- Before '95, the attention was around the information.
The internet was actually called
the information superhighway.
It was about looking up stuff,
it was a better encyclopedia,
look at this information.
At the time in 1994, I don't think anybody walking on earth
understood that the internet would eat up
almost every aspect of our lives.
Everybody laughed at me in 1995, when I told them
that I was gonna build a website to sell wine.
And I'm telling you, everybody laughed at me,
everybody said, "Nobody's gonna buy..."
I remember being in meetings where people would say
things like "Gary, this is crazy,
nobody's gonna buy wine on the internet.
The internet is a fad,"
And I would reply,
"Not only are people gonna buy wine on the internet,
people are gonna buy everything on the internet."
- [Gary] You got your perspective.
(crowd cheers)
I just wanna be happy, don't you wanna be happy?
- As a matter of fact, I used to use the concept
of people are gonna buy tomatoes on the internet
because for some reason, people are very passionate
about touching tomatoes at the supermarket
and that very much upset people.
And I remember when Fresh Direct came to New York
and people were buying tomatoes on the internet
it was a very big deal for me
'cause I emailed a lot of old friends and said,
I told you so.
I think that the blockchain
in the consumer way that we're talking about it with NFTs
is the biggest thing that's happened since 1994/95.
And I think everybody here should spend as many hours
educating themselves on what I'm really saying.
It goes far beyond board A or B friends.
It is a monumental shift.
And right now we're looking at collectability
with a hint of utility.
I think very quickly, we're gonna get into a scaled world
of utility with hints of collectibility on the back end.
And when happens, it's gonna start really moving.
- What do you tell somebody who says,
I don't really know about NFTs.
I don't know what that whole world's about is it, are they--
- Meaning the people that say, I don't know
or the people that are saying it's a scam,
it's full of shit, it's a fad.
- I think the people who really just haven't taken the time
to look into it or you know, given it any thought at all,
even if you don't invest or are involved,
but know what it's about.
- I don't really have a lot of passion
of really saying anything to them,
meaning I'm not in any need of everybody understanding it.
It's gonna happen anyway.
What I would say to people I care about
is it's a missed opportunity
for you not to get educated on this,
but I often tell friends and family
and people I care about in my community
a very simple truth in moments like this.
I have no interest in convincing anybody
on earth that this is important or opportunistic.
I have conviction in my belief that it is
but I'm not in the convincing business.
I'm in the business of putting things on the record
and being historically correct.
- All right, so.
(audience applauds)
- And this is an interesting point
and also being prepared to have to deploy a lot of humility
if I'm historically incorrect, you know.
For me the reason I'm comfortable doing this is
if God forbid 'cause I don't want it to happen,
this whole thing isn't real and the blockchain disappears.
I'm mentally prepared for saying here's why I didn't see it.
This happened, and this happened and this happened.
And I think that's a very important part
of many people's journeys.
I think a lot of you here don't produce content
or don't do things out of fear of being wrong.
And I wanna remind you that being wrong
is not only okay
it's actually a preference.
It means you're pushing.
What's not okay, is when you're wrong,
not being accountable and owning it.
(audience applauds)
- Now obviously today we're at Coders HQ.
How can coders or the coding community,
or even like digital artists jump onto
the blockchain of Web 3.0.
- You know, it's funny 'cause a lot of you
probably are aware of my content.
I often make fun of school or college
but what's unfortunate is that people aren't really hearing
what I'm saying.
I believe that education is the most important thing
in the world.
I think the way education
is currently being sold in the world has lost its way
in the reality of our world.
The answer to your question
is how do you take advantage of it?
Education, in December, 2020
when I sensed through my strength,
which is consumer intuition,
that the NFT thing was finally getting close,
I spent hundreds of hours educating myself.
It started with very simple videos of what is an NFT today.
'Cause I remembered what I thought it was in 2017
when I first saw CryptoKitties.
But I knew that I hadn't been paying attention.
So I had to reeducate myself.
The answer is education.
Like every Web 2.0 developer in the world
should be learning how to develop for Web 3.0
because it's lucratively exciting for them.
There's incredible demand for Web 3.0 developers.
And really it's not a very big leap
for a Web 2.0 developer to get to Web 3.0.
There's just certain things you have to know and understand
that, you know a decentralized server
is a very different environment than owning your servers.
Which is why so many launches last year struggled
because a lot of developers didn't remember
that they were really building on the blockchain.
They were so accustomed to building on their own server.
They got caught.
You could see the traits.
So the answer to your question is just education.
Like put in the time and effort to be educated.
And another little side note,
a lot of the energy right now in Web 3.0
is unfortunately built around greed
and short term financial behavior
which is a very different game
than Web 1.0 and 2.0 were built on
because there wasn't this much money being thrown around.
So if you're in this room just make sure
that you're not getting clouded by greed.
Which what that really means is once you have a hypothesis
make sure that your hypothesis is not grounded
in what you'd like to happen for you.
Make sure you're double checking everything
in a more holistic point of view on it.
- Can you give any advice to coders who wanna capitalize
on their code and coding capability?
Has there been any like drive
towards blockchain Web 3.0 for coders in specific?
I mean we know about the NFTs and--
- Well, I mean, you know, any viable project
that's launching on its own website
and is minting a project needs development.
You know, so, you know, I have a lot of advice.
It's called understand how to code
on decentralized servers, right?
It's like get accustomed to the new behaviors.
There's incredible, I mean,
this is one of the great eras for developers.
There's so much security that needs to be figured out.
There's so much bridging that needs to be figured out.
There's so much capabilities of minting
that we haven't even explored yet.
I mean, this is probably the most exciting time
for a developer since probably 2005, 6, 7, 8
when the Web 2.0 movement was happening.
So, you know, it's funny for me to even think
that developers don't see how big of an opportunity this is.
I think it goes back to education and execution.
- Yeah. I think, you know
you touched on it a little bit as well.
One of the other questions was about how initiatives
like Coders HQ are focused on enabling
the coding communities.
And you know, you said education obviously,
but you know how could they focus on driving communities
towards you know, so what kind of education,
how do they shift from how it currently is to Web 3.0.
Where does it start?
- It starts with believing that the opportunity exists.
You're not gonna spend 50 hours learning
if you don't think it's there.
So, you know, I remember when Ruby on Rails as a language
started catch attention back in 04, 5, 6, 7.
I'm trying to remember exactly the timing.
You had to believe that that was a language
that was gonna catch you know, heat.
Otherwise you weren't gonna stop coding in PHP.
And then of course it didn't catch
as long term and it evolves
and that's just the game of development, right?
Some things stick some things don't but you learn, you know
you learn from certain things
in learning that language might have helped you be stronger
at the next thing.
I think it starts with conviction around
the movement is actually happening.
And again,
I think the biggest reason,
so many of your friends don't see the NFT thing
or the blockchain thing
is 'cause they're bringing their internet perspective
to the blockchain.
People make jokes like that's so stupid.
I'm gonna right click and save.
That's an internet lingo.
That's what we did on the internet.
That's not how the blockchain works.
When people are like, this is stupid.
Like who owns, like people say the most basic things.
Like it is much easier for me to know
if you own something on the blockchain than for me to know
if you own something in real life.
We can all go outside right now
and take a picture next to a car,
put it on social media and make pretend it's our car.
People do that.
You can't do that with an NFT.
I can look it up in three seconds and see you don't own it.
So what's really fascinating is, is the concept of
are we grasping the opportunity
and are we learning how to not bring
our Web 2.0 development brain to Web 3.0.
Which is why so many projects struggled last year.
Incredible developers didn't even realize
that subconsciously they didn't understand the pitfalls
they were gonna have at mint because they didn't understand
that they didn't control the server.
Even though it's decentralized,
it's just fascinating to watch.
So I think A, recognizing the situation
and then B having the humility to really put in the work
to do it properly.
- What are the factors that drive your decision
into investing into digital companies?
I mean, you did it, you know, at a very early stage
like you said, with the wine company
and also invest into tech companies.
And now you're very ahead in the Web 3.0 world.
- My-- - Blockchain.
- My greatest strength is intuition
around what people are gonna do
before they realize they're gonna do it.
That has been my real business gift
that I'm able to somehow
intuitively understand
that you are going to do this
even though you say you're not going to.
And I think a lot of that has to do with
a couple of core beliefs I have.
Which is A,
I don't think humans understand
how much convenience will always win in the end.
That you know that I remember a Blackberry to iPhone debate.
So many people never thought they would get an iPhone
'cause they liked the buttons on the Blackberry.
But I remember just thinking every day from day one,
I'm like, but it has the internet on it.
And the internet is more powerful than touching buttons.
The internet will beat the buttons.
And I think that's how I think about
the consumer blockchain.
I already understand that NFTs representing the mundane
like a receipt or a ticket
or a bracelet is gonna be better for people.
They just don't see it yet.
Like, and so, you know, for me
what I do is first I understand the consumer truth.
People are gonna do this.
That's intuition.
Pattern recognition, my obsession with history.
There's a lot of things that help me be good at it.
And then the next thing I do after that is
I invest based on the human being that's running it.
I think the reason that I'll be successful in NFT investing
and a lot of people are gonna lose
is I don't believe in what a lot of people accept as truth.
For example, so many people talk,
Gary, this NFT has,
I think a lot of you,
if you are in this space remember the last several months,
I love the roadmap.
That's why I'm investing.
And I was like, but that's like a pitch deck.
(audience laughs)
Just 'cause you say you're gonna do something,
doesn't mean that's a good reason to invest.
I learned that lesson in my career.
That was a good deck
but they didn't know how to actually run a company.
Number two, Gary, you don't get it.
This is gonna win because of the community.
Well, the community's only as good
as the people executing the project.
These communities are not really built,
the far majority on communities,
they're built on the fact you're rooting for it
'cause you bought it and you want it to go up.
You're financially incentivized.
Just like people that bought Beanie Babies
cared about it to just flip, thus Beanie Babies died
because they're not Disney, they're not transformers,
they're not Marvel,
where you actually care about the characters.
You just bought the Beanie Baby to sell the Beanie Baby
which is 99% of the behavior in NFTs.
Which is why I put out content saying 99% of these
are gonna fail because I know human behavior.
For me, what I do is believe in a human truth, a thesis.
And then I start looking for the people that I think
are capable of driving that to a successful outcome,
which is something I don't think
people are spending enough time on in NFT land.
I mean there are people
spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on projects
where the founders are anonymous.
The reason there's so many rug pulls
is 'cause people are making bad decisions
because they're in a gold rush
and everybody's so over focused
on making money in 24 hours that they're gonna lose money.
- You always seem to be one step ahead of the game.
The game right now is 3.0 and blockchain.
Is there anything else that you're thinking about
or is on your plate that it's coming up?
- No, I don't allow myself to think that way.
I have no emotion that tomorrow needs to be
a new playing field.
What I do is I spend all my time absorbing
what humans are doing so that I'm ready
when something has emerged.
I didn't force NFTs into the lexicon.
I watched people and realized NFTs were
on the precipice of happening.
So for me I'm just paying attention,
but I only get interested when things are
on the precipice of scale.
My career, when it's looked on
when I'm long gone
will probably be much more of a story of timing
than anything else.
I bought Ethereum in 2015.
And you can find clips of me talking about it in 2017, 2018
but they're very far and few between.
I bought it, I understood the concept
I watched from afar.
And then when I felt that the summer of 2020
was showing me indications because of Top Shot and Flow,
because of Punks that something was brewing.
Then I committed to the time in the winter to say,
is it ready?
And then by early January, February 2021,
I'm like, oh my God, it's ready.
Then I got very loud.
You know, it's funny.
I'm so frantic, high energy loud.
I understand my communication style,
which I think confuses people at times
to think I might be a little bit
throw against the wall and see what sticks.
A lot of people say, you know
when someone says something nice about me,
like, man, you've been really right about stuff.
I'll always see a lot of comments.
I'm like, yeah, if you predict 900 things
three are gonna be right.
And I always reply to those people.
I'm like, hey, would love to have you show me
the video of what I predicted wrong?
I think what I do very well seems very counter to my energy,
which is the following.
There's a great saying that a lot of people
really believe in, which is measure twice cut once.
I believe that I measure 50 times and cut once.
It's just that after I'm done measuring 50 times
and I'm ready, I cut loudest.
I also feel that because of my intuition
and because of my listening strengths
that I do see things a hair early.
I, once I sense it and I taste it,
I'm so convicted that it's a feeling that I've known before
that I'll put in the work so fast,
which allows me to speak to it earlier.
I was right about TikTok, right?
I was right about social.
I was right about E-commerce and content and many platforms.
And it's because I put in the work
and I don't fear being wrong.
But I'll be very honest with you.
The only reason there's so many people
in this room right now is 'cause I've been right, right?
Like, and so-- (audience applauds)
I tell, you know, a lot of people are like,
well Gary, your, of course your NFT project's doing well.
You have a huge community.
I'm like one that I earned, like all, like--
(audience applauds)
I'm fascinated by that.
And so I'm incredibly thoughtful
of what comes out of my mouth.
I think a lot of you that have followed me for a long time.
I don't say that many things, I'm pretty narrow.
I have a good knack of saying them 8,000 different ways.
I may say them in new platforms
in different content formats.
But you know, to me,
I'm a 100% sure
that the consumer blockchain is gonna matter
and I'm trying to learn and build community.
And more importantly,
it is incredibly intoxicating to have your community benefit
from your observations.
And so that has been a beautiful part
of this journey for me.
(upbeat music)