#13: John Januzzi - Selling $300k in NFTs, working at Twitter, and How to Wear Socks

All right. Welcome to another episode of Brain Blast. Today we got John Januzian. He just released an NFT project called Avius Anime. It did over $300,000 in mint sales. It is a very cool project benefiting a charity, and I'll let him tell you all about that. He also is a writer and wrote for GQ, Lucky Mag, some other places, worked for Twitter as well. So we talk about that. And he also wrote a book called How to Wear Socks. So get ready, this one's an interesting one.

I never, I never thought that I'd be able to earn money or earn a living being an artist, and Web3 completely changed that in literally a week. All right, um, well, hello.

Thank you for, uh, um, yeah, I mean, yeah, let me, uh, I guess let's start by talking about Avius Anime. Is that— am I pronouncing that right?

Um, I think so. I mean, honestly, who knows? I think Avius, uh, Avius Anime is is how people have kind of been saying it. So I think you're on the right track.

All right, cool. So how did the project get started? I mean, from your tweets, it looks like it's been a hell of a crazy manic week of sorts. So yeah, say more.

So it kind of got started, I was working on art for a bunch of other projects that were like, you know, super clean, more on the vector side of things. And I kind of just got burnt out with that style. I still love it and I still am working on those projects, but I wanted to do something, you know, after a day of drawing and like getting really fine detail with like one pixel lines. I just wanted to do something that was a little more free-flowing. And, you know, I drew one character of this collection and I was looking at it and in my head I kept saying like, don't, Don't do it. Don't start building traits. Don't start doing this because, you know, it's very addictive for me when, you know, I do all my sketching on my iPad. So it's like you just add a layer and you're like, oh, here's a new trait. Here's a new trait. And then it kind of snowballed from there. And then I started adding— originally they were just black and white, and then I started adding color and I was like, oh no, the color looks really good. So then I made them all solid colors and I was like, oh, what if there were like some like differentiations. And then I was like, what if there are like, you know, these one-of-ones, which are the gods? And then, you know, the lore started building and it just kind of like, for me personally, it just like kept going and going. And I didn't really have any plans to launch a mint until last week. I was kind of just, I was walking around the city And I was like, oh, it'd be funny if we did a stealth mint on 4/20 and see what happens. And it was wild. I couldn't believe it. And now we've built this great community. We didn't have any marketing. It was completely stealth. We had zero followers when it launched. And now we've got a really active Discord. We're up to about 2,500, 2,600 people in there. And it's just been a wild, like, I mean, like you said, a completely wild ride to see how people responded to the artwork, the storytelling. And for me, it was a big leap of faith because it was like, I'm going to put something out there. And in Web3, it's like, you know, we've seen so many projects where people put the art out there and the art isn't received well. There's so many rugs out there. And then there's lots of over-promising and under-delivering. So I wanted to be really careful and not, you know, come out of the gate with, oh, like I'm going to build a theme park and, you know, your NFT will get you on like the, you know, free tickets and like a slushie or something like that, you know? And it's great because now I get to actually build with the community and, you know, take their feedback and actually act on it. But again, it's only been 8 days, so yeah.

Yeah, no, it's amazing. I don't know how I came across the mint. I really have no idea, and I just jumped on the website and minted 5, um, flipped a couple. I like the one I have now, but I want to get a cool one. Um, the ones with— I think they have hoodies, um, some of them. Yes, if I'm thinking correctly. Yeah, I usually am wearing a black hoodie, so I want that.

I mean, it's the uniform. Yeah, it's funny. It's funny too, because like a lot of holders will be like, oh, like I gave mine up, like I'm so sorry. I'm just like, hey man, it was a 0.01 min. If you got out when it was, you know, 0.08, like I'm happy. That's great for them. Um, but yeah, I mean, and I think, you know, speaking of the floor price, I'm— that's another thing that really kind of surprised me. It's held pretty strong. Um, throughout the week. And obviously, you know, in this current market that we're seeing, um, you know, with the land sale coming up in a couple of days, obviously a lot of people are selling, selling things to get liquidity, um, selling things to convert them to ApeCoin and send them, you know, all that kind of stuff. So it's been really great to see that, you know, the floor price hasn't, hasn't really dipped too much. Um, pretty stable. For sure, for sure.

I accidentally sold some ApeCoin, uh, the other day before it rose, so—

Oh, I sold, I sold all of the ApeCoin. I got— I bought like about 100 coins like when it first came out, and I was like, I'm gonna leave this here. And then I sold it all to get into the Moonbirds raffle, uh, and then I lost. Yeah, so it's fine.

So it goes— where are you based?

I'm in Brooklyn in New York.

Okay. All right, cool. I'm moving to New York in August. Don't know where exactly yet. My office is in Dumbo. My girlfriend's in the Upper West Side. So trying to be somewhere in between that if possible.

But yeah, yeah. I feel like you could figure that out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Get in there. Yeah. If you have any questions about it, let me know. I mean, I've lived here for like 13 years.

I appreciate it. So what brought you to Brooklyn originally?

Um, well, so my wife and I, we moved out of the— we used to live downtown in the city, um, in Nolita. And in the pandemic, our place just really wasn't big enough for us to both be there 24 hours a day. Um, so when everyone left the city, We thought about leaving, but then there were such good deals on rent and we found this apartment in Fort Greene, which is like, it's sort of like our dream situation. You know, it's in a brownstone. We have the top floor, it's got like really old wood floors and, you know, it's, it's great. It's so much more space than we used to have. And you can kind of see, well, I mean, they, nobody will see this, but I have like a little office and studio, um, to, you know, work on projects and that kind of thing. It's currently a crazy mess. And, you know, we got a dog. We did like the panda, the whole yuppie pandemic kind of thing. Where is he?

Sitting on the office chair as usual.

I know mine's normally like right back here, but he decided to go to the floor today.

Yeah. Yeah. So you're a writer as well, correct?

Yeah. Um, Yes, I am.

So writer, artist, what are you focused on mostly these days?

Art? Yes, I would say mostly art and specifically focused in Web3 because I found that really kind of like reignited my inspiration.

I was having—

I've always drawn, sketched, painted, done all that kind of stuff, but I haven't been this excited about it in a really long time. I mean, I think a lot of artists feel the same way. I think, you know, there's many that were hesitant or are hesitant to get into the space, but I feel like once someone tips over the edge and they get more of an understanding that it's not just selling JPEGs and it's not necessarily always about utility, and there's so many possibilities, like for me, the generative art aspect, was so interesting because I can draw individual traits on my own and think of how they would look when they're all put together. But when you get to see 10,000 of them at one time, it's just, it's common. It's like a breadth of work that you never imagined and it's combinations you can't even think of. And then, you know, I'm still doing some writing on the side and doing like working with brands on like copy and that kind of stuff. I thought about starting like a Substack newsletter, but I just have way more fun drawing. So we're just going to chill with that for now. Nice.

Nice. I lived the freelance writer lifestyle for 6 weeks and then accepted the full-time position because it felt stable.

Yeah.

Yeah. I'm excited. But yeah, no, that's— you wrote for GQ, right?

Yeah, so I guess my first, I used to work, there was another, there was a magazine that's since gone now called Lucky Magazine. That was the first sort of official writing job I had. And then I moved to GQ. But before all of that, I had like a Tumblr that was really well followed and it wasn't, it was more of a blog than like how you would consider like a traditional Tumblr, sort of image posting. And that's really how I got my start in writing. I was doing some freelance for websites at the time, and then I just like, you know, decided let's see if I can make a go of it full-time as like an editor. And it was going really well, but publishing is a very, I mean, as you know, it's a very kind of fraught industry. And I had like a cushy job at a nice magazine, so I was out. So I got— yeah, publishing budgets basically got cut and I got laid off. And yeah, and then I kind of moved into more of like content and marketing stuff. But I wrote a book. It came out at the very beginning of the pandemic, which in the history of humankind is probably the worst time you can come out with a book. And it was about socks. So it's like on top of it being a really bad time for books, it was a book about socks. And it's just like, it was supposed to be a big deal and then nobody bought it, but yeah.

Wait, you're saying socks, not stocks, right?

Yeah, socks as in what you put on your feet.

So what's the book about? I'm so intrigued now.

Yeah, it's called How to Wear Socks, which may not seem like a difficult concept, but I have like 120 pages that will prove you, will make you think differently. But it's all about like, you know, it's part of a series that Abrams Publishing does about how to wear specific pieces. And they had done scarves, they had done jewelry, and then they came to me and they were like, would you be interested in writing one? I was like, yeah, absolutely, I'd love to write a book. And then, you know, they pitched me the idea of socks and I was intrigued, but I thought, You know, maybe I was like, what about like coats or like something a little more complicated? But we turned it into like a really funny guide. Like it's pretty aware, it's very self-aware of like how silly that concept is. You know, there's history of socks, there's famous socks, there's like a sock diagram. So you can learn all the parts of socks. There's like what else you can do with socks. Beyond Sock Puppets. It's a pretty— and like how to clean your socks, how to store your socks, fashion. There's like a bunch of tips from, you know, different fashion editors and personalities. And it's actually, it's pretty funny and the illustrations are really amazing. But yeah, it's a book about how to wear socks. So if you don't know, you could be one of 15 people to buy this book and figure it out.

Do you, do you go into how not to lose your socks? Is that part of it?

Um, no, there is a section in there though about like lost socks and how it's just kind of like an inevitability of life. Um, and no one knows, no one knows where they go. I tried to research, but I think I would have died because it's like a big sock operation.

Exactly, exactly. You can't, you can't push too far. Yeah, so I, I assume you're a big reader as well? Most writers tend to be.

I am more of a vacation— like, if we're talking about, like, novels, I'm more of a vacation, like, book reader. But I read newspapers, you know, their websites, and magazines and posts, like, all the time. I feel like because I'm in this sort of freelance lifestyle right now, like, I have so much time to just enjoy doing that stuff. And I mean, my eyes bleed from also, you know, being on Twitter and getting bombarded with, with these stories all day long, which is another reason why I love Web3, because at times it can be an escape from me feeling like I need to know every factor about how the world is falling apart, or, you know, the ice caps are melting again, or like Oh no, like something awful. And I'm just like, let me go hang out with my JPEGs for a minute and like recalibrate.

Yeah, for real. Um, what are your thoughts on Elon and the whole situation going on right now?

So I— that's actually pretty personal for me because I used to work at Twitter. Um, I was there for about 2 years. Um, and I ran— I worked on the curation team, which is basically In short, they kind of run the Explore tab and they work with trending topics and Twitter moments and all that stuff. I think it's interesting. I am kind of personally frustrated that the board let that happen. I mean, I don't know what I would do if someone came to me with $43, $45 billion. I'd probably be like, have fun. I think Elon is a very, very smart person. And I think that at his core, despite how impetuous he might seem and those sort of things, he does want to make things better. I don't know. I'm in a very wait-and-see mode. I think it's, I mean, this is the reality of the situation in any situation, but it's either gonna go really well or really poorly. I know that a lot of my feeling is that a lot of employees at Twitter feel very adrift right now. It's one thing to be on the board and know what's happening, but to be a member of this company, it's like 2,500 people or whatever it is, and just have this massive shift. Is really scary. And Parag hadn't even been there that long as CEO. And, you know, he's throwing spicy tweets out there. Elon's throwing spicy tweets out there. And I'm just like, what's happening here? And, you know, having been— a lot of my job at Twitter was to be like front row on with some of the most sensitive and violent and kind of like disturbing content. I mean, I wasn't on the team that was like deep, deep in that, but in covering breaking news, you know, you're covering things like, you know, terrorist attacks or, you know, school shootings and all of this kind of stuff. And you see a lot of vitriol on Twitter when you're on it that much. And I know Elon's message of free speech is very strong and he has a lot of conviction with that. But I just hope that doesn't mean that it's going to be putting people at risk and allowing hate speech to come back. I don't think it will, but there are some terrible people on those tweets.

Yeah. Yeah. I bet.

We'll see. We'll see.

Yeah, he tweeted something about he doesn't want to let hate speech come back. It's more just anything that is legal should be allowed to be said, which I agree with. But it's hard to actually implement that with how many millions of tweets per minute or per day or whatever. I am curious though, how— I'd never thought about this before. I just assumed it was algorithms. I didn't know there was a curation team working on like, curating the tweets? How— I have so many questions, like how big is that team? Like how, how do you guys decide? Like how the hell does that happen?

So, well, I can tell you how it was when I was there. It's been about 5 years, 5 or 6 years. But yeah, there is, I think a lot of web companies tried to automate curation. I think Facebook got into some messy territory with that. And I think Twitter's always had this sort of human curation, and it works in partnership with the algorithm. And they basically will create content around what's important and happening on Twitter. If that content should be of interest to you based on the algorithm, that's kind of how it gets populated into your feed and into your Explore tab. But there are humans all over the world. I was managing the team in North America, so I had a counterpart in Canada, and then I had a team of curators here in New York. I had a team of curators on the West Coast, and then there was another version of me in the UK. They had a whole team. We had a team in India. We had a team in Brazil and Mexico. It's like a global network of people who are just super tapped into tweets and trying to pull out the most sort of informative, clear, and I guess, as I think it's funny because a lot of people read the trending topics and they'll be like, oh, like, why is this saying like people are reacting to this? And I think that's part of Twitter's efforts to just keep everything as straightforward as possible versus trying to influence an opinion or something like that. But it's changed so much even since I've gone. But yeah, it's a wild ride. And it would be like, when breaking news happens, it was always all hands on deck. I'm a super early morning person. So, you know, I'd be at the gym at like 5:30 and, you know, the shifts in the United States start at 5:00 or they did when I was there. And someone would be texting me and be like, hey, what do you think about this? I'm like, it's 5:30 in the morning. I don't know if I wanna go into like whatever horrible traumatic thing is happening while I'm like trying to just like, you know, get this workout in. But they're a great team. It's a lot of former journalists. And yeah, I mean, I'm sure they're just as interested in how this whole Elon thing is going to go. Probably more interested than I am.

But yeah. Yeah, no, it's fascinating. What are your thoughts on the edit button? Was that talked about when you were there?

It's sort of always been talked about. My thing with the edit button is that it allows people to sort of rephrase things that are potentially part of an important record. For the average Twitter user, yeah, you forgot the apostrophe, or you used the wrong version of their. But if you could, it opens up a really difficult can of worms. And I guess people could always just delete tweets, but you know, if you think about how that could affect like someone's endorsement of something, like they quote tweet something and then the quote tweet gets the tweet, they quote tweet, it gets edited and now they're endorsing something completely different. Like, it's just like, it's out of control. And I actually, so I have Twitter Blue because I needed the hexagon. Like I had to have it. And I actually think that they're, they're sort of like, they're like, I'm air quoting this, like, edit function of just like, you can look at this again for 10 seconds before we send it out. First, I was kind of ambivalent about it, but now I've actually found it really helpful because I do catch those little mistakes much more. I'm also like a huge believer in like tweet and delete. Like if you wanna see my most real, like, personality. It's the tweets that are up for 2 seconds and then gone. And I also maintain that, like, they really— I mean, I thought, I thought the execution of Fleets was really disappointing because, you know, I grew up with, like, invisible ink pens that would just, like, disappear after, like, 2 minutes or whatever. And I'm like, yeah, an invisible ink tweet, like, once you scroll by it on your timeline or you spend, like, and then the 2 seconds or whatever, whatever they decide is like the time that you should see it for, it just disappears. That would be so cool. But no, they did like an Instagram story, Snapchat thing, or actually it should be Snapchat, Instagram story. I think it's Instagram copy that from Snapchat, but yeah, I mean, I don't even remember what we're talking about now.

No, just the edit button. It seems like it would just cause so many problems. But I am excited for the potential of Twitter messaging to improve, just like the search mechanism in there.

Yes, please, please.

I know Elon, like, also talked about encrypted messaging for Twitter. I also have Twitter Blue and I did it solely for the hexagon. Like, I had the undo tweet, but it was so annoying. I just wanted my tweet out there that I took it off. So I'm just paying $3 a month for the Hexagon. But I really find it funny when there's like people with Bored Apes and CryptoPunks who don't pay the $3 for the Hexagon. It's like, bro, what are you doing, man?

I know, it's such a, there's such a psychological thing with like making purchases on the blockchain versus making purchases like off-chain. I have, I mean, I, I have thrown ETH away on so many things and I'm just like, what is one ETH? It's one ETH. But that's obviously like, you know, at some time not that long ago, that was like $4,500. And you know, it's just like, am I really gonna pay like $36 a year for this? Just seems silly. Like, oh my God. I bought a rug, not an NFT rug, like a physical human rug, not a human rug, rug in my apartment. And it had this option. It was like, oh, like you can either have it shipped or you can do free pickup in the store. And I was like, oh, I'll do free pickup. Of course. And then I spent $60 in a Lyft on my way there because I couldn't, I didn't want to bring the rug on the subway. And it was like particularly out of the way to get to. And I was just like, wow. I don't really think about anything, do I? Just like, just making wild choices out here, and then, you know, I'll do it again.

Oh, I, I mean, I'll drop money on, on NFTs but have trouble buying myself like a cool t-shirt that I see here. Is— I, I don't know, it's ridiculous. Um, it does feel kind of imaginary and frictionless, um, when you could just press buy and send, and, you know, it's just like I don't have to type in a credit card number, I just press a little button and it's good.

And it's like, it's not when the money, like, isn't when, when it's not like fiat, I guess. And I don't see it in my bank account. I just assume it's not there. So everything in my like ETH wallet, I'm just like, that's, that's just my, that's my whatever it is. It's like my fake money, even though it's not. Um, So yeah, it's a real, it's a total mental game. Um, I also, it's funny because I find it so frustrating to convert ETH back to like USD, like that whole process, like let me send it to Coinbase and then let me do this. And then there's all these moments where it's just like, you have zero and your money's just floating out there in the world. And yeah, I mean, moral of the story is I think if you have If you own an NFT, you probably can afford the $3 a month.

Yeah, yeah, facts. Yeah, I lost a significant amount of money sending WETH to Coinbase, which only accepts ETH. It doesn't accept WETH. And learned that lesson the hard way, unfortunately.

Ugh. Yeah, I mean, who among us? We've all been there.

Yeah, it's sad, but I feel like that's just the way it goes. It's like the tuition. For me, I wanted to work in Web3 full-time, so I was cool dropping a few hundred, a few thousand to understand Web3. I dropped out of college. I decided to go this route, and it's kind of the tuition I paid. That's my thoughts at least. What are your thoughts on I'm also curious, just thoughts on writing education and art education, like kind of the future of that, where that's heading, how to modernize that shit, because yeah, it needs modernization.

I think it's tricky because I'm remembering how I was taught writing, you know, through high school and college, and this doesn't mean to disrespect my teachers who were great or my professors, but the style of writing education is just like, it's very formulaic and it doesn't really encourage a lot of like diversity of style or thought. Like I remember I have written this, I've written the way I've written for as long as I know. And it feels like my teachers, like they tried to beat it out of me and they were just like, no, like, you know, just the classic like 5-paragraph essay when you're talking about nonfiction and it's just like thesis, opening statement, like boom, boom, boom. And you know, when I was in high school, I was trained to write specifically for AP exams and nothing else. Like I could, the DB, the document-based question, the DBQs, all that stuff. Like I was, we were like machines just churning out these like these essays in 40 minutes. And it never really allowed for a lot of creativity, I think. So that's one thing I think would have to change drastically. It's also like, the mediums now are completely different. You can build a successful career as a journalist, if you wanted to, just being on Twitter. And it's not necessarily— that doesn't mean you can just like tweet. Oh, there are people who do this and tweet for a living, but distilling stories down into digestible pieces, if it's breaking news, is a really important skill. So I think that that's one thing all of the mediums need to sort of be examined as people are learning. And I think people are doing it now. I think any student in college is probably better versed in consumption of media than your senior executive sort of at like a traditional publication. I was a senior editor, but I wasn't like up at the top. And it's just like a media literacy thing. And like, I can't, even if I try to keep up with it now, like I cannot. So, and then with art education, I think we're, I don't think we're going to see Is it— I have a— so my cousin, she's in high school and she's really interested in art. And I've been trying to teach her about Web3 and NFTs. And it's just not something that is at all of interest in her curriculum. And I, and that's fine because like, you know, they're high school students and they're, you know, they're learning the basics of creation and trying to find their style and all of those things. But I never thought that I'd be able to earn money or earn a living being an artist, and Web3 completely changed that in literally a week.

Facts.

So I think it's super important to also make sure that children understand, like people who are learning this stuff understand that there are multiple ways to success. I feel like when I was in high school, it was either sort of like you're going to be poor or you're going to be like a massive success. And in reality, when you get into the real world, there's creative people everywhere. There's illustrators, there's graphic designers. So I think that's based on my own experience, that's what I would like to change. And also just like, I wish people who were so hesitant and like anti-NFT would just take like a moment to like dig in like a little bit deeper because, you know, we all joke about the JPEG thing and, you know, a lot of people will see it. Like some people will see like the Bored Apes and they'll be like, why would I want that? And I'm like, you might want that. You might not. Art is subjective. It's all, it's always been a matter of personal taste. But there's every kind of art you could possibly want in the NFT space. And, you know, for decades now, our future has only been getting more and more digital. And I understand the refrain of, why am I paying for a digital asset that I can't hang in my house? But I also equate it to like when I would work with illustrators in magazines or for blog posts, like, I would pay them a hefty rate because you're paying for someone's creative work. So I just like, I wish there'd be like some like education level on that stuff for everyone. And I think that by the end of 2022, I think that it will be much more common. I know that a lot more people in my personal circle have started getting interested in it. Some because I'm really interested in it and it's all I talk about now. And some just because they're like, what is this actually all about? And, you know, with, you know, it was like over a year ago now, like just over a year with like, you know, Christie's and Sotheby's getting into it. And that's a huge signal right there, the traditional art world. And, you know, PricewaterhouseCoopers now has like a whole crypto division. And I wouldn't be surprised if like Morgan Stanley and, you know, all the rest of them are like going to be on their tails with that.

Yeah.

Art education needs to include Web3. It might, I don't know. I'm too old. I haven't been in high school in 100 years.

No, I got you. I, yeah, I didn't. So I was studying English at Rutgers and they didn't mention Twitter, blogs, or newsletters once. And then once I found Twitter and like started getting traction and, you know, figured my way out, I was like, why the hell? I'm leaving this. This is stupid. And my whole life I grew up with the prejudice that I could not be a paid writer. I couldn't make a living writing. So I originally went to University of Michigan to study business, was miserable because I was studying stuff that I hated. I didn't hate, but I wasn't writing them. Yeah, it's amazing to be able to make a living writing. It's such a gift.

It's so crazy because it's just like everybody, when I told people I wanted to be a writer and particularly like where I wanted to be a writer, they'd be like, that's never gonna happen. And I was like, well, there's people that work there. And like, why? I just think it's like, there's such discouragement of creative careers, I think when you're growing up. And a lot of it comes from like, it is, you know, for a lot of, for a lot of people, it's like an untraditional path and it can be very uncertain versus like, you know, when I was a senior in college, all of my friends got job offers in like November. And I just like hung out until the end of the year. And then I was like, I guess I'll just move to New York now. But it always like, I don't like the idea of betting against someone's like for what they wanna do just seems really, it's very short-sighted. And like, you know, people have bet against me all my life. I think people that everyone has that experience and I'm just kinda like, well, I'm gonna try it. And like, I have my point of view and my point of view is gonna serve me well or not. And like, you know, if I end up not being able to like make it doing art or writing or whatever it is, then I'll figure it out. But let me just live. That's really what it is. Just mind your business.

No, I couldn't agree more.

Also, the fact that you were at Rutgers and they're not teaching about newsletters, Twitter, and all of that. Newsletters, is like a huge situation and it's so young. Um, oh man, that's a bummer. Yeah.

Um, so you brought in like $300K and then donated $150K to, uh, charity. Um, I guess two things. Um, one more serious question, one less. Um, why'd you choose that charity? Um, I forget the name off the top of my head. And then the second question any big NFT purchases coming up? Anything that you're excited about?

So, you know, as I was— we were putting— I was putting this project together, you know, my wife, she's always like watching and like, you know, encouraging me along. And we did the math on a 0.01 mint and 10,000, obviously 100 ETH, roughly $300,000, right? And I knew I wanted to keep the mint price low because I thought, you know, $30 for my first PFP project made sense. Um, but we were also like, what are we going to do with that much money? Um, I'm sure we could have figured it out, but, you know, it just felt like an opportunity. I've seen other projects donate, um, you know, part of their funds to it. I think World of Women has donated so much money. Um, they actually just donated $100,000 to Save the Children, or Save Our Children. Um, And, you know, we have so many friends and family that are part of like the LGBTQIA+ community. And, you know, I think that as, you know, latent kind of homophobia and transphobia like bubbles up to the surface, you know, with kind of what we see in Texas and, you know, what's happening in Florida and other places, it just felt like for us it was like an easy decision to be like, all right, let's support, let's see if we can, you know, ease some people's concerns or stress or, you know, see what we can do. Um, and we actually haven't made the donation yet, um, because I'm working with the community, um, in Discord to sort of educate them about the different ways you can donate it, like a lump sum to one organization versus, you know, a few organizations. And then we've actually been offered a matching donation by The Giving Block, which is sort of like the— like, it's like a crypto donation hub, and it's sort of the only way that I've found to donate crypto. And— but the stipulation with that is that we'd have to donate to one of their index funds, which is great because it splits it across, you know, 95 different organizations. But at the same time, you know, I want to make sure that the community weighs the pros and cons of what would essentially be 1 ETH per organization versus larger gifts that could potentially have more impact. So we're doing an AMA next week to sort of, with like a charity expert, I guess you could call her, to sort of walk us through all of those things. And then we will, you know, we'll do a community vote on what's style of donation we want to do, and then we'll, you know, continue drilling down into the different organizations. Um, but, you know, I will say it was crazy, um, transferring the ETH from the contract, transferring the ETH from the contract, and then transferring the charitable donation portion, which originally was going to be 47.5, but like, because we took out like some expenses for like security and like Rarity Sniper, but I was just like, just make it 50 because it's like an easy round number. That was terrifying. And like, you know, it's on a cold wallet, like it's safe, but I'm like, is my dog gonna like crunch it up? Is my wife gonna see it and be like, oh, these USB drives, and just like throw them out? Like, I don't know. But it's I think, you know, one of my favorite things about blockchain, in particular in this instance, is the transparency. So, you know, the community has the wallet address, they have the transaction ID, um, so I know they're going to hold me accountable. Um, but yeah, it's just $150 grand just out there.

Yeah, yeah, that's one of the favorite things that I, I personally love about blockchain and crypto, and that I think the media narrative gets so wrong. The general media talks so much about hacks and shadiness and all that, and they don't realize that everything is on the blockchain and you can see it. I've listened to experts and people talk like the blockchain's actually one of the easiest ways to crack down on fraudsters and that kind of stuff. Anonymity is hard sometimes, but you could see, you just follow the money.

Yeah. That's why, like, when people do these rugs or like, you know, people get really brazen with how they do things. I'm just like, you know, at this point in time, like there's so many people in the NFT space that know how to go like deep, like deep forensics on wallet transactions. And like, when people try and do that, I'm just like, man, do you think someone's not going to figure it out? Like, and you know, a bunch of projects have been bitten by, you know, bad actors within some projects. They're just a group of bad actors and, you know, rugs in general. But yeah, I mean, I'm also, I'm always terrified that like NFT ethics is going to come after me. So I want to be like super transparent. But yeah, no, I think that's the thing that people get wrong too, because it has this— I think there's still this sort of people sort of equate it with the dark web, from when Bitcoin was super young and a lot of transactions would happen there. And certainly, horrible things have happened through cryptocurrency, but horrible things happen with every kind of currency. So I think it's just like, it's just a shifting of the narrative. And I, you know, eventually, you know, I fully believe that like, you know, the transparency on the blockchain will be a part of like people buying homes and all that kind of stuff. Like, you know, at some point in the future, like someone could buy a house and they're like, well, I have the NFT of this house. So like I own that house. Yeah. Yeah, it's wild. I think it's just, it kind of goes back to what we were talking about media literacy. People just need to get a little bit more educated.

Yeah. No, I couldn't agree more. I actually was on the phone a couple hours ago with a guy in Switzerland who runs a foundation focused on authenticating luxury goods. So they just, I'm writing an article about it for my work and They, yeah, so they just partnered with WatchBox, which is like a luxury watch, secondhand salesman or whatever of the sorts, like StockX. And so they're doing NFTs for watches and comes in a box and you get like your, you scan it to get your wallet and all this. And it's like, oh, like, you know, talking about real estate, like once you buy that house, like, you know, that's what every realtor would give you is a little like NFT or something, you know, it'd be, Kind of adorable.

Yeah. Like that's your deed to the property. Like, I mean, if we were in our current situation in terms of like Ethereum versus like, you know, US dollars or whatever, and it, you know, when you rent an apartment, they're always like, okay, can we see your checking account? I'd just be like, here's my wallet address. Like, go nuts.

Yeah.

I don't know if my landlord would take that, but whatever. She's chill. And so I know you had your other question about big NFT purchases. So the first thing I did, the first thing I did after the mint was I bought a Nifty Gateway, just because that community was like very supportive and I wanted to like go hang out with them. But I did buy the AkuPass, like the Akatar Pass, And then I bought another Alcatara in mint. And obviously that contract had some issues. So that was a little like wind out of my sails in terms of NFT purchasing, but that team is great and they'll rebound. I don't know how psychologically they're doing because that just seems like such a terrible thing, but the community seems to be behind them. Things that are coming up. I think next week is Shamans is minting, I think on April 8th, I want to say, I don't know. But Shamans is one that I've looked at for a long time. I found them through Marcus Magnusson, who was the guy who did Invisible Friends. He posted about them on Twitter and I like went nuts. So before I started doing my own art for NFTs, I was just like a hound for fan art. And I was like, this is how I'm going to get my whitelist. So I did so much for them. And their mint's coming up, so I'm excited about that. And then, um, I'm not— they haven't announced a mint date for The Possessed, but that's another one that has like an incredible amount of hype. I think the art is, you know, super high quality. It's very interesting, um, and the way that they're kind of approaching storytelling, um, is very exciting. I don't think I've seen anyone that's been that deliberate, um, their Discord, you're basically moving along in a narrative as they open different channels, which is just like a nice change versus like, you know, when you hop into Discord and there's like 100 channels and like everyone's grinding and like no one's really saying anything or having like a real engagement. And, you know, and I will always keep my eye on— I mean, obviously the land sale is this weekend. I don't know what is going on with that. Like, I, because of the, because of dropping Avias, I haven't really had time to dig into it this week. And I'm trying to think of what else is big. Oh, Garbage Friends, which is part of Random Character Collective, which includes Marcus Magnuson and Invisible Friends, Mood Rollers, and Slim Hoods. Garbage Friends is launching at the— I think it's on their roadmap for the end of the year, like maybe November, December. That one I'm really looking forward to just mostly because I'm just such a fan of, you know, Marcus's art and the community and the Random Character Collective Discord. It's like, there's like 60,000 people in there, but the way it's split up, it's actually a really great vibe in there. What else? And then, you know, maybe buy into some of the blue chips. I would love to get a Moonbird, but even after minting out a project, it's still just so much money. Like, I feel like I could spend— I would buy 10 2 ETH NFTs, wouldn't even blink. That's spending 20 on one. There's— it's another one of those mental hurdles that I just can't get over. Um, Yeah, that's sort of like where my head's at with all of them now.

Got you, got you. I, um, yeah, I saw some research come out that it's really only some of the top blue chip ones that are, that are killing it right now, um, besides a few others. And so I'm like, oh, maybe it's time to start saving up. Yeah, yeah, there's— I could try to save up for a place or save up for an NFT, but we'll see.

I know, so good.

Yeah, yeah. So my dog is grabbing me from under the table. I think I gotta take him out.

Okay.

It's a terribly windy day here in Jersey. I know it's probably windy up there in New York as well.

Yeah, no, it's awful. It's been the windiest spring of all time. I don't know what's going on. But for real, for real.

But yeah, thank you so much, uh, for your time and coming on. And, um, let's chat later. I'll shoot you a DM soon.

Yeah, and just let me know. I can support, promote, all that stuff.

All right, cool. I appreciate it.

What's going on with my camera? All right, bye dude. Later.