- And then he goes, "Do you have a punk?"
And I'm like, "What's a punk?"
(audience laughing)
And he dropped three minutes on CryptoPunks,
I had to run cause the family something
and then that night, started a 45-75 hour journey
over a one week period
where I consumed everything about CryptoPunks
and by Mid-January,
I decided that I was gonna buy a lot of them.
You got your perspective.
(upbeat music)
I just wanna be happy, don't you wanna be happy?
- But what was it about CryptoPunks
that sort of made you wanna be so obsessive
that you just jumped in?
- At that point, because of what I was already doing,
I had felt we were close to the time.
You know, my career winelibrary.com in '96,
you know, what I did in social in '05, '06,
my career is what I'm doing right now with VR,
I watch from very far away
and then when I think they're ready to jump in,
in a year, in two years, in 18 months, in 9 months,
when it's on the pre-dawn of the moment, that's when I jump.
And I think that's what I'm good at.
- So you felt December last year was the pre-dawn.
- Yes.
I felt that 2021 was gonna be a year of it.
- And then you went all in.
- [Gary] All in.
- I have never seen any technology so rapidly adopted.
- There's a reason.
There's money and greed involved.
And that's-
- But don't you think it's-
that might be one?
- That's why it's happening Jodee.
(audience laughing)
- But that's okay if we collectively understand it, right?
(audience cheering)
We have to understand
that there's amazing things going on here,
but let there be no confusion,
90% of the people currently in our space,
are in the business of day trading NFT's to make a bag.
And that's okay, but we have to understand it.
It's also dangerous, we have to understand it.
This happened with internet stocks in '95.
This is what happens, there was something called gold,
that's what we did, it was called the gold rush,
like this happens.
In the macro, this is the most interesting technology shift
since the internet decided to go social.
- I think there's been pent-up demand
rather than necessarily greed
to actually own your own content.
And it may be that your friends
are the ones who are the day traders, but my friends-
(audience laughing)
I think there's a broader community
that actually wants to see something about themselves
in their NFT's or collect.
- [Gary] A hundred percent.
A hundred percent.
That's why it's gonna be phenomenal, it's creative,
it's bringing a lot of us back to a creative place
that we gave up at 7, 9, 12, 13,
there's incredible nirvana in this moment.
The energy I'm bringing is let's not be hypocrites.
I'm sitting at dinners and meetings
and watching conversations in discords
of we're the anti-establishment, we're this, we're that.
But then what they're really saying is
I'm gonna mint this and flip it.
And so what we have to be collectively aware of
is if we don't go through this moment with eyes wide open-
Let me tell you how this always plays out
when we don't go in with eyes wide open,
it becomes oversaturated, it becomes too...
The conversations around money,
there's tons of conversation around art,
there's even more conversation around the money.
And money scares me because people make bad decisions.
- [Jodee] Yeah, it scares me too.
- And I'm watching...
The thing I do for a living is I watch.
You know, I talk a lot so I confuse people
cause it always seems like I'm talking, cause I talk a lot
and I pump out a lot of content,
but the reality is 90% of my day is watching
and I'm watching, and people are very clever
and some people are not clever,
but it all is going around the same thing.
This reminds me of a lot of Web 2 on the great things,
take control of our own, all this stuff,
you know, Web 2 started off very nirvana too.
- [Jodee] Yeah
- But let there be-
- [Jodee] But it didn't work out that way.
- [Gary] Of course it did.
I love how everyone's like social media's so bad.
I'm like, you mean you liked the alternative
of mainstream media?
You mean the media communication infrastructure
that led to the most fascism, dictatorship, and wars.
Let's not get confused right now,
I understand the current conversation is to raz social,
but this concept that the media
that used to be controlled by 49 people was so much better,
I think we're a little bit lacking thoughtfulness
to the conversation.
- Well, let me put it differently though which is;
we have, as consumers, we have jumped on many trends,
microcomputers, apple, various brands,
mobile telephony, Nokia, Blackberry,
and then more recently social networks,
Facebook, Twitter, Google,
and every time as consumers we've jumped in with both feet,
someone else has ended up controlling what we're doing.
What I love about where we are now,
apart from the money-making part-
- [Gary] It's not true.
- Is if it's actually decentralized.
- It's not decentralized.
- [Jodee] I think it is.
- No, it's really not, let's talk about why.
The technology's decentralized.
Is anybody watching what's going on.
The humans become the centralization.
- But that moves, because the centralization is moving
because the technology allows the centralization to move.
- Until we take accountability for our own actions,
we will blame platforms and people.
(audience cheering and applauding)
Guys, gals, this is an important conversation.
Everyone's like, this is awesome, it's decentralization.
I spent 13 hours discovering an artist
named Sarah in Texas that I like,
and just literally say, oh, I like this art,
and then I get 400 DM's saying,
you're the centralization now you motherfucker.
(audience laughing)
Okay, like this thought-
The biggest issue
that leads to unhappiness and anxiety in society
is the decision that somebody else controls you.
Like, what are you gonna blame
when it becomes decentralized?
Other humans?
Something else?
Like, what are you gonna blame?
Like, it's fascinating.
Like, you know, you were there.
Social was competing against Rupert Murdoch
and three old white dudes
that controlled all our thoughts.
Social.
Now it's like this fucking algorithm makes me a racist.
Fuck you!
You're a racist.
(audience cheering and applauding)
Facebook made zero people racist.
Facebook exposed the racist.
(audience cheering and applauding)
So I'm not confused what the current conversation is.
I'm very happy that everyone's excited to blame Twitter
and Facebook and I'll be here in 10 years sitting here
and you'll be blaming centralization allowed humans
to have too much control.
Because they're blaming Elon, Jodee.
- [Jodee] Say that again.
- [Gary] They're blaming Elon.
- No, no one would blame Elon.
- [Gary] Of course, they're blaming Elon.
- Pumped it up, pumped it down.
Guys, you know what's decentralized?
When you have enough self-esteem to think for yourself.
(audience cheering and applauding)
That's decentralized.
This is gonna play out very, very simply.
It's going to become decentralized technology.
Governments are gonna fight for centralization.
- I think you've sort of manipulated the argument.
(audience laughing)
I think where we were going was the value creation
in social networks is centralized
and the value creation in the NFT space is decentralized.
- It just wasn't.
This thought that Facebook Inc and Twitter
and everybody else got all the value.
What about the 8 trillion fucking influencers
that had no audience, that paid nothing to get attention
in return and make millions and millions of dollars.
What about that, Jodee?
(audience laughing)
Like this thought that they kept all the economics,
like it's absurd.
It's real.
- Oh, you're talking about the influencers on social
who make money out of having lots of followers.
- You mean the people that paid nothing for the attention
in a world where you pay for attention?
Yes, I'm talking about that.
It's a very important conversation.
- It's a great conversation.
- Right, cause pre social media, if you wanted attention,
I did this for my dad's business.
I had to pay $80,000 to a newspaper to get a full-page ad.
Then I just made a YouTube video.
Like there's a trade there.
- Don't you think one of the craziest things
in the history of marketing is that CMO's of brands
pay to have people follow their Facebook page
and then they paid Facebook?
- CMO's of brands of big companies don't know
what's going on in the reality of the current marketplace.
- But I think the CMO's of brands now have an opportunity
to have their own NFT marketplaces with their own fans.
- As they should.
And I can't wait for it.
- They're on their own platforms.
Not deep inside Facebook-
- Jodee, I can't wait.
I'm here for it.
- I love your work.
- I love you too.
Like I'm here for it.
I think the energy I'm bringing this morning
is let's have 360 conversations.
Like 360 conversations are healthy.
Here's a good one in the NFT land.
The community's gonna drive it.
Let's talk about that.
- [Jodee] This is the community by the way.
- This is a great community. - This is a community.
- Let's talk about what's happening in our space.
Let's go into the details.
Gary, this project, you know,
this porcupine with fucking, a clown nose, right?
This project's gonna work not because of the founders,
but because of the communities.
So I sit and think about that, right?
So Jodee, do you know how many Bulls, Chicago Bulls fans
there were in my New Jersey high school in 1992?
- Say that again, what?
- [Gary] How many, I know you're an Aussie.
How many- - I'm not, I'm a New Yorker!
- [Gary] I know you're a New Yorker.
- I told you I was a New Yorker.
- You're for 40 seconds.
Jodee, listen.
(audience laughing)
How many Chicago Bulls fans
were in my New Jersey high school in 1992?
- Tell me.
- [Gary] Half the fucking school.
- Wow.
- Because Michael Jordan was doing his thing and everybody
in the community was wearing Bull swag.
How many Bulls fans are in my high school,
in New Jersey right now Jodee?
Zero.
The community is all for it
because their money's tied up in it.
But if the founder's of the project
can't navigate it to success,
the fans aren't gonna show up to the stadium.
We have to be very thoughtful about this.
There's just a lot of things happen...
Listen Jodee, you were there in '05, '06, '07
when I was coming up.
- Yeah, we both joined Twitter the same month.
- [Gary] That's right.
You recall, like that there was all those convos
and I think the reason I get to be here today
is cause I've navigated those 15 years a specific way.
And for me, when I sit,
my obligation, when I do an interview like this,
is I'm gonna give everybody here my best stuff,
they're gonna do whatever they can do with it.
I could be wrong, I've been wrong before,
I could be right.
But what I'm watching is what I saw in '06 and '07
which is the conversation's one dimensional.
And if you peel the layer off, an unfortunate amount of it
is really about short-term economics.
And I think that for us to achieve
what we all probably subconsciously and consciously want,
we need to level up the convo of what's happening here
and there's a lot happening here and a lot of good,
but we also have to watch out
for some of the things that are brewing.
- So just zooming out to 35,000 feet,
what industries do you think are gonna be disrupted
by NFT's over the next 12 months?
- Over the next 12 months?
I mean, to be Frank, I don't really think about it
in that terms, I'll tell you why.
If you asked me that question in 1995, about the internet,
I wouldn't have known that Jeff Bezos' talent
was gonna be deployed against bookstores.
I wouldn't have known that, right?
I wouldn't have known that some guy,
whose wife was a Pez collector, was gonna build E-bay.
But I knew in 1995, if I was sitting here as a 20 year old,
I would have said all of them.
And that's what I felt about social
and that's what I know is happening right here, right now.
Every business is gonna be affected
by what we're talking about right now,
I just don't know what gal in Tennessee
has an idea right now and is gonna start something
that's gonna go after this
or what person in, you know, Harlem
is gonna go after transportation,
but what I can tell you is there won't be an industry
not addressed, affected, changed, impacted
by the infrastructure of decentralized servers
with a platform, whether it's SOL or Cardano, or ETH,
with apps being built on top of it at scale,
it's gonna fucking change the world
and it's gonna change it in a big fucking way.
(audience cheering and applauding)
- Well, I'd like to say thank you to you
on behalf of the community,
because many people say to me from outside this community,
why have NFT's been so successful?
And I say three things to them.
One, one of the smartest
marketing programs, campaigns I've ever seen
for $69 million, everyone in the world was talking about
the sale of the Beeple artwork.
That was amazing. - That was the moment.
That's one, that's one.
People staying at home using Clubhouse
because Clubhouse was..
And not in this order, by the way.
And then the last thing is you.
Because you have done so much for this community
in being so passionate about it.
So big thank you.
(audience cheering and applauding)
- That's very nice.
Everybody, it's really why I wanna talk.
You know, it's funny, I'm an entrepreneur,
I'm a businessman.
I wanna go to a garage sale and buy something
for a dollar or for $5,
it doesn't mean I don't understand
what's happening in the macro
that I want everybody to be more thoughtful about.
And more importantly, the thing we have to watch out for
is the hypocrisy.
The bigger danger is the way we're talking about it,
but then really it's about, can I flip this for 5x, right?
Like we have to be very conscious about this
because here's what's likely gonna happen
if we stay this way.
If we stay this way, then what's gonna really happen
is we're gonna have a massive crash
cause there's too much supply, demand won't catch up.
People are moving around communities,
I'm incredibly worried about people betting money
they can't afford.
You know, if you look at Wall Street,
when people bet money they can't afford
and they lose it all,
it leads to suicide.
Is our space ready for somebody to commit suicide
cause they got a rug-pull, right?
Like there's a lot here.
- See, I'm really surprised
how much you're focusing on the flipping part,
because I see so many people in the broader community
who, you know, they wanna have a CryptoPunk
because they might think it looks like them
or their wife or someone.
In fact, we have someone talking later today about that.
And it's tribal, it's tribal.
I don't think it's just about the flipping.
- Listen, I appreciate that.
And again, you know, what I'm trying to do here
in the limited time, is bring a conversation
to the forefront that I think could add,
because I'm buying everything that I think we're all buying,
there's so much, you know, there's so much excitement.
I don't think that many people are buying
a $500,000 CryptoPunk cause it looks like them.
(audience laughing)
- [Jodee] Well, wait til you hear who said that.
Wait till you hear the who.
It's someone talking today about why they did that.
- But I mean, do you know what I mean?
- Well, but CryptoPunk was a placeholder for art,
you know, for things, for collections.
- Look, this has been the greatest thing that has happened
to the independent artists in a long time
and I'm fucking here for it cause I love all of you.
(audience applauding) - Amen, amen,
- One.
Two, there is just the thing I loved about '06- '09,
the friendships that you're all about to make
with each other, like, please, please, please, please,
whenever there's,
I don't know what the programming looks like here,
but if you go out for a few minutes,
please, some people are more introverted, I get that.
But for people that are a little bit more introverted
things of that nature,
this is exactly the community at this moment
where everybody is as excited
for you to come and say hello to them
as they are to you.
This is literally your best friend, your business partner,
somebody you might marry is literally sitting in here
right now. (audience laughing)
And I know this cause I saw it in the last two waves.
Please push yourself to say hello to a stranger
when you guys have breaks, please.
- [Jodee] Totally, totally, totally.
(audience cheering and applauding)
- YouTube watcher, what's up, it's Gary V.
First of all, thank you so much,
I hope you're doing super well during these times.
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