- I think NFTs are going to be a framework
that we trade in ,collect in,
utility in, access in,
for the rest of our collective lives.
(upbeat music)
- You got your perspective.
(upbeat music)
- I just want to be happy,
don't you want to be happy?
- Our first guest is a media Maestro, serial entrepreneur
and prominent internet personality.
He co-founded restaurant reservation app, Rezi,
which I use from time to time
and was an early angel investor, tech firms
like Facebook, Twitter, and Venmo.
Joining us now is Gary Vaynerchuk,
chair of a VaynerX,
and the CEO of VaynerMedia.
Welcome Gary, welcome to the show.
- Thanks for having me.
How are you guys?
- Great to have you, great.
Alright. So, you know,
we just had people on last week,
we have Metakovan,
the buyer of his $70 million NFT, later on the show.
Are we in an NFT bubble?
What are your, what are your thoughts on that?
People said we, he thought he, we were.
Do you agree?
- I do.
I think that we are in a very similar place
to where we were in internet stocks in 2000.
I think when you have
these massive transformation technology shifts,
there's a moment where everybody gets excited about it.
And, you know, for me
the internet was happening in '95, six, seven
but you started to really see the stock market
embrace with those IPO's in '98, '99.
And then obviously in April, March, April, 2000
you had the, the collapsing of it
at the time
of the stocks
at the time, a lot of people talked
about the internet being a fad
and it never been meaningful
for businesses, blah, blah, blah.
What happened in reality was the internet
was this game changing revolution of technology
but a lot of the early projects
were just overpriced on the excitement.
I think we're absolutely in the replication of this.
I think NFTs are going to be
a framework that we trade in,
collect in, utility in, access in,
for the rest of our collective lives,
but I think some of the projects
that we're seeing right now
on the individual pieces
are going to burst.
- So you have a long experience in marketing
and are obviously quite skilled at that.
Until recently, Bitcoin was widely considered
to have a marketing problem.
Like people just didn't get it, like people,
the mainstream just didn't get it.
Now that's changed a little bit
just because of the price.
But if you were,
if you had to give kind of
like the elevator pitch for Bitcoin
like the quick marketing soundbite,
what would you say?
Like, how would you sell Bitcoin to the masses?
- You know, if I was selling Bitcoin
I would, I would speak about history.
You know, why did gold do XYZ?
Why did Fiat happen?
Like, what is the human psychology to acceptance?
I would speak about things that could happen.
Like what if Amazon accepts it?
What if XYZ country invests
aggressively at it?
So I think there's a lot of logical steps
to continue the
affirmation
and confirmation of the currency,
and I think history has proven that,
and I would use history and examples
of one domino effect
that could change the outcome
for the people that are cynical about it.
- So just to follow up on that, how would you
how would you market NFTs?
You know, and NFTs,
like right now, there's all these people
being like why is someone spending
$70 million on a JPEG?
If you just had to quickly explain
to somebody what the value is of an NFT,
what would you say?
- I usually go down the route of
do you know somebody who's bought a Fortnight skin
for a hundred bucks,
do you think a blue check
on Instagram is worth something,
I educate them for a minute
on the metadata on the NFTs
and speak about access, membership clubs,
VIP, treatments, one-on-one dinners,
and talk about all the charity events
and things that are sold when people get access
to things that they can't get access to.
- So getting back to the topic,
keeping on this whole idea
of the NFT bubble, et cetera,
nonetheless
NFTs,
how would you translate that
into the real world?
How would you translate,
You know, you've been in the business
of selling physical goods.
So how would you translate
the NFT from intellectual property
into the physical world?
How, how will, how will that come about?
- I think people really under underestimating
and undereducated on the smart contracts,
and
the reality is
you could sell the digital asset
then deliver the individual,
the physical good
but then in the smart contract,
let me give an example.
If I decide I have a book coming out in November
but then I'm a free agent
and I was going to sign another book deal.
Now I'm debating,
Should I just NFT my book after that
print 200,000 copies
make an NFT replication of the cover,
make 190,000 that look exactly like the cover.
And if you buy it for 20 bucks, the NFT,
I send you the book it's literally, and you have now
this little digital asset
that you might be able to trade
on to make some of your dollars back,
or what have you.
But the nurse 10,000 covers left.
9,000 of those can be silver covers
and they may be a hundred dollars,
but what that does in the smart contract
is it allows you to be part of my book club,
and once a month, once a week,
whatever I decide in the smart contract,
I will go with that small group
and do Q and A learnings
that leaves a hundred gold books
that might be things like one on one dinners
or live conference,
and maybe one platinum book
that is somebody
that gets to spend a month with me.
The access underneath the smart contract,
I think is going to end up being
the aha for a lot of people
as they become more educated,
that it's not just a JPEG.
Not to mention,
people care about the ownership of provenance.
And as that becomes social currency
and the way we live,
it's no different than in 1999
when I told my friends
that everybody would online date
and they laughed me out of the room.
They were unable to see the chess moves
to how society would evolve.
I believe in 15 years,
people are going to look at
people's public wallets
to see what they have bought
to become a conversation piece
or a social currency layer
the way that logos are,
the way that followers on social media are,
the way that your Wikipedia
or Google search results are.
- That's funny you say that,
cause I'm about to do that right now with you.
Gary, you tweeted in 2013
that you just bought, using Bitcoin,
Google smart pants
and had it delivered by a drone in 21 minutes.
First of all, must be a very expensive pair of pants
in today's dollar terms in seconds.
You know, you know, what was your experience
with paying something with Bitcoin,
should it be used as a currency?
What, what, what are your thoughts on that?
- Should be, I apologize
should be my experience was in 2013.
Go ahead
- Yeah, should Bitcoin be used as a currency?
- It is, it's not even a should.
This is not about predictions.
People accept Bitcoin all the time.
It's it's already happened.
The question becomes what happens next.
I think this, you know
Bitcoin is so much further along
than the majority of things
that have come before it as an exceptive currency.
To me,
I don't get
to say
more to most humans get to say
what should or shouldn't be accepted.
If enough people believe in it,
then it becomes, you know,
I always remind people,
somebody used to live in the world
before gold meant anything.
You know, we didn't have great documentation
but gold was a created ecosystem.
Should gold be accepted?
- What should be the currency
of the world is my question to you.
- Whatever enough of the people
in the world accept, right.
Humans create their ecosystems.
I don't think,
I don't think it's the game of should.
This is a game of how has it always happened?
People used to trade berries for sheep.
People used to trade furs for, for people.
People used to trade high-end wine
for workers to build things.
I mean, I laugh at people's naivete
to think what is going on today,
or what we grew up with
is the end all be all.
That's just laughable.
Human race will continue to evolve,
and if anything,
I think it makes more sense
that things, that are digital become the currency
as we go that route there's a race.
- Do you see Bitcoin
becoming the currency of the world
that everyone will start using, and...
- (sighs) You know, I'd like to
answer things that I understand
and you can see the conviction
I come in on the other questions.
I really don't know.
You know, for me,
the reason I've gone harder into NFT
than let's say currencies
is 'cause I just enjoy it more.
You know, I wasn't the kind
of person that really
traded equities my whole life.
I haven't spent the meaningful hours
that I think other people have
around really being able to answer that question.
What I can tell you is,
people are naive,
And if they don't understand
that a shocking number of people
have accepted this,
I think there's a lot of conversation
of what happens to the dollar
when it goes off of the gold standards in the seventies.
I think there's a lot going on
with our society
and our relationships with governments.
And I think the ingredients are in place for Bitcoin end.
You know, you've got to understand
that if Bitcoin hits
and becomes a currency of society,
well that leads to a lot of other currencies,
and a lot of other variables
like NFTs to also follow suit.
And it creates a real digital finance economy.
- So for a long time
people have been getting really frustrated
with our current social media platforms,
in particular Facebook, right.
In terms of, you know,
keeping our data, selling our data, you know,
individuals having limited control
over these sort of centralized platforms.
And, but we still haven't really seen anything
truly disrupt the current model
the sort of Facebook Twitter model.
I guess my question is
how do you see the future of social media?
Do you think blockchain technology
will play a part of it?
Do you see a decentralized social media
coming in the future?
- I do see a decentralized social media.
I do think on the flip side
that are great discussed with Facebook Inc
is more of a mainstream media headline than reality.
I haven't seen this grand exodus from Instagram
because they sell our data.
You know, when you talk to normal people
it's like talking about defy or Bitcoin or NFTs.
Most people speak about it from a headline standpoint
but can't actually articulate
what they're so upset about.
When they quote unquote sell our data.
It's not like people are surveillancing our life.
They're creating a scenario
where we are getting
more relevant advertising in our feeds
based on our clicks and our actions,
this great propaganda
that these machines are manipulating us is laughable.
You can absolutely delete the app.
So, you know, there are two separate things.
I think the reason you haven't
seen anything too crazy
is real life Humans are not so up in arms
for seeing root beer ads
in their feed because they like root beer,
I do think a decentralized central is inevitable
because decentralization is here, right?
Like the technology is here
and every aspect of our society
will play on top of it.
- So along those lines
do you have an expectation, for instance,
for where the price of Bitcoin
will be in a couple of years from now
based on just the overall change
in the economy and how people view networks
and how they trade currency, et cetera.
I, you know, it's funny, my friend
I don't tend to predict very good at seeing something
and then tasting it, using it and having observations.
Here's what I will say.
I will say that there, I don't believe there's a really
I don't believe there's a middle ground for Bitcoin.
I think it's so far advanced
that unless you have government involvement,
I think it will continue to go up.
And then if you do have massive government regulations,
if
if Russia, America, Europe decides to say you are
if you are a citizen of our state, our sovereign nation
you are not allowed to hold this.
I think you've got a whole nother bag of issues,
and who knows what comes out of that,
but I don't think there's this middle ground
for a very long time.
I think you got another decade max
of potential middle ground,
and then it's going to
space
or you're going to have real interesting unrest
between citizens and sovereign nations.
- Thank you so much, Gary
for joining us this morning
and sharing your thoughts.
Always a pleasure.
- Thanks for having me team.
Bye. Bye.
YouTube watcher what's up, it's Gary V
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