 Hi everyone, it's MJ and in this video I want to talk about NFTs and the reason being is I woke up this morning to get an email from super rare Confirming that I had just sold my hundredth NFT that I've minted through their platform so of course a little bit of a celebration but in the good mood, so I thought why not make a YouTube video where we discuss what exactly is NFTs and Yeah, what is what is their potential future? But I guess let's maybe take a step back and very quickly Cover the the history or especially my history with NFTs for those of you who've been subscribed to this channel for for a while You'll see that it was towards the end of 2017 that I was making videos on crypto kittens And that was kind of like the very first introduction I got to two NFTs I mean there were crypto punks Which I think is even earlier than crypto kittens Which I unfortunately didn't get into because those things are now trading at astronomical values I think I don't know you can Google them, but I think like some of the prices are in like a million dollars for for some of those NFTs Absolutely crazy and the weird thing is is I kind of remember after the 2018 crash that we we had with Bitcoin Like reflecting on and saying, you know, why didn't I see this coming the fact that we were spending so much money on Virtual kittens, you know, this was a sign that we were in a bubble and gosh I should have that you know, the writing was on the wall Why didn't I I tap out and of course we sold a lot of the kittens and 2019 started getting slowly back into crypto kittens and all these kind of things but I kind of put NFTs I guess to to the side and Then it was it was basically because of COVID that I started getting back into NFTs And the reason being is I wanted to be an artist wanted to be an artist while I was studying for these actuarial exams I listened better when I'm doodling or drawing or doing things and because actuarial science There's quite a lot of lessons quite a lot of lectures that we have to go through. I had quite a considerable amount of time Sitting and having to do something well while I listened to all of this I started drawing started doodling started messing around with with art applications and My art, I mean, it's it's nothing great, but it's it's decent and I would you know I thought how cool would be if I put it in in a bunch of galleries so called up a bunch of galleries and a lot of them were like nope, nope, nope, nope But I went to an old boys school and whenever we would go to these socials You try to talk to girls. So I was I was used to being told no, no, no, you know, we're not interested and I Thought you know what? Rejection is something that that I've learned to cope with where I think a lot of people once they hear no, no, no Especially specifically in the art world. They think okay my art's not good enough and they just give up But kept going to different different galleries and eventually some would say okay cool You can have a bit of an exhibition with us so Cape Town We have this thing called first Thursdays and I was able to do one of these every single year So I think starting out 2016 2017 2018 2019 I had an art exhibition every single year And I moved from just being like in the city for first Thursdays to some of the more established galleries out in out in the Winelands so I was slowly building myself up as an artist had a bit of an Instagram account But all in all in these four years I only sold four pieces and that's why to have sold my hundredth piece now in it with super rare Which I've been on for less than a year makes me think wait something Something's up because if anything my artistic ability is probably declined because I'm not you know Listening to as many lectures as I was back then because now that I'm done with the actual exams It's kind of like wait with my arts getting a little bit worse But the sales are going up. Let's let's explore this But yeah, that's essentially what what kind of happened is 2020 we've got COVID I can't do a gallery exhibition So I remember when we were fooling around with NFTs back in the day that you know People were talking about an art use case and we had looked at like ascribe.io Which is now a defunct website where we had tried to put one or two pieces on it But nothing really materialized from it So I saw there was this website called super rare They're getting quite a lot of traction a lot of volume through their smart contract and I was like, let me let me do it So submitted the application form so they wanted a video. I have a phone call of course in the phone call Oh, you look like Ed Sheeran. I was like, yeah, that's the first time I've heard that but anyway long story short I've actually got on to to this platform and I started releasing quite a bit of my art And I think the first piece sold for like two hundred eighty seven dollars and it was like what on earth just happened I just sold a JPEG effectively for like two hundred eighty seven dollars Which in South African currency is a significant amount and I mean I would go through this process where I'd be selling these pieces and it became like quite an emotional roller coaster It was like it was like, I don't know shot of adrenaline Don't mean all of these things are rocked up in one when people started bidding on your on your pieces So bit of a roller coaster ride You got a little bit of set if no one bit it on the next piece and all these kind of things But it was kind of like around this. This was what June was like July September that kind of region When I just sold my tenth one and I wrote an article for the actuarial magazine and Basically that article was saying well is NFTs will can this be considered as as art and The conclusion of that article was yes that this this is art But the reason why I had to write that article is because I kind of been conditioned from a very early age And I think a lot of us especially a lot of us who you aren't really grasping or embracing NFTs is because we've kind of been You know conditioned that art is something that belongs on a canvas, you know If it's not on a canvas Then it's not art and it has to be that special, you know fabric canvas because a lot of the time when I was trying to get my Art out there they would like well, you know, you're not printing on canvas I was printing on on perspex on wood on metal, you know Just on different types of mediums things that kind of complemented the image I was doing So if it was you know a lady by the sea just put printed on wood if it was like a Wisdom machine and very mechanical it was printed on on like a metal People didn't like that. They didn't like the fact that I was printing on different Mediums and so I can I can see why a lot of people are against NFTs the fact that it's it's got a digital canvas because Like I say we will come conditioned as as children or we've been taught that art is something that's on a canvas But when you think about the history of art, it's I mean the canvas was it wasn't It's not like oh as soon as we had canvas then we had art We look at cave paintings I mean majority of the very very early art was was done on on walls cave paintings Or we would use sculptures or these kind of things the canvas was fairly modern It was this whole thing of like wow, you know We can now paint a picture and we can now move it So the canvas was a big technology in the sense that it allowed for art to be moved around and it It ease the logistic burden We're gonna see the NFTs. I mean it helps that 10 10 fold But you probably find back in the day the first few artists who were painting on canvas They'll probably look down upon, you know, everyone was like, oh This isn't real art what you you're not painting it on a wall You know, if it's not stone if it's not there, um, you know canvases Oh, they can get lost and oh canvas can get stolen and oh, you know canvas can get damaged You know all these kind of things or canvas can be copied You know, all these things probably people sort of saying and why canvases is wrong But first forward since canvas has been created and it's almost like now If the art piece isn't created on canvas, it's like oh, it's not it's not art So a lot of that article was dealing with how art is more about the Idea it's a transcendence, you know concept. It's not bound by its physical Um Structure so art can be like let's say that banana that they just put duct tape on, you know It shows how crazy society has become and you know, it was celebrated and all that kind of stuff and Yes, a banana and duct tape or two easy materials and you know themselves They're not worth much but the way it was presented and the risk that that artist took in saying that this is You know, there's a lot of beauty in that and that's why that piece sold for a considerable amount of money so Slowly and like very, you know, I guess in high contemporary art We are seeing a move away from canvas, but for a lot of us We're still thinking very traditionally that art has to be on a canvas So that first like say first article was I guess even for myself was to try Like like I thought I had to print my things on perspex hang it on a wall You know as a decoration and being like, okay. Now it's now it's art Whereas nfts made me start questioning what exactly is art And once you can overcome the realization that art like I say isn't bounded by the physical structure But it's more of this idea that helps to communicate bring people together and has all these other what weird and wonderful Social benefits you begin to accept that art can live on the blockchain and it can live within its jpeg format What makes the blockchain interesting is how it ties ownership it allows for a owner to to say this is mine And I think that's very important because you've got the creator who makes the art piece Normally they would sign their piece now with the blockchain, you know with your specific hash You don't no longer have to do that and now owners can embed their part Embed their their hash and belong to that whole story in the narrative of that art piece And you can think about like how valuable would it be just to say that you've owned the Mona Lisa? I mean simply to buy it and then resell it Um, there's quite a lot of value, you know just from a bragging right just say hey I'm part of part of this narrative So we see that quite a lot with entities we see people buying them and flipping them straight away Just because they want to be part of the ownership history And I mean I had someone buy one of my pieces for a thousand dollars Literally the same day resell it at two thousand dollars And people like oh, but you know used then sold it too low And it's like not necessarily because there's a weird thing that happens when somebody buys an NFT When someone buys an NFT, they've validated it They've made it like oh, this is something that is collectible This is one of the valuable ones because there's lots of NFTs out there Just how there's lots and lots of canvases out there and there's only a very small proportion that are a worth significant amounts and just by having someone purchase an NFT Then uh, it tells the rest of the market. Hey, this piece has been validated And so people can sell it on for a much higher amount And I think a lot of the early collectors figured this out And that's why they were able to buy NFTs and then resell them straight away and actually make a little bit of profit And of course whenever you've got collectors making money artists making money It's going to attract a lot of people into the space So it's interesting also to look at how the trading dynamics work because You also you think as an artist. Oh, no, I could have sold it for $2,000 and it's like Only once the art piece has been sold then its value will will increase along with it so Like I say, there's a very interesting Psychology that goes behind NFTs and also with how whole understanding of of what is art But I mean if we were to compare NFTs to traditional art and this is something where I'm very grateful for the experience of going to galleries and you know having these exhibitions and doing these things because It's not it's not that's difficult. It's just it's a bit of a pain. Okay Transporting these canvases is a mission Worrying that they're not going to get damaged finding enough space to put them in making sure that there's lighting and everything's good and You know printing little descriptions and having it next to it and then I remember I sold a piece through a gallery But I only found out like two weeks later that they had sold the piece And then there was a little bit of a tussle on how much they wanted to pay me for it and the agreement They were like no now they're short on cash and the delivery expense was a lot more than they thought And they wanted to take that out of my part of the the deal and it just became very very Messy and just like a big pain in the yeah We're not gonna mention that word but this is where NFTs become fascinating is NFTs you don't have to worry about them getting Copy because you can see the artist hash hash thing. So a little bit of research can take away any of these potential counterfeits Then it's so easy to move them around because if I want to send an NFT to you We simply do a transaction on the blockchain and it's done. We don't have to wrap it up in bubbles I mean I sold one painting to to america And had to put it in bubbles and then to try to get it to america then it's in customs And that's how when I even had like a european by one of my pieces They they they saw it on the computer. They said no printed on paper So that they could roll it up and so that it could easily transport it And I did not really because I mean paper for me was probably the most inferior of all of the mediums But you had to factor that into consideration When trying to get your art out there that hey, there's these frictional costs of logistics and all that kind of stuff NFTs take that away and of course when you start selling a lot of NFTs like I've been doing You do get some of these galleries contacting you. They don't want to meet for coffee They do want to talk about it and chatting to these galleries makes me think wow NFTs potentially have a bright future because I'm talking to some of these gallery owners and they're telling me about how 90 of their day Is around the logistics of art, you know trying to set this exhibition up then moving these pieces here Then one gets lost and now this is a lot of money and then this and they need insurance And it's like I say it really becomes a pain and nft technology Removes that it removes a lot of the frictional costs that you normally see when it comes to to art no longer Does art have to be stored in these high secure vaults? Especially I'm talking about the really old ones to preserve their quality because once this thing's on the blockchain It's pretty much secure another thing that started to Storn on me on why NFTs are so important and I think we're gonna make another video on it But I mean it's kind of what this room is filled with at the moment is you know good old uh if pokemon cards, I mean You try and buy and sell pokemon cards And you realize why NFTs are also doing so well because pokemon cards again Bayer wants to say buy some cards They want to look at the quality is it damaged isn't it damaged then there's this whole trust game Are they gonna pay first or are you gonna send the cards first? You know NFT there's a smart contract which does the two simultaneously and it removes the need for that NFT there's no issue of quality of these things because they can't get get damaged Also with pokemon cards You're geographically restrained Okay, so I can only really trade with people in in in my country And even limited a little bit to to some of the big cities where postage is not that expensive But normally like oh, yeah with these pokemon cards If you want to buy a card from america a lot of import duties or you want to get some costs from japan There's there's a lot of more, you know friction costs So it means the market that we're dealing with here in south africa is very very small NFTs You've got the world you're basically participating in a market where their entire world is buying and selling And for anyone who knows anything about markets the more market participants The more liquid things are the more quicker and easier it is to sell So art has traditionally been an asset class. That is e-liquid very difficult to sell high friction fees You've got to pay an auctioner, you know, there's high commissions all these kind of stuff suddenly NFTs Takes away a lot of that because hey, you've got these things are constantly on sale Always open for for someone to make a bid on them and it's it's a 24 7 art market And I mean I look at pokemon cards and one of the big fun aspects of pokemon Is is just the fact of trading just buying low selling high It doesn't matter what you're dealing with whether it's pokemon cards bitcoin All these things there there is a lot of fun in just the act the activity of of trading and NFTs allow people To to get that trading kick with weird and wonderful things And there's so many weird and wonderful collectibles that are jumping up. So there's the art ones I mean, I've even made that that other project where We're making all those actuarial history videos and then each of the significant characters We're turning into their own NFT. So, you know, there's the sir Isaac Newton NFT and I mean these NFTs They each contain a secret the secret is a riddle you solve the riddle and you get a word and that word is Could potentially be a part of a seed phrase that allows you to get quite a lot of of cryptocurrency And I mean I've been thinking about a lot of other crazy NFT ideas. The one is basically Black with pokemon you get a lucky packet and inside the lucky package You have all these little components and if you join the components or you craft them together You can get pieces of of a motor vehicle and then you can start assembling You know a motor vehicle and start combining these things to create an NFT Or and this I did have this idea before before covid I think with covid now be a little bit in bad taste, but It was like crypto bacteria. So the idea is that you'd have a piece of bacteria And then you could mutate it or split it and when it split it splits it into different Uh, bacteria, so it was like oh you're getting one is turning into two But if that was a valuable bacteria, you've now lost that one because it has transformed it to these others And it's simply, you know, you have the smart contract burn this one mint these two And you know the code isn't that that difficult But looking at all of these NFTs and the the weird and wonderful ideas that we could potentially have The most successful one has been art art seems to be the one that is leading the way In NFTs is the one that's attracting the most money because it's kind of like Well, I guess this is the thing like Because we were in lockdown, you know, you spend a lot of time thinking about things. So one thing I did You know, you're talking for too long when the GoPro runs out of battery. So let me maybe Yeah, I'll start uh, stop wrapping this whole thing up But what I was saying before the GoPro died on me was that during the pandemic during lockdown I went and I got all of my mother's steps that were down in storage and I just kind of went through it And I was trying to get in like side the mind of of a collector Also watching a lot of videos on collectible watches, you know, Hublot Rolex Richard Mill Philip Patek all of these things and trying to understand what makes something collectible and I mean, there's a whole bunch of Properties that something needs to have in order for it to become Collectible and that's one of the things I'm trying to do with my my other NFT project that I've listed on on rareable those actuarial icons is trying to meet each of those criteria and Look, it has had a very slow start. I mean, we sold a few But there's only been like around five people who've been buying like a couple of them Um, and then gas fees went up and then it was like, ooh Minting these things does get a little bit expensive. So NFTs is not perfect. You know, there's still a little bit other other risks that you need to consider For instance gas fees can play a significant role because they're very volatile one day It costs just a couple of dollars to mint one the next day It or even sometimes in a couple of hours it can change to be costing like a thousand Um, not a thousand dollars a thousand ransom like a hundred dollars to mint an NFT. So There is a lot of volatility on that side and I am hoping that Once gas prices come down Then I can actually finish that project and just release the the rest of the NFTs There's going to be a hundred different ones in total couple for each one and basically Make my own kind of trading card thing and I think that's why I call this research. Okay. I'm buying Minecraft trading cards, which I'm not gonna lie. They look really stupid, but I like minecraft. So I did get one shiny one a dolphin. So just buying things like Yu-Gi-Oh Um, these premier league ones as well. This is kind of Even getting japanese pokemon cards It's kind of just research is trying to kind of see what makes things collectible. What do people want? Um, understanding like I say the psychological side of it because NFTs have been a lot of fun. Um, they've been very rewarding for me I mean, you can imagine selling a hundred of these things where the I mean the last 20 have been averaging around 700 800 dollars An NFT It's it's almost rivaling like the amount that I make doing actuarial consulting and and sometimes there's like a thought in my head that says This is this is so much easier than actuarial science. Like why don't you just stop consulting altogether and focus? all your your attention on NFTs and I am trying to resist that that urge because I think it's good to be diversified with how you generate income Um, so for anything I want to keep working at the actuarial stuff It's still a little bit more than the NFTs does require a lot more more effort though Um, but I'm very thankful for this whole NFT thing. But one thing that I that I am busy building at the moment and It's a little bit early to maybe talk about it But I kind of feel like we've made it all this way to the to this part of the video Um, I'll let you guys in on on what we're building. So Essentially, we're building an NFT platform That is going to allow NFTs to be exchanged at a zero percent fee because now if you buy something on supray Like let's say asala an NFT on supray 18 percent goes to supray that very first sale 18 percent 15 percent gets hit on the the seller That's me and three percent gets hit on on the buyer and then going forward another three percent, um But just trading costs and sometimes they give the royalty back to the artist of another 10 percent So that's still 13 percent. It's quite a high fee wearable and open seas There are 2.5 percent on each side of the buyer and seller so in totals also around 5 percent Now when these NFTs are trading for hundreds and thousands of dollars 5 percent of that amount is quite significant and it can eat into the profits of these NFT flippers people who buy today and sell later that afternoon Having to deal with that 5 percent as well as dealing with the gas fees It can kind of hurt to whatever trading profits that you're hoping to make So on our platform, we're going to have zero fees Essentially, we're taking the smart contract and we're just where it says, you know, take a fee and send to our address We're just deleting that. I mean, it's not not rocket science. What we're doing We're just removing that fee So it's still going to have the same security the same mechanics of all these other smart contracts that are last for the seamless Transaction of either for NFT, but now with zero percent fee Of course, we wanted to take it one step further and we thought instead of just being negative fees Oh, sorry. Instead of just having no fees. What do you think we had negative fees and by negative fees? I thought What if we gave you some cryptocurrency every single time you Took an NFT and you sold it through our smart contract So you you sell your NFT through our contract Not only do you get ether in return for selling that NFT But we will also give you our own native token. In fact, we won't be giving it to you Your action of exchanging it. There will be some code Then this is the only way that our currency will be minted. It can only be minted when the smart contract goes So the more people selling on our site the more coins there's going to be in circulation Now you can take these coins and you can sell them on a decentralized exchange Or you can use them on the platform to promote your other NFTs So if you've got some other NFTs you sell one you get some coins and you say I can either sell this for bitcoin or ethereum or whatever I want Or let me use these coins to promote my other NFTs and push them to the top of the listing because If you're on the home page of these NFT platforms You're more likely to get a sale than not and I kind of know this from going through super rare Every time you change the price you push your NFT to the top. So Yes, it costs gas fees But a little trick is to keep changing your price even if it means making it go higher Just the fact that you're now like listed number one on the on the home page Of course when other people start listing you start moving down So you have to do this regularly But just being at the top It means that you're more likely to have a sale from a nectoral point of view is kind of like You're getting more exposure. So the event that you want to happen is more likely to occur So that's what you can do with this token. So by selling on our platform, not only are they going to be zero percent fees We're not going to charge you or the person buying from you and that way they're going to probably get you a better price But we're going to be giving you a token that is going to behave just like any other ERC 20 token So you can sell it on decentralized exchanges send it to friends use it as a currency like anything else But it also has this purpose that it can be used to promote NFT listings on our platform Look, like I said talking a little bit a little bit early. We're still in the demonstration phases We're still lining up investors getting that whole thing ready But I guess this is one of my moves that I want to do in the NFT space is Been very successful selling them now. I want to stop building the infrastructure to assist with the whole trading and all these other things But sure, like I said, the the gopro has already told me to shut up once by by dying on his battery So let me maybe wrap up this this video by saying cheers If you've got any thoughts any questions any queries, let me know down in the comment section below And yeah, I guess also thank you to to all the people who have purchased my entities I sometimes chat to them on on twitter and I see that some of them are my Chariot subscribers on this youtube channel So for those of you who have bought into the NFTs and have flipped them and made a little bit more and all that kind of stuff I just want to say thank you so much And yeah, I'll see you guys for another video where we'll probably talk about pokemon. I mean, I think we need to talk about pokemon I mean look at this We we we took a lot of the NFT money and we were buying pokemon cards So we'll talk about that in the next video. See you guys soon. Cheers