139: Everything You Need To Know About NFTs - #GrowYourLife

Hey everyone, thanks for listening to the Grow youw Life podcast. My name is Jeremiah Gracowski, and on this podcast we talk about ways for you to grow in your life and your business mindset, business strategy and more. For you to reach your goals, make more money online so that you're prepared for the future and don't have to wonder what's happening next. Now listen, if you're not in the Grow your Life Facebook group, check that out. There's over 1600 people like yourself that are growing in their life and in their business every single day. And so be sure to check that that group out as well as check out the over 138 episodes of this podcast on my website, Jeremiah krakowski.com Now today we're going to be talking about NFTs. A lot of people been asking me about NFTs. They've been saying, can you tell me how to create them? And there's two sides to NFTs. I'm going to go break those down for you. If you're looking to know what the best APE to buy is to be profitable, I'm not going to give you the answer to that because I don't know. I almost bought an Ape Cyber Kongs NFT that went up to $150,000, but I missed out on it because I was $20 short in my wallet. And so I'm kind of kicking myself for that because I literally was that close to buying one of the most profitable NFTs on the market back in March. And it's funny because I can look back and even see like a failed transaction on that day when I did that. It's, it's hilarious. There's a record on the Internet of me trying to do it and failing at it. And I can laugh and look back at it and think it's pretty funny. Some of you might be devastated by something like that. This is why I always say, failure is not the end. Stop living your life based on the pipe dream of perfection. Be willing to take action imperfectly and mess up making big, massive mess up mistakes. Was me missing out on $150,000 a big mess up mistake? Yeah, I think it was. But you know what? I don't beat myself up over it. In fact, I laugh at it. And that's what we're doing today is we're laughing at it. But I want you to be prepared for the future. I believe that the technology behind NFTs is going to radically have an impact on the, on the metaverse. What's happening with the metaverse, as well as how media is going to be delivered, whether it be news media, print media, social media, music and movies, and particularly we're even working with some people in the music industry. If you've met some of my friends, we're working on ways to prepare other people for what NFTs are going to do for the music industry. That's as much as I can kind of say to that. But we want to make sure that people are A set up for success and B, we're able to set ourselves up for success as well as other artists and musicians that are in the music industry around NFTs. What is an NFT? Let's start with that. Okay, let's start with what it is, because I think that's the biggest question. It is not a jpeg, it is not a picture of a monkey. Okay? But a lot of the most valuable NFTs have been artwork, pictures of monkeys. So that's why a lot of people mix that up. And they're just, they're basically just digital JPEGs that are sold through this site called OpenSea. There's another one called Rarible that you can buy NFTs on and you can buy and sell them through these different platforms. But an NFT is essentially, it's a, it's a piece of art, or it could be a piece of music, or it could be a movie, or it could literally be a piece of software that's tied to the blockchain. What is the blockchain? We have to actually look that up. And that's where I think the answer to this question is. For most people, if you look up blockchain, what is the blockchain? Let's type that up, a definition of the blockchain. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can see the video version of this where I'm pulling up on my screen these definitions and things like that. So you can actually go over to the YouTube version of this episode and watch me as I'm scrolling on the web, pulling up my screen on this. So blockchain is a system in which a record of transactions is recorded across several computers in a peer to peer network. So what is an nft? Well, an NFT basically stores on these digital peer to peer networks the validity of your ownership of some kind of an asset could be physical, could be Digital. In fact, NFTs can even validate the authenticity of physical products like watches, purses, wallets, things like that. I could see in the future a title of A house being an nft, meaning you sell your house, the NFT is transferred to the owner. The way that our title system works. And something like that could actually happen a lot sooner than we're thinking. And so there's a whole lot. Right now we're at the ground level of this right now. NFTs are a lot like Beanie Babies and trading cards. So I just, I tied a very real asset to them, real estate, and then devalued them completely as having the value of Beanie Babies and trading cards. Now why is that? Because right now the way that they're being used is very similar to the bubble markets of Beanie Babies and trading cards. They, what's being sold really doesn't have much value. It's, it's, it literally is just a JPEG picture of these apes that are worth, I'm going to show you some of these. They're that are worth hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars. These, they're literally pictures that are painted of monkeys that have different clothing on them. And they're trading like digital trading cards for hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. And that's the NFT market right now. Highly speculative, speculative, highly risky. Almost certain that if you buy one, you're gonna lose your money. Okay, so hear me out on that. If you're looking at what's the best one to buy, how do you figure that out? And that'll scare a lot of people away. That's great. How do you figure out which ones are the best ones to buy? You get into the community, you get into the community of the NFTs, you, you look at what's on Twitter, what are the new projects that are being released, what is the new stuff that's coming out that people are saying, oh, this is a, this is a hot trend, or this is not. You get in before the trend goes up and your chances of success are that much greater. But right now there's, there's so much speculation in the market. The real place that you can make the money with NFTs that I think more people should focus on is creating them. If you're an artist, if you're somebody that draws or paints, you can literally take your painting, mint it to a site like OpenSea or Rarible, and sell the license of the digital copy of that piece of art through one of these NFT marketplaces. And so let's say that you painted a one to one piece of a painting in artwork. You, you digitally scan it in and you are able to sell the license to the only digital authentic copy of that. And you could even tie it with a utility to the physical copy to where you're able to then ship the physical copy or store it yourself for the owner of it to be redeemed at whatever time. Think of it like a gold bar. Think of it like a promissory note. Okay. So a person could actually redeem their NFT for the physical work of art, and if they're separated from each other, it could lose value and almost go to zero. So that's one way that an artist could use NFTs to do that. How do you launch these? Well, you have to also understand cryptocurrency, and that's why most people are just not ready to get into this market, because you got to understand the blockchain, you got to understand cryptocurrency, you got to understand this virtual world of the metaverse that we're going into and the idea of digital assets. So there's these like four ideas that are very much not every day for people, but if you've been on the Internet for any length of time, you're starting to see more of these pop up. And so Coinbase, again, is the easiest site for Americans to buy cryptocurrency. Literally, anybody can create a Coinbase account and own Ethereum through, through Coinbase. And then you load your Ethereum to a wallet that's on OpenSea right here, see? So one of the easier wallets, you got it. You can actually link your Coinbase wallet to it. So your Coinbase wallet can have the Ethereum. They didn't even have this like a couple months ago. You link your Coinbase wallet to it, and now the crypto that's in your Coinbase wallet can be used to purchase one of these assets, one of these trending NFTs. Okay, and now how much do they sell for? Well, that. And how is it related to real world money? Well, it's the exchange rate between the Ethereum and the currency of your choice, US dollar, something like that. So right now Ethereum is $4285. Earlier this year, it was hovering around this eighteen hundred dollar range. And so because of that, the value has also gone up. Just because the value of crypto has gone up. Most NFTs are double in value what they were here. The one that I bought earlier this year is at least double its US dollar value just because Ethereum has gone up. And I could, I could flip it tomorrow and sell it through one of these platforms. So, like the Mutant Ape Yacht Club is these little mutant apes right here. And they're selling for over $20,000 literally. So people are paying for them. And you, you can buy them, you can pay with cryptocurrency, you can bid on them. The Bored Ape Yacht Club is right here. This is another big one. They just did an event in New York City where people could come on this, this yacht if they owned one of these apes. Okay, so like here's one of them right here. Here's one of the apes. And right now the minimum bid is $200,000 and the Reserve price isn't met. It's incredible. It actually sold a full transaction for 24 Ethereum. We multiply that by 4,000. This is at least been sold before it was sold two months ago for over US$100,000. This NFT right here. Okay, so for artists, your art can go up in value as well. Now there's a really cool piece of the NFT too. Every time that it's bought and sold, the artist gets a percentage royalty kickback built into it. You can built in a 10%, a 20%. It's all based on what's called the smart contract. Okay, so smart contracts are essentially these contracts that are computer programs. They're executing themselves as a program rather than needing lawyers to go back and forth with them. So there's the basically robotic contracts. And that's what Ethereum is. It's, it's a smart contract system. So that's why a lot of NFTs are built on the Ethereum blockchain or the ADA blockchain. Not a Cardano blockchain, but ada. ADA is the, is the call sign for it or Solana. These different cryptocurrencies because they have smart contract functionality built into them. I don't believe Bitcoin has smart contract functionality built into it, which is why you don't usually see Bitcoin traded for these. So it needs to have smart contract functionality built into it. Then the smart contract validates the owner, it validates when the transaction happened, it validates what happens when somebody buys it. And it's literally a computer program that's built on the blockchain. You don't need to be a programmer because it's already built into the nft. So if you go to, to create an nft, if you go to launch it, see they have the create button here you go to launch it, you got to put it out there. You'll be able to configure how much of a percentage do you want to have kicked back to you if it's been sold. How much of a percentage goes to the Marketplace? Because obviously OpenSea is the one, they're. They're really the ones making a killing. They're making a percentage off of every one of these sales that goes through their marketplace. Okay. And so right now, digital artwork is the biggest way that we're finding that they're used. How do you find those trends? Twitter, it's a great place. Reddit, Facebook groups, you look at all of these, if you see a lot of people on all these different platforms, telegram groups talking about a specific type of an nft, discord groups as well, there could be buzz around it based on how many of the NFT is launching. So I've been observing kind of how you predict an nft. I'm still not quite sure the right way to predict the most profitable ones, but I think they have to have a smaller amount than 10,000. I think they need to be closer to like 2 or 3,000 and that those ones hold their value far better. I know Gary Vaynerchuk, absolutely brilliant. He launched his V friend, so yeah, so he's got 10,000 of them as well. But there's so much value built on these. Over 30, 30, 000 Ethereum has been traded of his NFTs, these little scribbles that he's done and they sold for reasonable prices when he launched them. I wish I bought one at the original price that they were. I kind of was a bit skeptical at that moment and I should have because they are literally worth a lot and they're going to keep going up in value. Maybe his next round that he launches I might jump into. I like what Gary is doing and I think that he's very legitimate when it comes to these NFTs. Probably the most legitimate person out there for them. Should have known better, right? You live and you learn. So when it comes to NFTs, how do you know what the best trends are? Well, being on social media, listening to the market, you can pay attention to what new ones are that are launching. You get in at the ground level. The other thing too is they also trade based on volume. So if you have a decent amount of cash flow, you can look at the activity right here of a trending nft. You can notice, okay, it's going back up in value right here. A couple days ago would have been a great place to kind of buy into one of these because their price was much lower and then volume went up. So this would have been a great place. If you had a hundred thousand dollars to spend, that would have been the time to buy an NFT right here. Because you probably could have at least flipped it and made double, for example. So that's how you can find trending NFTs if you want to trade it. If you really want to make the most amount of money though, create art, release it as an nft. And here's how I would recommend learning how to do that. I'm not going to walk you through how to do that on here. How to create NFTs on YouTube literally. There are YouTube videos. There's tons of YouTube videos about this, by the way. I'm telling you. YouTube literally is like a university. If you guys aren't using YouTube to learn things that you don't know how to do, figure out what step it is that you don't know how to do. Somebody, at least 20 people have already made videos that teach you how to do almost anything that you want to do. Okay, how to set up my wallet on OpenSea. Like if you like I don't know how to set up my wallet on OpenSea, you literally type it into YouTube and you will find videos of people that walk you through how to set all this stuff up through YouTube. YouTube is going to be your friend if you're going on this journey to launch NFTs to sell them as artwork. Okay, so looking into the future right now, again, artwork or if you're a video game developer, digital collectibles. And in these video games are a great way to sell NFTs like Trey Smith did. Okay, so Trey Smith. Not this Trey Smith, a different Trey Smith. Trey Smith launched his mech NFTs for a video game that he is launching. Okay, so he's launching this video game that. Let's see, where is he? He's right here. Mech.com and so he sold all of these mechs as NFTs for $11,000 each. And I think he sold close to a thousand of them or more. And so now he's building a video game around these NFTs. And so these are collectibles each NFT that's a mechanical NFT you're able to use to fight. There's over 5,000 of them generated by AI right here. And they have different properties. And it's going to be tied to a video game that he's actually developing because I know that he's a video game developer. So that's how and based on what NFT you have, you might be Able to combine skills together, things like that is how they work. So right now they're very much tied to these different collectibles. In the future though, looking into the future, NFTs can be attached to anything that we sort of relate to value and I think especially music. We're already seeing artists releasing copies of their music as NFTs where you get a, get a special release version, maybe a music video of some kind through an nft. But I think that more and more we're going to see kind of like MP3s, apps like Spotify are already researching how to implement NFTs into this to implement a royalty system so that the royalties manage themselves through systems like this. And you could transfer your masters, for instance, through an NFT as an asset as well as tied to real estate and other assets, physical and digital. Okay, so anything that we equate to value as people can be calm at some point and NFT. Now how do you, how do you create NFTs of some of these other types of assets? Well, you are going to need a programmer, you will need to work with some kind of a developer if it's not been done before, if it's not a piece of artwork. And so upwork.com does have some NFT developers, people that can code in Ethereum solidity. They these different languages that can help you set up different stuff like that. If you want to create an NFT that's tied to maybe a physical asset. If I wanted to sell these scissors as an NFT for instance, I could. We just have to build a smart contract around it and then it's a one of one token that I can trade with somebody based on how much cryptocurrency they give me and it becomes an asset. We trade crypto for, for the NFT that becomes the license. And that's how it works. Kind of like transferring a car title, a house deed, things like that. They're a digital version of that and that's how those smart contracts work. So I'm really excited for the future. Keep an eye on this stuff. Keep an eye on this stuff for the future, on how it's all gonna work, on how it's all gonna work together and how it's really gonna change a lot of the world around us. I hope that this has given you an inside look at into the world of NFTs. If you want to learn more about it. Again, I think YouTube is going to be your friend. Check out YouTube. I'm serious. You're going to learn so much about this. If you don't understand the blockchain, if you don't understand cryptocurrency, research those first. I think just buying a little bit of Ethereum is worth it. Buying a little bit of some crypto on Coinbase is worth it. Especially like today at the time of this recording. It's not a bad time, not a bad day. It could go down. It could. But I, I'm a big fan of crypto. I hold a decent amount of it and I love it. And that's something that I really am passionate about and have been since 2017. And so I think everybody should at least hold a little bit of it to kind of get in the game, to get their skin in the game, to understand this world of cryptocurrency and this new world of digital assets that we're stepping into. All right, so listen, if you need help as a business owner, selling digital products, growing a community, building an audience, your messaging, your marketing, your advertising schedule, a free 15 minute call with me on my website, Jeremiah gracowski.com We can talk about your business as well. It's over 138 podcast episodes on my website and I have courses on topics such as messaging, marketing, funnels, advertising, course creation, website building, and more@jeremiah krakowski.com.