 Hello. Welcome to today's episode. We're talking NFTs with Function. If you follow the NFT world, you've probably seen them on Twitter. It's got a huge following. And so I did my NFT drop last week and there was a lot of controversy around it. And I was like, you know what, who should I bring on my next podcast episode? Who's not necessarily a fan of mine? Maybe somebody who was in this whole, you know, Twitter criticism. There was people criticizing. There was people liking what I did and everything. And a lot of people replied to my tweet and were like, you need to get Function on here. He's a big voice for the NFT community. He's got a following. He knows what he's talking about. So I just messaged him on Twitter. I said, hey, everybody's a lot of people are saying your name. And he was nice enough to come on here. So welcome Function and my business partner, Dr. Alex Mer, I appreciate you being on. What's going on, guys? Function. How's it going, Ty? It's great, great. And yeah, the purpose of today's call, I don't have a real agenda for today's show, except let's just talk, you know, the good, the bad, the ugly. I like that. You know, I'll just start by saying I'm new to the NFT community in the sense that what I just did was my first project that I was, you know, putting my name on kind of thing. And so it's been very interesting. I look at everything I do in business. It's like an experiment to start. I've learned stuff. I've seen what people liked, what people didn't like, you know, some hype, some higher price stuff. People now to be fair to myself, I think, you know, like we were talking about sound bites go go viral. So I don't think people totally understood the project. But let me step back before I this this show is not to talk about my stuff. But let me ask you a question. Just Function, you've been in this game. And how you've been in the crypto game even before NFT, you've been doing this for how long? Man, I went full time into crypto at the end of 2017 and watched a little bit of NFT hype back then. You know, there's crypto kitties and crypto punks were coming out and all that good stuff was just starting, but there wasn't like a market print of keys. Everybody was just trading shitcoins on finance and trying to make as much money as possible. So it was just like, it's a completely different ecosystem and environment in terms of the NFT world. But it's been really like interesting to like, watch and observe what's happening in the NFT world right now, because it's a very, very similar thing to like what happened in 2017, which is kind of like part of the discussion of like what I want to talk about, you know, like as soon as as an ecosystem starts to evolve and step into like a new format and a new limelight, it brings a lot of attention from people who don't know about the ecosystem and haven't been a part of the ecosystem. And like as the counter to like you coming in, right, like to a degree, like what I see when I see celebrities coming into the ecosystem is kind of like when I call it grifter, like someone who sees an opportunity wants to come in and will like take advantage of the opportunity while the market's at like a peak cycle and then we'll just completely leave and like not add anything to the ecosystem. So I think that's kind of like what I want to like discuss as well in our call because I've seen it in 2017, bro, like the exact talk for the 2017 Bitcoin crypto market was Katy Perry painting her nails with Bitcoin, Dodge, Ethereum and posting it on her Instagram page on December 15, 2017. And that's the exact date that Bitcoin hit 20 grand. So it's interesting to watch and observe how celebrities and other people come into the industry now. And the way that they choose to approach it because like, quite frankly, I'm rambling a little bit, but quite frankly, like, you want to make two or three mil on an NFT right now, pretty fucking easy if you have any form of an audience and any form of traction with like any form of like social currency, right, like pretty fucking easy to transfer that social currency into two or three million dollars. But I'm a huge advocate that if you're patient, you learn, you get educated, you get involved in the community, and you understand like what this technology is doing where it's going, you can make 100 million in the next 10 years, like fuck the two or three million. So yeah, that's kind of a little bit of the story about me. I've been doing crypto since 2017 full time every single fucking day, been to crypto events and done all the shit you could ever imagine in the industry. And I'm stoked to be on this podcast to kind of discuss this constant dilemma of like, like, struggling with people coming in on the outside. And like, where do we become gatekeepers and call out the bullshit? And where do we like also see that to a degree, there's like a very large benefit for celebrities and people with other large social currencies and other industries to come in and to add to the ecosystem. So I want to make sure that I'm keeping you open minded this discussion as well, Ty. I don't want to just like be a closed-minded asshole. So we'll just start with that. Yeah, no, I hear you. I mean, the way I look, I started in crypto in terms of going on my social media and talking about it in August in around the same year as you 2017. And I saw the same thing, people were mad, they're like, oh, Ty's coming in. I mean, a lot of people got into crypto. What I told people, you know, I started a podcast back then and it shot up because just because I had a following. So a lot of people were listening and it did the same thing. It brought critics and it brought people that were like, yo, I got into crypto because I saw you talking about it. And it is a dilemma. Like, here's the, here's just how I kind of think about it. And you tell me if I'm stupid here because there are gonna be two types of influencers or celebrities who come in. One's gonna come in and fulfill what they say and the other's just doing it for a cash grab. I think for me, when I was responding to people, I was like, look, I got my name on this, I have my face on it. Do you think I'm, if somebody, you know, gets an NFT, one of mine gave you access to all these courses? I'm almost done with that, that course access or make sure you have the NFT, checks your wallet and gives you access. It'll be done next week. It took me two weeks to fulfill. That was the biggest category of NFT I sold. It was .1 ETH. It was about as low as you can go. It was two, 300 bucks. And so I was telling people, I was like, I'm gonna fulfill this. And then, you know, I got some hate because I had something like go to a basketball game with me and it was like whatever, 30 grand. But I think people forgot that was a three year NFT. So I have to take people to a basketball game with me, courtside, three years in a row. I get the, you know, the primary, a basketball game. I wasn't really making that much money on it. So it was kind of, I put a whole bunch of NFTs out to test also, I think, because this is how I see NFTs. I'm not an artist. So I don't, a lot of the community now I own a board A, Alex has a board A, but that's not, I don't profess to be an expert on PFPs, collectibles. I'm more of a utility businessman. So I've been following NFTs since I remember, you know, Crypto Kitties and all this. And to me, I was waiting for an opportunity where I thought the market would allow me to buy a restaurant or buy a hotel or buy a nightclub and actually use NFTs more as a key to unlock something. And a few projects have done that, Gary V's stuff. But so I guess, you know, in terms of people saying that don't be a grifter, I'm not really being a grifter of saying I get the community. Like I'm not embedded in that community. I'm kind of just using NFTs at phase of value. You, I used to own nightclubs. It's like you come to the door. If you have an NFT, we swipe it, we let you in. That's more what I'm interested in in the NFT world. And I'm not sure I'll ever be able to be a person that understands the all of the ecosystem. Does that make sense? And I think there'll be people, but I think this utility side of NFTs is fascinating. I own farmland. I was like, okay, I don't want to, if I fractionalized the farmland with NFTs, it becomes a security and I don't want to deal with the SEC, but there's this thing called community supported agriculture. It's been around for decades where people buy from a farmer, they buy, you know, they pay a thousand bucks a year and they're entitled to one tenth or one hundredth of what's grown. A hundred people buy a membership and when the farmer collects, you know, grows their food, they put it in a hundred boxes and people come pick it up. So it's like a fractional ownership of the land, the harvest of the land. So I was like, I could do that with NFTs. And then if you, the problem with the CSA, the old way before NFTs, if you live near the farmer and you go get your box, but then you move, all sudden you paid a thousand dollars and it's not transferable. So to me was like, wow, NFTs are transferable memberships so that when people no longer need them, you go to a four-year university and my brother went to University of Chapel Hill, dropped 80 grand to get a Spanish degree. At the end of four years, he had an $80,000 interest accruing debt. It really stressed him out for years. He didn't even speak Spanish at the end and I was thinking, what if he would have bought an NFT that unlocked access to four years at UNC Chapel Hill and at the end he resells it and there's two things, not to be long-winded, but that I liked about it. The first thing was it forces Chapel Hill be since they would make money on royalties. Maybe they put the royalty a little higher, 20% on the trade. So now UNC Chapel Hill is incentivized to make a good Spanish program so that the word doesn't get out and the value of the UNC Chapel Hill NFT drops, they would be incentivized to be like, let's make the most amazing program so everybody can get in and they have a limited amount of it, non-fungible tokens denote sign of uniqueness. So you have a limited and then the second thing, my brother, maybe he could have resold it for $90,000 or even if he could have resold it for $50,000 at the end of the four years, he would only have $30,000 a day. So that's what got my going and why I got into the community. And anyway, well, I think first off, you're talking about very high level NFT like implementation. I think like the ideas and the concepts that you're just discussing about would like college NFTs and being able to split them like that's something that'll probably happen in the future is like this technology becomes more advanced and stuff like that, but kind of bring it back like to your NFT drop and like really my main question, my like initial like inquisition was like, first off, I don't think anyone really had a problem with your like point one Excel, right? Like you're clearly, you clearly have some sort of unique ability to get attention from people and that has led you into creating a career and a persona Tai Lopez. And I've seen a lot like, I'll just say it like I've seen people charge a lot more for shitty NFTs, right? So I personally was like, all right, point one, like he's given away some courses and shit, like whatever, it's not like a big deal. My main beef with the whole thing. And I'm curious about your approach on it because it really, I think like your perspective and like why you did it is going to like really solidify like my like perspective around your NFT drop as a whole like my main and the whole community to me community is being issue is like you're trying to charge people nine, 10, eight in a reverse Dutch auction that goes to 60 for watching a movie. Yeah, that one got every but that movie one got people that was a funny one Netflix and chill for 60 grand. Before I get into like the beef around it or like why I think that's a little grippy cash grabby, like more than a little why I think it is grippy cash grabby my question for you is when you made those is that something that you're like, yes, my time is actually worth this and I think people will pay it or is it something that you're like, this is going to get a lot of fucking attention and it's going to help me sell out my other NFTs. So we're just going to do this because I know people will be like, why the fuck would I ever pay $30,000 for to watch a movie with time opens, right? And so if it's the latter, then I'm like, okay, like I get I get your game. That's the game you play. And that's the strategy you have. Now, if you're actually legitimately thinking that people should pay you 10, 15, upwards to watch a movie with you, whether it be for one time or three times over three years, like we got some shit to discuss. Yeah, so here's how I think about it. And yeah, that's good points. I look at it this way. So let's take the movie one. I talked about the basketball one, you know, it's expensive to go to Laker floor seats for three years with somebody. But you could say movies aren't expensive, you could just go to the movies. Here's the thing. So let's say somebody paid whatever $30,000, $40,000 to go to the movies with me for three years. So you divide it up. It's 10, 15,000 a year, whatever sounds high. Here's the thing. One, I put those black cards up very limited, just a couple of them. Most of them had two max supply. Part of why I did it was I told my team, I was like, you know what? Let's see what's most in demand. And it was very interesting, like the gold cards too. That was a higher price. Those were like one or two ETH. So part of it is to understand my following. But more importantly, that wasn't the main reason. The second one is I'm different than most people and I've disagreed with many people on this. But it's just my personal belief and I kind of stick with it. I see the value in mentors and I spend a lot of money on mentors. So I paid one time Steve Ballmer, business partner with Bill Gates. They own Microsoft together. I paid $250,000 to have lunch with them. One time at the Clipper game, there was a raffle thing and I paid $250,000. A lot of people were like, why'd you do that? I was like, well, that hour with Steve Ballmer was one of the most important hours of my life because I could ask him really complicated questions and because of his experience, it added a lot. I was trying to decide whether I wanted to sell a company that I owned at the time and he gave me some unique insight that I'm a college dropout. So I think it's more valuable than anything I could have done had I gone to a four-year Harvard degree. So I pay a lot for mentorships and I spend about, and some people, like I said, when I say this, people are going to get mad because people think it's ridiculous. I don't think it is because to me it has an ROI. It has a return on investment. So I pay trainers, like I worked out sometimes with Dorian Yates. He's a bodybuilder dude and he'll zoom with me for like, he won the Mr. Olympia six times and he'll zoom with me and he's like 800 bucks for 20, 30 minutes to zoom with him. And so I have friends that are like, that's freaking insane. Why would you do that? I'm like, well, because this guy, I feel confident that he knows what he's talking about and I'm willing to pay that premium. Same with Steve Ballmer. So that's kind of the, there are people out there that want, that are in similar businesses. I own big E-Com businesses and they want to be an E-Com, you know, and they want to know these things. So it's not really the movie. It's people want to ask questions. Now people, I heard some haters going, but Elon Musk doesn't offer that. And I'm like, well, Elon Musk is super busy. And number two, is that a good thing? If Elon Musk offered to take people under his wing and mentor him, mentor them, is that necessarily a bad thing for those people? Whether he charges a dollar for it or, I mean, he's the richest man in the world. So maybe he could donate it all to charity. The black cards, I was thinking maybe I could donate it to charity. It wasn't so much about the money. It was just more that if I'm going to take the time, my life right now is crazy scheduled out. I own about 20 companies and I'm not saying this to brag. I'm just trying to talk about the black cards. It's hard for me to take time off. And so that's why I put the black cards up. I'm like, it's a free market. Nobody has to buy. A lot of the black cards didn't sell. So it's hard to take advantage of people, in my opinion, when it's optional. You know, if Steve Ballmer would have said $2 million to have lunch meat, I would have been like, no. And is that taking advantage of me? I think the only way it would have been taking advantage is if without my permission, he would have taken $2 million out of my bank. So I like NFTs from the free market side. And the last thing I'll say, I kind of mimic, I don't know if people remember, Vayner V Friends is one of the most popular NFTs, high floor price. He started at 80 ETH to go to a Knicks game with him. I was a little surprised with the community because I kind of, I knew Gary V was maybe not everybody likes somebody seems to be somewhat in the community. And I was like, he charged 80 ETH to go to a basketball game. And he did a regular Dutch auction. And I'm going, I started at 10 or something. So I was surprised at that, honestly, because I thought everybody let Gary V do it. And some other people, also I have friends, not to protect myself, but I have friends going, wait a sec, Ty, a bunch of pixels that's just art and has no utility can trade for a million dollars. But having a business dinner with you, which maybe it's overpriced, but at least it has some potential value. My friends were surprised that aren't in the NFT community. And they're like, so maybe let me, can I ask you this question? In terms of, and I'm not trying to attack anybody, but I'm reiterating some of my non-NFT friends, they're like, whoa, they think NFTs are scams. They think I shouldn't go in it. They're like, guys are trading up and up a board ape or a crypto punk all the way up Justin Bieber paid a million. They're like, this is a Ponzi scheme. It's a confidence game. They're just saying it's valuable because the next person, but they're like, there's no value there. And if it's art, is that art, would you really pay a million dollars for that as a piece of art? So what do you think I should tell my friends? Cause it's a legitimate question. They asked me and they're like, why do they care? If you go on a private jet and somebody comes on to talk to you, I have to let a stranger into your life for three days, three years in a row on a private jet and you're charging 40 grand for three years. That's 12 grand. They get a free private jet flight. How should I answer my friends? Cause they think I shouldn't even be some of them in NFTs at all. I would tell your friends they don't understand NFTs even in the slightest bit, right? They don't like, if you're questioning and even Utah, right? Like if you're questioning whether it's your friends or you or anyone, if you're questioning why a crypto punk is going for millions and why you can't sell something for 10 E, then you haven't been in the industry for long enough and you don't know enough about, right? Like that's, and you bring up Gary V and I think that's a really important example is that, and it's the difference of what Gary V did versus what you did. Um, is the Gary V and the thing that I, the reason he was accepted by so much by the community before he dropped his NFT is for three to six months, that guy was posting every day learning about NFTs. He was literally on Twitter and Instagram. Like he spent two months in silence about him after he found out about him. And then he spent like three to six months, like just talking about them. And then he went specifically on Twitter to the community members who had built the space like coin artists and other like really OG NFT crypto people like coin artists been building shit since 2016, 2017 on the blockchain with NFTs on Ethereum, right? Before NFT was even a word that 90% of the crypto people you could know, much less the world, right? So what he did is he strategically went in and was like, I don't know shit, I want to learn before I drop anything. And he did it very publicly so that when he did drop something, we all had some sort of respect for it, right? He had gained a social currency within our crypto ecosystem. I won choosing to be humble and interact with quote unquote, nobody's right, like people with a thousand followers or 3000, but he knew they had information because of the experience they had. And so he chose to dive in and interact with those people. And then he just chose to continually like sit and listen to what people were talking about. And I think honestly, I think the thing he did, and I don't mean to be completely shitting on you here, but I think the thing he did better than any other celebrity I've ever seen is he like continuously like pushed how his NFT is like how he's here for the long term, his NFT is not going away and he's like consistently grinding at it. Right. And so there was a lot of thought process and a lot of it like innovative thinking going into like how to provide value for these things and fecons. And now he's talking about version twos like the man is living it. And so when I'll speak for myself and probably a lot of the crypto community, like when I see you come on a video and talk about giving people your phone charger or your headphones in a box or a laminated piece of like information that you found and putting it into a box and mailing it to them, whether or not that is valuable to an individual out there is I'm not going to debate because there's some people that might love a box from you. I don't fucking know, but what I think is like the ultimate clear fact is it just looks low effort. It just like looks like you haven't thought it out and looks like you're kind of reaching to add value to this thing rather than being like, yo, this is exactly what they get. We're going to make a really high quality video. It's not me on my computer just like in my office just jam and then like saying whatever is coming to my mind. Like I need to show why the crypto community should accept me. Right. I should show like the actual value that I have to bring. And I think that's like the main thing because like that along with like buying the board for hype and attention to kind of like start your way into the industry, it just feels like low effort. Yeah. No, I see. I mean look and to be 100% honest to give you some credit like maybe it's not low effort. Maybe this is something you have thought out and like you do have strategy behind and like you just haven't portrayed it well to the community and to people involved. I don't know. I did enough research on your NFTs and going through your websites and stuff and like I can like after like looking into it, I can like see what you're trying to add and like maybe that wasn't portrayed well enough or maybe that like maybe I don't know well enough to say that it's not like low effort because you just haven't shared your strategy behind the scenes to give you some sort of credit. So function, quick question for you. You say low effort, but if you look at the project and the utilities, you would see that most of the things that are packed into these NFTs, different types of NFTs are actually our core competency, meaning we are uniquely positioned to deliver those. Ty and I have done a lot of acquisitions. You can Google it. It's just kind of like our bread and butter. So adding, acquiring a hotel to deliver on a utility is something that is literally our core competency. You mentioned sending boxes of things to people. Well, Ty and I had a business where we delivered monthly boxes to people. So it is our core since 2016. So it is our core competency. If you look at, for example, Ty's courses, Ty has sold how many people have gone into his programs like SMMA or 67 steps or all of them, tens of thousands. Ty can correct me if it is higher. I think it's like 60,000 at SMMA. People paid to go into a single course, including a lot of people that are currently even helping us market outside people. They knew about Ty by going into his programs and they got into the trade. Just put it out there, see how many people have gone into online marketing and drop shipping and e-commerce because of Ty's courses. So that's core competency. If you look at basketball, honestly, it's funny because I did not know anything about basketball and Ty dragged me into it. I've been on the floor seat with him. I've been in the bats. He got me into this is his core competency. I mean, he knows basketball players. I mean, it's not like he made it up for his NFT and he's like, you know, I'm doing something that I like to do anyways and I'm going to allow someone else to come in with me. And I've done it. I've actually been with Ty on the floor Lakers game and I loved it. It's a great experience, even though I'm not into basketball. So it is his core competency. If you look at any one of those going to the movies before pandemic, I want to say Ty. Well, by the way, let me just, Alex, let me say one thing on the movies because that was a hotspot. What I said in the video and I mentioned this on my social media is that for this is more for people in the movie industry. Alex and I produce movies professionally. We're executive producers on a movie with Sigourney Weaver, you know, Dustin Hoffman this year. We produce through three movies. So that one was a little bit more from my Hollywood days like, Hey, if you want to go out and we talk the business of movies while we're at a movie, but let me let me step back and just before you go on and step back or anything, I want to address Alex like, and I think it's like hitting on it perfectly here. I'm not questioning your core competence at all. Right? Like, I think that Ty has made it this far in the world and people are wanting his core competencies. And that's awesome. I don't question that he is competent in the areas where he's delivering like content and information to people like I'm sure through his experiences, there's been value added to people's lives like obviously or else he wouldn't have some sort of a following like some people like if some people add value. I'm more addressing the way that those core competencies were presented to the community because they're presented in a low effort way. And that's how it came off to me as someone who I'm very familiar with you, you know, like it's hard not to be familiar with you if you've done anything on in like the digital like landscape at all. And I'm also very, very, very deep in the community. So I completely understand why the community is going to nitpick you. They're going to look at every little thing and they're going to be like, why is he saying this? Like, why is that? And when from a crypto community standpoint, like when you're on a video and you're telling people that phone charger is going to be mailed to them, like it just becomes a joke. Like how can it not become a joke? Right? Like you're asking people to pay three $500 and you're giving while what may seem to a Tai Lopez fan as a normal video and a normal, like delivery of value and maybe a Tai Lopez fan would be like, fuck yeah, like I'll buy that. You got to understand entering the crypto industry, like you're at a whole new like landscape, you got a whole new subset of people that may know of you, may already like you and maybe already not like you and a whole subset of people who are like, who the fuck is Tai Lopez? Right? So from an outsider standpoint, from someone outside of the bubble that you've created of the world that you've created and the success you've created the internet marketing circle and world, I look in and I say, this feels low effort to me, especially when I look at other examples, like Gary V, who literally just like was on like phone calls for six months straight trying to learn about NFTs before he ever even dropped one and was publicly sharing his entire journey. Right? I don't know the journey you've gone on the back end, but from a perspective that I see and from the perspective of the crypto community, you bought a board eight, got some attention, it's like, like you're a little announcement, you're in NFTs, and then you drop an NFT project like a month or so later. And not only that, but you've got what seems what is like ridiculous to a degree of like a nine, even watch a movie with Tai Lopez, like maybe from someone who's like a movie director who's like, I need to meet Tai Lopez, I could see the perspective of someone wanting to buy that. But you also like can't deny that 99.99% of the people aren't going to want that. And as soon as you post that into an ecosystem like crypto Twitter, that's really built on 4chan and making memes and Reddit, right? Like, it's going to get trolled, you're going to get memes, you're going to get laughed at. If that's part of your strategy to get attention, then honestly, bro, prompts like that's a fucking smart marketing tactic. I would say this, I don't know that I always try to create controversy, but I'm also not afraid of it. I've been through this game. I've had people underestimate me forever since I started, you know, with the dad in prison, my mom, single mom raising me, I've seen people, I remember telling, I was funny, I was talking to a family friend and she's like, I remember, you told me when you were like 18, I'm going to become a millionaire. And she's like, I didn't, we didn't know any millionaires in that, in this kind of growing up. So I agree with you. I mean, in hindsight, I look back and certainly the existing crypto community, the way that I presented it, maybe should have been more like you're talking about, you know, slowly move my way into the community. I'd say in some ways, I don't always have the time to publicize everything I'm doing. But in hindsight, I probably, because I've been looking at crypto and FT is my seventh year, sixth, seventh year, but I haven't always had time to talk about it. And when I do talk about it, I kind of come out as a burst. So maybe I agree. It's that it seems like, yo, this is a grifter, but I'm like, man, I was telling people to buy crypto at scale when Bitcoin was 4,500 and ETH was at 100. And so part of me can defend myself and part of me agrees with you like, yo, learn. I'm not perfect, man. I'm busy. I do stuff. I roll stuff out. Like you said, maybe I should have shot the videos more professional. Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned phone charger. That one, by the way, I'll defend myself. It's a gift box with all kinds. Tim Ferriss does the same thing. It was like a box of everything that's changing his life for that quarter. So, you know, but I can see why it looks grifty if you're like, who the fuck is this guy? What I would say, though, I'll go back to this as a libertarian kind of political guy. I'm not totally libertarian. I like people throwing stuff up because who I'm going to give you an example. Let's just pick a random celebrity. I don't even know. You brought up Katy Perry or somebody or LeBron James basketball player. If he threw up an NFT and it was just like, you know, go to the sauna with me or like get stretched by me while I'm getting stretched before my basketball game and I'm going to charge whatever price, crazy high price. I have this feeling and this is what I like about capital markets and why I'm somewhat of a capitalist and why I like crypto to me and NFTs is the ultimate capitalist game. There's no government intervention or minimal. Yeah, permissionless. The market sets it. So, let's say LeBron James says it's 100 grand to stretch with me like before the game, 20 minutes. Now, let's say I am just hypothetically, let's say 9 million people see that and all make fun of them. But one person who's had chronic back problems is like, holy fuck, I've been to 30 doctors and like, nobody fucking helps me. If I could stretch with LeBron James who has like 20 of the best, you know, physical therapists, maybe they vowed for three years you could do that. Maybe they value it. And so I, I hear you on the crypto community and I agree that optically, maybe the way I did it doesn't sit well with them. I mean, that's obvious. It didn't sit well with some of the ingrained community. But there was also voices in that ingrained board eight and other communities going, give us a fuck what tie sells. I think the biggest thing people said was it'll be fucked up if he doesn't fulfill it, which I do think if I paid LeBron James 100 grand to go stretch with him before his Lakers game and he never showed up. Now that's a problem. And when I look at the crypto community, my kind of defense, like I said, I'm, I'm, I hope I'm a smart enough guy to defend myself sometimes and not defend myself others and admit I was wrong and or I should have done it better. But there's part of me that's like, I've seen NFT community projects go out that are at that raise $20 to $30 million. I'll give you an example. This isn't an NFT. When I saw a Dow, they were going to raise money and buy Blockbuster video. Well, I tried to buy Blockbuster, you can't buy it for $5 million. They were about to get people to send $5 million in with no idea what they're doing. And so I've seen a lot of stuff. If I wanted to become a crypto critic and how about all the blockchains that have raised money that'll never launch or haven't launched? And of course you could say, but Ty, you can't justify your, your bad thing by other bad things. I was just saying, I'm going to buy a hotel. I've been posting the hotel. I was working on a hotel right before COVID kind of shut down that car. It was hard to, it was a weird time to buy a hotel. But I've been posting on the restaurants that I'm looking at and I'm looking to buy one of the top nightclubs. So I was kind of, I understood, I understand you that the NFT community, but there could have been a part of the community that's like, this motherfucker buys shit. I just dropped over a hundred million bucks buying big things. And I've seen other people promising hotels and I'm like, do you think I should do this? The biggest haters against me, we put a million bucks in an escrow account. The ones that were saying, this isn't you, but other people that are like, ah, Ty's rugged at their community. I'm like, how about this? Put a million bucks, anybody, all match it. And if X amount of time, I buy a hotel or I buy a restaurant or I buy a nightclub, I get their money. And if not, I lose. I lose my money because I'm like, shit, people want to bet against me. Let's go. I'm like, put, everyone should put their money where their mouth is. I'm totally good with that. I will take, many people I bet against me. I've done this with people. I've taken, I'm 50 out of 50 taking people's money who bet against me. So like you said, I should have talked to you before this. You could have helped me optically make this thing. But I'm like, I've already got the course thing. I'm already going to have the first, I know Gary Vee has his Vee friends. I've got the first one that was after a year of him. I think it comes out this year. I'm like, I already have mine. But is that, I mean, here's my thing. I see people paying, and Gary Vee is a super sharp guy. I'm not talking shit, but it's a floor price on his conference of 14. So that's roughly $50,000 to go to a conference. I know of no conference on earth. That's more than $1,000. Maybe there's some conferences. I went to the Ritosa family office in Dubai, which is supposedly the highest level investors. That was 5,000. So I guess I'm saying, am I really that great? Because I was looking around, I'm trying to do the math. I'm like, okay, this one's 50,000. This one raised 27 million. And everybody knows they're not going to fulfill. I'm charging for floor seats, 10 grand a year for three. Am I maybe on the horrible? I don't know. I couldn't get the math. I think there's, there's, there's a split thing we're talking about here, right? And I think it's the way that the way that I operate in the world and the way that I see the world is specifically like, especially in an online community. And when your reputation is involved, you're dealing with two things. You're dealing with social currency and you're dealing with financial currency, right? And so what Gary V did with slowly building up over a period of time telling historian creating content created enough social currency for him to be able to sell the ship for two, eight to five, eight, whatever it's like it was. And now it's at a 17 or 18 floor. So I see what you're looking at. You're looking through it at a very traditional value perspective lens, right? I'm giving this for this dollar value. This person is giving this for this dollar value. My dollar value is less. Why is everyone not mad at Gary V? Why are they mad at me? Right? And so I think what's being missed is the value is actually in like the social currency aspect of it. Like what Gary V is done, which is what Y board Apes or 100 ETH or probably like more like 70 at the time of this recording, but why they went to 120, why like celebrities were trying to buy them was essentially the social currency of it. Like they had created an ecosystem, which is similar to like what Gary has created and what like a zoo key and other like major projects are creating is a social currency ecosystem, where when you buy an NFT, your social currency immediately increases. So I think that's what you're missing. And why aren't people buying this for this or that for that is like the crypto community operates in a completely different and especially the NFT community operate in a completely different mindset around value. The same people that are shitting on you for trying to sell an NFT for $300 are the ones with the $2.5 million dollar profile picture. And until you like fully grasp and fully understand like why people are buying the NFTs, you're always going to be in this like, I'm giving value, why are you mad at the kind of stuck position? Also, there's a flip side to that argument, which is look, this is blockchain. Ty and I like have co-founded two other blockchain projects have been investing in blockchain startups for a while. This is and Ty has been talking about blockchain for a long time. So we are not new to this game. And the beauty of blockchain, the whole philosophy is that it is permissionless, does not require anyone's permission or even the zeitgeist of whatever it is, in this case, NFT for people to create new concepts. And if the new concept and it's expected, so yes, you're talking about one paradigm, which is all board apes and how it's done and the social currency of the blah, blah, blah. But the truth is for as long as there have been human innovation, every time new people came with disruptive ideas in this case, it is okay, we're going to build an NFT that actually delivers value. There's been hate and misunderstanding from the current establishment forever. It's been true with every innovation with everything disruptive. So the flip side of that argument is Ty comes out with an NFT that actually delivers value. And we are not even shitting on the NFTs that are, they have social currency, but don't actually deliver actual utility. He comes with an actual utility NFT. And because it's a new concept, the existing establishment pushes back. It is expected, but it doesn't mean it's right. It's expected, but it doesn't mean it's right. So there's a flip side to that argument. Yeah, I don't disagree that there's another perspective to it. The reality is, while I was tweeting a bunch of jokes and memes about it, and it's funny and it gets attention, everybody's laughing, the reality is it's up to you guys. In three years, Ty, if you're still building off of this first NFT collection and people are still buying it and are still receiving airdrops or whatever perceived value you choose to create in your ecosystem, then you've got the W, right? You're chilling. You're still going to be like, you're probably going to have a different perspective in the ecosystem. People will probably respect you more. I think there's a couple, the reality is you have to realize that the people that are commenting, including myself, are people that have either participated or watched many, many, many celebrity drops go to zero and people abandon them after they make three to five minutes. Little Uzi Vert, I could name 10 more if I really, really wanted to, but probably not going to drop names too heavily on the podcast. But these guys literally are full-blown, multi-millionaire rapper celebrities that are dropping NFT projects will make $5,000. Let me finish this first. What I'm getting at is you are fighting against that perspective naturally as someone who has attention from outside of the industry. Even in me, if I decided to drop an NFT project, I would even have to fight that because that's just a matter of fact. You are instantly proving that you are not a rug pull in the current state of the market. That's just because the current state of the market is overinflated, overhyped, and there's too many people dropping NFT projects and there's too oversupply. What will make you win? What's going to turn the community back around? Don't give up. Start adding actual utility that people find value. Watch your NFT price continue to go up. Continue to put shit out. That's the way to make a W, even if there are people drawing. One of my favorite sayings, it was Gandhi. He said, first, they ignore you because I don't know who you are. Then they laugh at you. Then they hate you. And eventually, if you keep going, like you said, then they love you. And after that, you become a legend. Arnold Schwarzenegger is like that in his day. First, he was a nobody and then people were hater when he first came on this big steroid guy. Then he reached this long hate stage of people. And then they love it and now it's like the legend. I'm not saying that I'm on the par with that. I'm just saying I've said to myself, if you think you're doing the right thing, continue. And like I said, in hindsight, if I look at how I dropped my NFT, probably I should have done this podcast with you. I could have learned a lot of things ahead of time. I didn't do that. And so now you, now I do it now, you know, better late than never. So, you know, I never saw my NFT by the way as something that the community, I actually thought when I thought it would be totally ignored by the community because it had no art. We decided should we have an art reveal or any kind. And then I was like, I'm not going to pretend to be an artist. Why should I do art? So I said, let me just put out pure utility. And I, this is what I thought and I was wrong. I thought it'd be totally ignored by the current NFT community because they're kind of like, ah, and then my people who are ready, for example, buy my courses. So let's say somebody in the past has paid $500 for a course, four month course. I had a four month course, social media marketing agency. It helped. I launched 20,000 businesses, easy. And it was, it was like 60 hours of training. But at the end, they couldn't resell. So there was an expense. I've been telling people on social media like to me, NFTs turn expenses into tradable assets, which has insane value. And I didn't see anybody doing that. So I was kind of talking to my community. The fact that it went viral in the mainstream NFT community, I should have thought of that. It was a little unexpected. And so, but now I'm glad, you know, you kind of got my brain seeing it from that side, which I had needed. But that was dumb of me that in a way to not think, well, maybe they're going to see it as complete. You know, what the fuck is this kind of weird shit? So I'm glad we have the call, man. Me too, man. And I got to say, I enjoyed your clockbacks, right? Like when you're clapping back at people on Twitter, well, like that's how you get welcomed in the NFT world. Like when you clap back at Farooq, like that shit was hilarious. People love that. And so there's other people like that too. I'm like, there was another person that I saw and I didn't even post yet. I wonder if you think I should. I'm like, this motherfucker is in my DMs about investing with me and he's talking shit. Like for years, he's DMing me trying to get my attention. And then he's like, ah, so I was thinking, ah, I should help people play it when you're down, bro. They'll try to kick you when you're down. I've been there. I get it. But I guess what I'm encouraging as, because like, I don't feel like this conversation is like in me trying to beat you up, it's more like honestly constructive criticism. So like, as you like continue to like expand in the ecosystem and like, if you continue to choose to play that role where you're like, I do want to do this shit for the next three, five years, I will add value to the NFT for the next three to five years. Like learn to have fun with us, bro. Oh, dude, I like the hate. The hate doesn't scare me. Even outside of the hate, like come join the community, follow people interact with people, come vibe because like even if you got like, I know you're busy too, but like, even if you got 20 to 30 minutes a day to sit on Twitter and did like joke back and forth and hit people with responses, you're gonna get like, like, even after this conversation, like I appreciate the humility that you brought to it. And like, I'm vibing and like learning a lot from, from like the way that you approached it and like learning more about your NFT project from your mouth. Right. Like if people are able to like learn more about it from your mouth and even just interact with you on Twitter, you're going to gain a lot more respect and you're going to gain a lot more like be like people like, you know what? Maybe I don't hate Tai Lopez. Maybe he's actually kind of funny. Maybe he's a cool ass dude. Right. I saw some people being like, don't hate me, but I'm starting to like this Tai Lopez guy. Yeah. It's like retweeting him. It's funny, right? Like that's the kind of shit I'm talking about. H3H3. I don't know if you know who that guy is years ago. He made this mean video of me fucking all this hate. And then I was like, come over to my house. And then he came over and then he's like, yo, come on my podcast. And he's like, you're not as bad in person as I thought. You know, there's always the two sides of people. There's the shadow side. There's the visible side, you know, one thing I would just say to the crypto community if they're listening is that maybe if I can offer one thing, crypto and NFTs will get better as people who are not in the community. The community has to grow. That's what the supply is there in NFTs and in DeFi and in crypto, but the demand has to rise with it. So as much as some people don't like me in the community, I'm like, I can bring millions of people who have never, who maybe aren't in that community and never going to be. Let me help bring evangelize them in, you know, and be one of the voices to say crypto is real and it's here to stay. And I have a certain part of the world that listens to my opinion. And I think, you know, maybe in some ways I'm more allies than people realize, you know, and I'm more of an ally than people realize. But I think there is a potential to prove that as you prove that you're not in it for the short term, most people are just going to assume you're in it for the short term to make a quick couple mill and then just like dip. But as you prove that you're not by adding value with your NFT over time, that will become more and more evident to the people that are criticizing. Yeah. And I'll tell you, the math ain't there. I said, I promised a hotel. I got, I'm going to buy a hotel with my own money or my group of investors and friends because I only did a one hour mint. I'm going to do a couple of minutes for a couple, even if I raise three million, try to buy a hotel nightclub, do all the stuff I'm promising. So I didn't even try it like maybe that seems like a lot of money, but that ain't in your reality that might seem normal. I was promised. There was an NFT promise that promised to send someone to space that I was. So like we've heard this shit before, you know, we heard, we heard how much did it raise to send people to space? I mean, I think, I don't know how much they raised total, but they were supposed to send one person to space. It may still be happening. I don't know, but it's been like six months since they made that promise. I'm going to tell you that. I'm going to tell you as weird as this is, as weird as this is my libertarian side, my first mentor, Joe Saladin, he said, look, that NFT served a purpose. Everybody who bought that learned don't buy shit. That's obviously zero chance or very low chance. So, you know, in a world, there's sheeps and wolves. And if you study game theory, you need the wolves. Totally unfriendly. And I'm not a wolf. That's the thing they get. I think I'm a sheep and wolves clothing. And I see a lot of people who talk, oh, I love the others and I'm not doing it for the money. I'm like, bro, I know you, you're a virtue signaler. You're a wolf in sheep's clothing. That shit don't work on me. So maybe one thing I've taken away, maybe I need to show my non-wolf side more. I think that'd be positive. And you got to understand from like the NFT traditional investor standpoint, whether it's Tai Lopez promising a hotel or some other project promising space, they both sound super outrageous. Yeah. But a hotel is a little bit easier than space. It can be for sure. I think it's like 480 grand to go to space on Richard Branson ship or some shit like that. Okay. Well, maybe that is easier. Whether it's easier or not, like from the perspective of an outsider, they both look outrageous. So the only way that you can like prove your validity is to make shit happen. And to like pretty much just tell everybody who's on your decade to like, watch what I'm about to do. Or I'm going to tell them, here's my escrow account. Put the fucking money. Let's make a, I love betting motherfucker. I really should start a crypto project called haters bet against me. It'll be run by a big law firm, the fucking crypto. You could use dollar fiat or crypto. It goes in there. You could pledge your NFTs. And it would actually be good. A betting market can actually even extra motivate me to fulfill. Be like, I'm going to take motherfucker's money right out of their wallets. But we could start. What's an NFT project? How can we do that? Alex, this has some kind of NFTs. Smart contract, put a million die into it. The other person puts a million die into it. Give like, have a panel of three independent. No, but I like it would be like NFT. And it says like limited and it's tradable and people go shit. I bet it get like, fuck. Now I think Ty's going to fulfill. So I'm going to sell it to somebody who's at a discount instead of losing my whole million. I totally do that. I can actually build it. Function. I'm going to name it after you. I'm going to call it a function fucking fuck you up. Function fuck you up for betting against me. You still with us? Yeah, I hear you. Well, this is good, man. I appreciate you taking an hour out of your time and maybe we could do it again sometime. This is actually really fun. I appreciate the open mind and kind of humility that you came with with my kind of like contradictions and like opposing propositions and like I wasn't expecting that. So I appreciate that shit. One thing I've learned in business business will humble you, man. I've been doing this a while and I still wake up. I'm like, fuck, I need a time machine. I did it wrong. So life humbles you, you know what I mean? And NFTs, I guarantee you I'll look already after this call. I look back. I'm like, fuck, I should have done these three things different. I probably could have done, you know, five podcasts with the community would have helped. And I was, I've been working on the project for months, but I, you know, it's lots of good stuff, man. Well, I just want to say I'm going to pay you back for being on my podcast. I'm going to send you lifetime supply from phone chargers, laminated articles, and other things in a nice little more box. Send. What about has anybody done anything with your, you know, anyone done anything in like the hemp weed world with NFTs? Shit, man. Probably I've seen a couple weed NFTs. I don't know what they try to do utility-wise, but if I could buy an NFC and have weeded my house every morning, I would do that. All right, man. Well, I'm going to, I'm going to let you go and I appreciate it. And, um, thanks for taking the time and let's do it again sometime. Thank you, man. All right. I'll talk soon. Bye.