Cypto Buffalo - WTF Is Hard Fork Gaming?

Boom, boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.

What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustler Flowchart podcast with your boys, Matt Wolf and Joe Fear.

Matthew, today is a good day. It is a good day. Yeah. Why is it a good day?

Any day you wake up on this side of the dirt is a good day, as they say.

That is what they say. That's right. They say a lot of good things, and that's a good one today. You know what I'm excited about? I'm excited because we're bringing a longtime friend of ours, and we're going to go back in time. We're going to go back, way back in time, what, like 10 years ago of how we met this guy, but now how we're spending basically an entire. Every single day of the week with this guy, every waking hour. It feels like we're in this house under the same roof with the main man, the tallest man. I think I know, Mr. Crypto Buffalo. How are you doing, my man?

Hey, what. What an intro, man? The tallest. You know, that's a. That's a title I can hang on to for a minute. Yeah, man. Hey, this is a pleasure. Thank you guys for having me on the show. I've been watching you guys do your hustle and flow for a minute now, and yeah, like you said earlier, we've known each other for over 10 years, and now we're all working together in San Diego. Just crushing it, man. This has been a crazy journey.

Yeah, it's crazy because, like, I think the first time we all started talking, we were like, where do we know each other from? And we're like, it's from. From around this time. And you started pulling up some. Some video clips and some images from an event back in, I want to say, 2010, 2011, somewhere around that era. And we were in those video clips, in those pictures that you were sharing.

With a thumbnail dude, we were the.

Thumbnail of the video. And I was like, damn, we really do go way back. I mean, there was like a year gap in there where we weren't really in communication, but, like, the genesis of it was a long time ago.

Yeah, I was. That was a Phil Sane event. Jason Moffat got me that gig, and I was traveling on an RV with him and got hired to essentially cover a bunch of affiliate marketers partying at the MGM grand and. And then Venetian as well. And I was just blown away. Guilty. Yeah, there was a lot of partying, and it sucks when you're the cameraman videotaping people Party. And I'm gonna tell you right now, I was fomoing hard. Yeah, it was a lot of fun though.

But you're the perfect cameraman in that environment. You are very tall, so you're looking above everyone. You probably get the best angles. But yeah, back in the day, I mean, that was. I think that was the first big marketing conference thing that Matt and I went to, like party where there were a lot of people there, a lot of people now who are friends. Moffat being one of them. I think we even told this to Jason before. We're like, that's Jason Moffett.

Oh, man.

You know, like we've. He was one of the guys that really helped us get into this space and now help me with this whole profit Moffitt days, you know, and. And that's where you were doing this road bandit thing. After that, like there was a lot of people probably watching the podcast or listening to the audio from back in the day. If they were a marketer, they probably came across some of your guys crazy videos and pictures in the Internet marketing space. I don't know. Take us back, like briefly how you got into this whole thing because production is also in there, obviously. Being a camera guy. This is partially why we came together for Hard Fork Gaming. Take us back little. Little like memory lane, maybe 10 years ago or so, at least.

Well, it all started April 10, 2008. I sold everything and bought an RV and me and my cat Bird hit the road. And the first place we went to, like a moth to a flame, was Las Vegas. So I traveled around in an rv, had no idea what I was doing, had no idea about marketing strategies either, and didn't even know about Jason or anything for a couple of years on the road. Decided to start a blog. And the first, I think first post I was doing was on MySpace. You know, I was printing out MapQuest. I mean, yeah, I'm going way back here. I wasn't blogging on a typewriter, but I was going back a little bit. And then first couple years was really me just freelancing and doing a lot of gigs off of Craigslist. I was doing how to videos, but also covering what life was like in the rv. And then started a travel show called Road Bandit in 2009. And Jason Moffat came across it and he hit me up on MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, email. I think a plane drove by, sky messaging me. It's like, I need to respond to Jason. And I remember his exact words. He's like, bro, you teach me how to rv. I'LL fill your pockets full of cash. And I was like, who is this guy? This is admin. It was insane. And so I was like, first of all, how do I teach you to rv? I don't even know how to rv. And I live in one. And he had a massive like 40 foot, like mansion on wheels. And I had a 24 foot RV that I barely fit in. Literally barely fit in. I'm 6 foot 8 and the ceiling is like 6 foot 9. So I was hitting my head from time to time in certain spots in there. But I love the house on wheels. Her name was Betsy. And Jason really introduced me to Internet market. I'll be honest with you guys, I thought marketing was a giant scam. Every time I think about marketing online and you know, I used to do the things where it's like you send a dollar to five people and then they're supposed to send a dollar to you. You remember those? I was doing that stuff back in the day.

Yeah.

There was another one when I had dial up Internet where if you, if you use a certain and you had a banner on your whole browser, they would pay you like every hour or something. And I racked up a phone bill like no other. And because my dumb ass was calling long distance and didn't realize it. And so that actually got me my first job ever at McDonald's because my dad said I have to pay the bill and I had to go get a job. So Internet marketing at the beginning for me, I could not figure out how to make a dollar. But when I came across Jason, he got to introduce me to the La Jolla Internet marketing mafia. I got to hang out with marketers all around the country with him. We went from La Jolla, California all the way to Florida. Florida. Stopped out in Mardi Gras during when the Saints just won the super bowl. And we had a hell of a time traveling together. And he really blew my mind because when we were at Mardi Gras together, he was doing an affiliate sale. I think it was for Easy Video Player or something like that. Josh Bartlett's Josh Bartlett, right? And he was just, he had his laptop and he was walking around drinking a beer, screaming at his list. You guys gotta buy this, man. If you buy this, I'll do this.

This.

At the end of it, I'm like, dude, like how much did you make there? What did you do? He's like, oh, I sold like 40 units and I get like 50 commission. It's a two thousand dollar product. I'm sitting there going Are you telling me you just made 40 grand drinking, smoking weed? Like, how the hell did you just do this, man? My brain. I'm already gras. Exactly. I mean, there's a great picture of him with his laptop on a police car while he's doing it.

Oh, we gotta dig that up.

Yeah, it's on. It's on the Internet. And it was life changing from then on. Looking at the Internet and looking at my skill sets as a cameraman and editor, I realized, holy. I know Jason, like, he has the brain for promoting and doing a lot of crazy stuff, but his, like, production style was, like, super amateur. So I was like, man, if I could work with him on scaling up his production, he could teach me the fundamentals of marketing. And he really did a great job of introducing me to a lot of Internet marketers. And they all said the same thing. Focus on what really separates you from the pack. Focus on your production, focus on video and editing. And so I created a jumpstart marketing and had this whole little marketing company where I create videos and then market those videos to their target market. And I remember the first time somebody paid me like three or four grand upfront, and I was like, this is a game changer. And so Marketing for me, 2010 was really the big change when I met Jason, and now it's 2022, and it's. It's a fundamental thing. Like, if you're going to create stuff online, you have to have a plan, right? Or you're just throwing on the wall.

So how did. When did, like, the whole videography stuff really come to the mix? Because I know you've been, you know, you filmed Seahawks games, you filmed Mariner games. You've been telling us stories about being on the. In the octagon at UFC fights, filming UFC fights. Like, when did all that come to the mix? Is that like pre marketing, pre road bandit? And then you kind of brought all those skills into road bandit and then kind of picked it up again later. Like, where did all that come in?

It started and continued through road bandit. And I went to school for technical production and essentially get my associate's degree, which I never showed anybody ever. So it really didn't matter. But the great thing is I graduated high school, and the only thing I gave a shit about at high school was my video production class, because I had a show that I would do called SportsCenter. I know original, actually ripped off the open of SportsCenter on VHS. So the rolling for my show was the SportsCenter rolling. But the Whole school loved it because I would cover sports, but I would do it in a very like SNL type thing where I would dress up as Shakira with a green screen and be shaking my hips and everything. And people just lost it. They're like, man, this guy's got something. I remember I had a crush on a girl I never said a word to in high school. And she came up to me when I was a senior and she was like, I love your videos. I look forward to them every Friday. And that was it. That's when I knew I need to lean into this because it's the only thing I care about. So I asked my video production teacher what do I do? And he's like, oh, there's a school in Tacoma that's broadcast production. You should check it out. And so I went down there and did about a year and a half of technical college that was based off of live tv. So I went to news. And at the same time that I was doing news, I did freelancing in the sports field. So for Fox Sports, abc, espn, NBC, you name them, I worked for them all. And man, I'll tell you right now, news reminded me of when I worked at McDonald's. Sports reminded me of like those Make a Wish foundation people. Like every day I was going to work, I'm like, I feel like I Make a Wish foundation kid. I'm actually being paid to be here. And everyone was happy and it was exciting because it's a live event. You never know what's going to happen. I'm a huge sports buff. So to me it was like, man, something amazing could happen. That's never happened before in sports. And I'm there, I'm on the field, I'm the cameraman supposed to be covering that. So when you find that passion where you feel like a little kid and you're, you're so grateful to even be paid to do it, you just lean into that. And that's what I did, man. I just went full into it. And it was really tough at first in Seattle to get camera work. I was doing party poker online to try to pay the bills, gained a bunch of weight. But eventually I got enough calls and started networking. And I've been freelancing ever since. And when I hit the road with roadbanded, I would lean into that. So I had my own gear, I could edit. And they called me like a one man band. Somebody that can shoot it, light it, edit it, and produce it and then market it. And you know, with that skill set. I knew I could kind of take over the world, and it gave me a lot of courage hitting the road to cover that story in a way that was somewhat above amateur in that sense, by myself. And then when I first hit the road, my number one bucket list was to work for the ufc. I love mixed martial arts, always have been. And finally, when I got into Vegas, I asked everybody, hey, how can I get on here? How can I get on here? And eventually, somebody friended me on Facebook and found out I was a cameraman, and they got me on the Countdown show, and before you know it, I was going in the octagon in between rounds, and I'll tell you right now, that was one of them. I even told them, I was like, I'll almost pay you guys to let me do it. And then they go, don't you ever say that. Don't you ever say that. You know, I was like, you're getting paid, and shut your mouth. So I was like, okay, okay, boss. But I think it's one of those, if you can align your passions like that, like where you don't even sleep because you're so excited to go to work. To me, it was just like, I just feel grateful. And I think I took it, you know, to a point where I just didn't realize. Most people aren't that lucky to find out what they love in high school and continue to do it as a career. But for me, I was lucky enough that in high school, I found out I love video and I love production, and I've been leaning into it ever since.

Yeah, it's so interesting, too, because, like, you know, we're all at a house together right now. Like, I'm here. Joe's on the other side of my camera over there. You're down the hall a little bit. We see each other almost every single day. And it takes getting you on a podcast to even hear these stories, because I don't think we've heard, like, most of this about you so far. So this is, like, this is really cool. I'm curious now, like, when did NFTs come to the picture? Because we initially, you know, we came across each other because you started doing this Lad City with Nifty Q and, you know, some other folks, Fun uncle, and a handful of other people that we've talked about on the show before. How did the NFT stuff all come into the mix? How did you start going down that rabbit hole? Because it seems like a pretty big leap from, you know, filming Seahawks games to look at this crypto dick butt that I got.

Yeah, good shout out, man. I'm a long term holder of my crypto dick butts. Yeah, I think it was one of those. And I think everybody has a story with crypto where they first heard about bitcoin or dogecoin or any other altcoins and we're like, oh, you know, I should have looked into it back in 2012 or 2013. I never really gave it an ounce. I mean, I was traveling with Jason Moffat in Portland, Oregon. I went up to a taco stand one night with me and Jason were jumping around checking out food trucks and one of them said, we accept bitcoin. And I remember going, you accept Minecraft currency? Like that's where my brain was at. I never looked into it, didn't read one article, never listen to anybody about it. And it wasn't because I was pushing it away. It's just I didn't give it one ounce of my own research. And that's the thing, man, a lot of people take the news or take a lot of other people's kind of advice on their research. They don't do their own research to make their own opinion on what was happening. So it took me until 2017 and it was June 10th, and I remember it because I was on a farm in Georgia, all by myself, miles away from anybody. But I had some solid Internet and I downloaded the documentary the Rise and Rise of Bitcoin. And halfway through that documentary, I hit pause. I stood up, screamed, yeah. I was like, yes, the financial revolution is here. I couldn't get behind the old school of fiat and how they're just printing this and nobody's really regulating it. And now we're going to get to something that's going to be transparent and it's going to be trusted. And you can do business with somebody in Japan and there's no middleman that deserves something. It's like, hey, it's between me and that person in Japan that should be the only people getting the money. And for me, it just clicked. It clicked right in the middle of everything. I hit pause in that documentary, realized everything that's centralized and outdated is going to become decentralized and evolve to the next scale of its potential. And I'm telling you guys, it's never unclicked since. And that was in 2017. And so that first year I had no money, so I couldn't really dabble with investing in what I believed in. But I knew this was an emerging technology that was going to change the world. And in 2018, I started a show called Crypto Buffalo. And it was just essentially like Road Bandit, where I was doing little research videos each week. And then on the sixth week, my computer crapped out and I had no money. And I realized, shit, this is almost exactly. It was a little over exactly 10 years of being on the road. And just like Forrest Gump, where, you know, where he's running for a couple years, and all of a sudden he just stops and turns back to everybody and says, I'm kind of tired. I think I go home now. It's kind of how I felt. And so I came on back to Seattle.

One day, you're just like, yeah, I'm good.

It was such a journey. And then I'm like, okay, I've been living under the line a little bit in the sense of how much I need. And when you realize there's something in front of you, you just need, you know, sometimes you need some funds to play with. I knew I had to get back to Seattle, start working my ass off. So I drove back to Seattle in 2018, and I was sleeping out of my truck and working at baseball games and going into the locker rooms in the morning and showering and like, literally living like a homeless man that was a camera guy just to take every gig I could. And then I started dollar cost averaging into Bitcoin. And when I started doing that, it was like, okay, I'm building something here for my future. I believe in this. I'm rock solid. No one's going to change my mind about blockchain technology. I see it, and it's one of those, like, belief changes everything in your life. If you see an opportunity that others can't fathom yet, they need to go to school to be taught blockchain. And you understand it in half of a documentary. I mean, there's going to be some advantages there. First movers. So for me, it was just leaning into this. I'm one of those guys, like, sells his, you know, sells his, like, car and get out of his apartment and get in an RV and just travel. Like, when I have that belief to that core, I'll lean into it 100%. And I have now, like, ever since then I came back to Seattle, I worked a lot in camera, but the more I got into crypto, it just started changing. And then Covid happened. And when Covid happened as a cameraman working live events, that all came to a halt. And suddenly I'm like, well, is this ever going to come back? Are we Ever going to hang out in stadiums and stuff. So I was like. A lot of my fellow camera guys were, like, panicking, right? And what am I doing? I'm sitting there and I'm watching documentaries about crypto, and I'm going over YouTube and looking at the charts and going, okay, Bitcoin is crashing right now. Okay? All these other projects are crashing right now because of COVID They're not crashing because they're failing. They're crashing because the whole planet is panicking right now. And when there's blood in the streets, this is the time for you to take advantage and. And make some entry. I took every dollar I had and I put it all into crypto. And this was back at the end of April of 2020. And then from there, I started just diving deeper into who was involved. And that's when I came across Lad City and a show called NFT Live. I reached out to the host, Nifty Q, and I said, man, I'm learning some software called vmix, which is allowing me to direct from my apartment. I'm a cameraman, but I'm not doing that anymore. I'm going to lean into directing. I would love to direct the show called NFT Live with youh. And we can scale it up to a level where it feels like a sports center show. And from there, man, it's just been all in. I've literally stopped working camera. I mean, I love sports. I watch sports every day. I watch my Mariners still playing and everything. And I know all the camera guys and watching their moves and knowing the position of where I would be. But it's one of those. I want to keep evolving. And I feel like moving into the blockchain space now will give me opportunities to do things that I won't have to, you know, sell my time for money. I'll be able to compound the knowledge I have now to have a return of. I want to retire by. I'm 40, everyone says that, and I'm 38 right now, and I'm on my way there in that sense. So it's one of those, if you believe in it and move into it, time can really speed up. And I think that was the biggest thing, being on the road for 10 years and not say, I never saved once, you guys, I had no mentality of saving. But now, in the sense of investing in the blockchain, I have all the patience in the world to hold stuff for years and watch them grow, because it's one of those belief. It comes back to belief. And again, I just truly believe in it.

Yeah, dude. I mean, so what you're. It's cool because the switch flipped for you after watching that documentary. And then halfway through it sounds like.

I finished the whole thing. I mean, I've watched it like a hundred times.

But that was obviously, that was before NFTs were really a thing. So I'm curious. I want you to touch on the NFT thing too, because there are people that believe, you know, or maybe they're. They're seeing Blockchain. You know, they're hearing about it on this podcast. You know, we've had a lot of people from all aspects now, more so in Gaming and NFTs. And I know there's a big disconnect for a lot of people just thinking NFTs are a scam. You know, they're hearing these headlines in, like, the Ronin Hack. You know, I was reading a big thread about how there's, you know, that's making mainstream and how North Korea was involved. And then I was reading the comments and everybody was just bashing NFTs. And this is why blockchain should be banned and no one should be, you know, and so I'm curious of, like, you know, you had the brain explosions, these aha moments. Now NFTs are like another layer of it. And that's why ultimately we are together right here.

Yeah.

So I want to. I want to hear, like, what your thoughts are there and the opportunities along with some of these stories. Because I know you've had some nice wins in that by going all in on crypto.

And it was one of those things, too. I would tell my roommate, I would tell my neighbor, I would tell the people I'm walking my dog, my family, my friend, anyone who would listen. And I really only have less than maybe two or three people I could count on my hand that actually looked into it for themselves and even piqued their interest. Because there's something that's really interesting, I've noticed, especially with a lot of camera guys or people I work in production, they'll go, oh, you're into that crypto stuff. Oh, man, you know, it's going to be a fad. You know, I was like, there's a famous article that was posted on a newspaper in 20, it was 2000, that said the Internet is a fad. So what I think is, is when you have something that's so disruptive, you have people that are holding on to old systems, they're old beliefs, especially if they're in traditional markets and I mean, Buffett, he's not gonna be all for this. This goes against everything he's involved in. And I have friends and family that are smarter than any people I know, but their emotional attachment to the old ways, they can't entertain something new, especially if it's uncertain. And, you know, like, the markets have been very volatile, that they defend it with this aggression and anger. And it's like, to me, it's caught me off guard, man. I mean, I've talked to family members about all the wins I've had, and they say, still, oh, this is scam. You're playing pyramid schemes or something. And I'm like, have you researched any of this? And then, like, I've tried to get them to watch the documentary. Most of them don't. So for me, it was one of those, okay, I can't convince anybody right now. I'm convinced. So let me move harder into this. And the first thing that I did during COVID was to go pretty ham on some projects like vechain and bitcoin and traditional tokens. And then eventually I bought some NFTs. And the first NFTs I bought were Virtual Land. So I always tell people, hey, my first house was an rv, and my first land was virtual land. You know, kind of think outside the box. And I ended up buying some land called the Sandbox, which is a very big metaverse that has been evolving. And Snoop Dogg has land in it, and Atari and roller Coaster tycoon. So many brands, man, it's huge. It's so huge. And I was investing in it in the summer of 2020. And I remember I bought for 10 ETH, I bought a plot, a three by three plot that was directly attached to Atari. And I remember I really wanted a big plot because I had a project in mind called NFT Island. And I wanted to have this island in this metaverse. And I can see all this ahead of time. I knew there'd be all these avatars running around in this. Essentially. If I could paint a picture for you what a metaverse is going to be in the future? Think of your browser right now and how you're going to all these different websites. Well, that's like 2D. What if you had a 3D experience with all these websites? What if these websites were buildings or arenas or all these games that you could actually immerse yourself into? The website metaverse is that their plot is essentially their website to brand themselves and experience it in that 3D realm. So for me, it clicked, and I was like, I want a three by three plot next to Atari and I want to build something massive. And so I ended up shelling out 10 ETH at the time, which I think was around like 3200 bucks to buy Virtual Land one plot. I mean, it was a three by three, but it was one essential big old thing. And I remember telling my roommate and he's just like, what are you smoking, bro? Yeah. He's like, he wasn't gonna buy any of that. I remember telling my cousin, I was like, you know, I'm gonna do NFT Island. I'm telling you, you could create if you have a. She's dating an artist. And I was trying to teach him, like, if you create some of these, you know, voxels, you can sell them on their marketplace and essentially become a Metaverse art designer that just sells things that people put on their plots. And that's a huge market now. And I was trying to tell him about it in 2020, but I think it's, again, it's a belief thing. You have to be able to lean into something that you may not fully understand, but intuitively you're understanding there is something happening here. And for me, I knew it. I was like, I got to get some land. And so I bought that land and also got into a project called Vulcanverse, which is another metaverse that I was able to scoop up some land in. And I just held onto them. I pretty much locked them away until end of last year. I sold some, and I sold some at the beginning of this year as well. And the biggest returns I've ever had in my life. You're never going to get those kind of returns in a savings account in bank of America. And that's the other thing. Don't get me started about traditional banking. Right.

You gotta learn.

Yeah. I'll just say, though, I did eventually leave traditional banking after going to a festival in Costa Rica and really started looking at, you know, the bank of America, the Chase, the Wells Fargo, they're all the same. All right? What they're going to do to you is you're going to charge you to use their services. They're going to act with. I go to bank of America, I look into my little transactions and there's a 35 maintenance fee or some. I'm like, is there a guy coming in with a mop and he's what, cleaning up my, my currency or something here? Like, what, what are you actually doing here? Besides stealing from me in that sense? And so I moved on to non brick and mortar. Border banks, like Ally banking, which I. I think to this day they've never actually taken one cent from me. They've given me interest, but never actually charged me on anything. And. And that's the kind of stuff I can lean into. And even though it's still a bigger kind of company, it's the next wave of appreciating people for utilizing and respecting them instead of taking advantage of them. Where I could. I mean, there were so many times, you guys, where I was like, a hundred dollars in my account or something, and then it would go down to like $10, and then I'd go buy food and it would go to maybe it was $10.50, and so it was $0.50 below. And I got $35 charge or some shit. And I'm like, how? How? Yeah, everybody knows.

I remember Louis CK had a joke about that, about how, like, you know, my bank charges me fees for not having enough money, so I have to spend money because I don't have enough money to spend money.

Like scratcher.

And who does it affect? It's the ones that are struggling the most. And so whenever I was below the line like that, I hated the banking services. I hated, you know, all the different bills that I had to try to, you know, maintain a certain level or else it just compounded and pushed you down. And then you see people getting second and third jobs and you're like, that's a trap. You're never going to get out of that at this rate. And so for me, that goes back to crypto. Now, why I've leaned into it so much is it's once in a lifetime, once a generation opportunity here where money is literally evolving right before our eyes. And to me, it's just like, I'm all in, baby. Let's go.

Well, hit us with some opportunities, because I feel like. So your story just going all the way back to, you know, road bandit and working for all these UFC included, you know, is you're really good at getting your foot in the door and being resourceful to a lot of people. And I think that's where we've talked about this space. There's so many opportunities. You know, we've had Bryson on, and he talked about how there's so many opportunities of just giving value and, like, creating content, for instance. There's a reason why we're doing this, but there's like, a lot of ways, I feel like resourceful ways that we all have skill sets that we could bring into crypto that might not be just investing in a coin. You know, just like the obvious ways to get into crypto. Talk about some of the opportunities that you see. Maybe it's that kind of abstract way to get into crypto and somehow work and give value with players in the industry. Or maybe it's NFTs Games Financial. Obviously, there's a big spectrum, but I'm kind of curious where you see the opportunities lie right now.

I think, you know that there's a spectrum of opportunities and every major, I think, like music and gaming and art. I mean, art has been transforming because they've been leveraging the blockchain. And you're having these major auctions at Christie's that are NFTs of apes. You know, it's like, is this real life? What is happening right now? And because it's trusted. And it all goes back to blockchain. Now, if somebody in Japan wants to buy my piece of art, it's verified, it's a one of one. It's on the blockchain. It will always be on the blockchain. Where before you could have copies and like, remember the Beanie Baby craze? And suddenly you have a bunch of them.

I'm sitting on them. I'm waiting.

Where's The Beanie Baby NFTs? All right, I want to know when that's going to jigger. Let's talk to Ty.

And pictures of all my Beanie Babies.

There could be something there. And so for me, it was one of those. I just started understanding that since this is an emerging technology that's disrupting every space, you really just try to get ahead of it. There's a wave happening right now, and if you can understand it, you might be right on the space, but wrong on the horse at times. And there might be projects that just rugs or. They literally took advantage of the fact that there was so much hype behind what they were going to do that they got all the money up front. And that's what happened in 2017. You had a lot of ICOs where people were throwing a bunch of money, almost like a Kickstarter Indiegogo, say, oh, this guy's gonna create the next bitcoin. Let's buy and buy and buy. And that dude did nothing but just take all the money and rug everybody. And then we're having a lot of that with NFTs as well, because they'll sell out of these NFTs because they're scarce. There might be only like, I don't know, like crypto. It's had 6,969. And then 10,000 is a number that you see a lot of. And you know, of course there's more than 10,000 people on the planet. And on, you know, one of those where you buy a couple hundred of them, you know, and ends up ballooning like bored apes, you're gonna have more money than the majority of people on the planet. And that's what's crazy is I look at it as every day right now. Literally, we could go online right now, we could dive into something none of us have ever looked into, and there would be an opportunity, a play this quarter or next for something that's going to emerge because we can understand it. And that's the biggest thing. Research right now. Go crazy. When Covid happened, I wasn't. I was. I mean, I did go all in on things I already researched, but I was researching after that like crazy every day. I wanted to just dive deeper. And so Data Dash was somebody on YouTube that I came across in 2017 who did killer research. And that's when I came across NFT Live. Like, for me, it was like, I just bought some NFTs. I feel very confident in it. And this guy just started to show two weeks earlier called NFT Live. Hell yeah. And this was 2020. And in 2021, NFTs blew up and we had a show that covered the whole thing. And during that whole time, there were things that would blow up right in front of my face that I wouldn't dive into because it was happening so fast. So you're not going to be able to get involved in all of them. But at the same time, keep researching because you're going to see something before others, you're going to comprehend something before others, and there is going to be a return that. It looked life changing, honestly. And then the biggest thing is like, I try to check myself in this and I'm like, am I feeling like I'm at a casino or am I feeling like I'm in college researching something that's going to change my life? You know, and if you feel like you're in a casino, you're chasing that high and the returns and stuff. And I think for me it's. It's. I try to check myself and, you know, sometimes I'm going to have some losses. Nothing crazy. But at the same time, you know, there are there. But don't judge me by my winners, judge me by my losses because I have so many, so few or whatever. I butchered that. But it's true, though. I do Only have a couple that really suck, but most of them, it's because you get in early. It's like, we're still so early in the space. And if you're listening right now and you have not looked into blockchain at all, you're still so early. This is a massive disruption in the whole way that this world operates. And you think of supply chain, and that's what really got me excited with Vechain is like, Covid supply chain. It showed. Okay, this is outdated. We got to figure this out. And I think in the next couple of years, you're going to see a huge change in a $50 trillion business around the world that's going to leverage the blockchain. And so it's one of those, like, if you can see it and then you research it, you're going to see those plays as they emerge before others do. And there's so many ways to. You got defi. You've got gaming, which is why we started Hard for Gaming. I mean, what's the biggest adoption that I feel like is going to be through gaming? Because it's an immersive space, and it's one where a lot of kids are born into the gaming world now with online play and assets and managing their own characters that to them, whether it's on the blockchain or not, most of the times they won't even know it's on the blockchain. But they'll be utilizing blockchain games now because it's. It's just natural. It's just a progression of the gaming space. And I think there is a little bit of a civil war going on. You have traditional gamers that are looking like, oh, if you're doing it for money, then it's not gaming anymore. And I totally get that argument, because if you're playing a game just for money, it turns into a job.

Yeah.

But at the same time, if you're investing all this time because you love the game and then there's value in that investment that you can actually sell to someone else who doesn't have that time. I get that aspect as well. So it's a. It's a very complex situation, but it's not going away. It's only speeding up. And that's why we started Hard for Gaming is we're literally going to catch this massive wave that is happening right now. And I think in the next couple of years, it's going to change everything.

I think what you just said, you said a key thing where it feels like we're on a blockchain in a lot of these games and the setup and the onboarding into games, into defi the financial aspect of things. I mean, into anything. On Blockchain right now there is definitely like, oh, this is blockchain based because I have to go through all these hoops and stuff. So I think like you said at games, that is a big reason why we started Hard Fork gaming and why we came together and among all the other reasons why, you know, we can create a bunch of content. We're really savvy at the marketing thing. We got some background there, but we've seen games maybe you could speak to. This is like where we're going with Hard Fork as well. Because you are the CEO, my man. I kind of want to talk about like how games can be that onboarding and the opportunity and like what we are doing together, the three of us. But then you have fun uncle and you have the other guys. We have quite the crew that we've assembled because we've kind of. Yeah, we remit because of all of this stuff you're describing in Ladd City, we got to give a shout out to Q and lads, you know, the whole crew there. Let's, let's talk about hard for gaming and what we see as an opportunity with games and the blockchain and how this can expand to everyone listening as an investor, as a gamer, as someone that can give value.

Yeah, I think it's one of those. Last year and in half of 2020, working with Q over at Lad City into an NFT Live. And then I directed a show with Kagi on called NFT Arcade and did another radio show called Lad City Radio. And as I was every day of the week pretty much working on content, I was really starting to feel, feel the vibe of each sector and the gaming sector was bubbling and I was like, okay, there's some big projects coming out in the next couple years and now the Unreal 5 engine is out. I'm telling you, the games that are going to come out are going to be like, oh my God, this is super real. You're not going to need a VR headset. This shit looks real. And it's amazing because I mean, look at video cards. You always know they're going to keep evolving and getting better and everyone knows gaming is just going to keep evolving and it's a very exciting timeline to embrace within the blockchain space. But over at Ladd City, I really got this feeling of especially working with NFT Arcade, like, okay, There is so much in the gaming space and as you guys know, within Internet marketing, if you're all over the place with what you cover and you're not really, you know, what is it? The riches are in the niches. It's like you really want to find an angle, something that brings out the best in you. And for me it's video, but it's also gaming. Love gaming. I've always loved gaming, Love multiplayer, love playing. Like we've been playing some goldeneye together recently and some Mario Kart and it's like, man, those are some of my favorite moments. Sitting on the couch with my friends early in the morning on Saturday. I think that was one of those. At the end of last year I decided, you know, let me lean into what I'm feeling here, you know, and my best friend is my intuition. And it was one of those where it was like with Lad City is an amazing content network and they're covering a lot of things and they have some really genuine people in that community that really care and they're. Their whole slogan is ovot. Our vibe, our tribe. So if you're rocking that vibe, well, you're part of that tribe, come on in. And I love that. And I had nothing but good times learning with everybody and really sharing Alpha, you know, and that was the thing is like so many people coming together to drop Alpha and bored apes, you know, Ronan dropped bored apes. But I went to bed five minutes before he told everybody about that sale. So I mean that's the thing, communities. Find yourself a community and you can share information like that that could totally, you know, be life changing. But for me it was one of all the shows I really got excited about covering gaming and at the end of the year I really wanted to create a fundamentally sound network that was based off of Internet marketing and the passion for production and gaming. And there we go, Hard fork gaming, man. It was literally a hard fork of the mentality of where I was going last year to where I am now with you guys here and, and I decided, Seattle, you've been good to me. But it's time to head on home to where I was born to San Diego and, and got a house here with you guys. Now we're just about to take off and I think Hard for gaming is going to cover content in the gaming space like nobody else is doing it. We're going to cover tips and tricks and Alpha and the history of gaming. We're going to play every type of game you can imagine with those gamers that Created the games. We're going to have a lot of fun.

Exactly.

I think that's a big piece right there is like, and this goes back to my point about it being blockchain ified. Like, like let's be honest things, it's, it's going to be best when it's seamless, when the onboarding is easy for the layman to not have to do their deep dive research, to watch all the documentaries, to have the whole mind, you know, gasm of wow, this is the next financial revolution. Like at the end of the day, that's not what I don't think most people are thinking about right now. They want to have fun, you know, they want to get in on something early. I'm sure the early adopters, I mean that's the phase we're in and it's like the early part of that phase still. But at the same time it's going to take time for this to happen. But man, part of what Matt and I talked about late last year or like mid last year when we started talking about more about crypto on the show is we want to be a bridge for crypto and Web three people, not only marketers and entrepreneurs, but just in general, our families, people like. So we have the understanding, we bring in smart people on this show so we can kind of distill the mystery of what this space is. But you know, then us coming together, that's really what we're doing hard for. We're just layering it with cool games and fun stuff like that. But you know, the education and that financial, all those mindgasms will kind of happen, ideally seamlessly. Yeah, yeah. I don't know man. It just helps me out because this gets us to our roots and there.

Does seem to be this thing that's like, you know, the traditional gamers versus crypto gamers. And like we try, we want to try to like break all that shit. Just talk about gaming.

Right?

Like we want to make videos about games and having fun and entertainment and this is what gaming is all about. Oh by the way, there's opportunity to have just as much fun but also make money while you're doing it. And like right now there's a lot of crypto games that. But let's be honest, like the gameplay is just not that fun right now. The focus is around making money and not about entertaining. And I think with Hard Fork, what we're trying to build is let's get a whole bunch of people interested in gaming that maybe, maybe weren't into gaming. Let's get an audience of people that are into gaming and then let's kind of bridge that gap as well. All the people that just enjoy gaming now, let's bridge them over into like let's talk about this crypto conversation as well. Let's start bringing that into the mix and saying, hey, all these games that are really, really, really fun, there's actually versions of these games where you can earn money and play that as well, you know.

Totally. I think it's almost like the games that were online and the games that weren't online and I feel like eventually most of the games are going to be online, there'll be some that aren't and they'll be just land based or solo player on your own computer. But it's like most of the games are going to be on the blockchain over time, you know, and some of them decide not to and that's okay. But the same thing that we're all talking about here is the love for gaming. And if you have the love for the gaming itself, you appreciate the developers and the story that you're immersed in, then it's not about the money. Because right now like you nailed it. A lot of people are like, I love this game. No, you love the returns of this game, sir. You probably haven't played the game nor do you even know the story or the characters or give any ounce of shit about any of that. You're just like, look at these returns. This is the best game ever. Axie Infinity to the moon, right? And I think that it's essentially right now that the spectators, investors are loving it because it's an emerging bubbling market and I think there's going to be a lot of fun to have here of playing the games that actually do evolve and look just like a AAA game. But right now most of them are pretty cringey and they're really based off of a lot of hype at first and then they're all learning how do we maintain these fundamentals. And it creates its own weird economy that just crashes and yeah, then you just have a sticky situation.

We're early days, man. And I think what's really interesting, and I think this is where we can help dispel a lot of these myths is that we've had a lot of conversations with developers, game developers, people who have left a big game studio from the traditional gaming side and they've come over here to really be an entrepreneur maybe for the or they've rallied, you know, a troop of small crew around them. But like that's, that's fucking hard work, man. Wait, that's hard work, man. I'm using the new soundboard. Can't get beep happy over here.

I like how we had no censorship this whole episode until just now.

Yeah.

What brain.

I can't believe you just said what did I say?

But the point being is like we can now see the story of what's happening behind these games and projects is that we have maybe new entrepreneurs, people that are leaving this traditional space because they see an opportunity here. They're also learning on the fly, as we all are. It's such a early phase we were talking about, I think it was with Justin Kahn on here from Fractal is like it's just ideas. We're just putting our ideas into motion. As long as we're creating and putting them out there, that's what's so exciting. It's evolving in record speed. You see people raising money, seed rounds left and right because the ideas have some traction or they can can go somewhere. The team is good. So it's like all these factors, I feel like go into a fun game, one that actually looks really good, that we take for granted almost when a new GTA comes out or whatever, Call of Duty game. Whereas over here it's like the freaking rascals of the industry have come over to the dark side or something and are trying to build it themselves with the technology that they figured out from the overlord companies. I'm going a little wacky with this, but.

It'S like this is the background of everything that's being built right now. And we just gotta be patient, but also learn what the hell's going on in this industry. And there's some fun shit out there right now. But at the same time, the big AAA looking games might take a minute.

They're watching. 100% they're watching. And I never had to sign any NDAs with Microsoft, but I directed a lot of stuff for Microsoft back in 2020 and 2021. And when they would talk about Minecraft and they would talk about the blockchain, they would literally say we know about everything that's going down. It's not in our timeline right now, but down the road it probably will be. And Microsoft's been making some moves and they've been acquiring a lot of things. So I think they're all watching. I mean, it was crazy to see like Mark Cuban merging in into the space after me too. When you're ahead of Mark Cuban and then Suddenly, you're on a seed round with Mark Cuban's name next year.

That's crazy.

You start to realize, holy shit, I'm ahead of the shark. You know, I mean, it's one of those two where most of them wait until it's confirmed, and I'm jumping in like, oh, it's confirmed. I'm telling you, this is happening.

So I think you should take his job on Shark Tank.

Yeah.

Should be vacant.

I might take over his basketball team, but not.

I know, right?

Mark, he's coming for you.

I'm coming for you, Mark. No, no. He would take me every day of the week, man. But I do think it is one of those where I started noticing, okay, those who get traditional markets are now starting to make an entry into here, and then they started getting aggressive with it. And you started seeing Gary Vaynerchuk, and you started seeing Tom Bilyeuse, and you started seeing Jay Z's, and all these artists start to acquire bored apes. And you got Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon talking about their bored ape NFTs on the show, Tonight Show. And it's just like, I couldn't believe it now. To me, it was one of those where I believe the NFT space was coming. You know, it felt like I was ahead of the, you know, the wave. And that's why I got in the summer of 2020. But when SNL did a little rap video in February of 2021 about NFTs, I was like, oh, shit, it's coming and it's here, and it's gonna. It's gonna take over everyone's brains. And it really did for a while. And you had a lot of scams, which also had a lot of people. People make more money than they ever made in their life, and you got a lot of people. I'm quitting my job to do this. And, you know, FOMO was hitting hard on every level for everybody. And I think money is a dangerous tool. And when you're really searching just for that, like I said, if you feel like you're in a casino with the crypto space, then you're doing it all wrong. And I think if you're researching and studying and really having that patience like you were talking about, you're doing it all right, because the market is a cycle. And that was a big thing for me in 2017. I got in in June, and then in December, watching Bitcoin go all the way to 20 grand, then come all the way back down to three. You know how many people walked away Thinking this is broken didn't face me one bit. You know what I did the next year? Cryptobuffalo.com and I was doing research like it was no other. I wasn't really buying at the time, but I was researching. And I think that's the biggest thing right now. If you don't have the funds, you have the time, and if you can understand this before the others do, you're going to have the funds eventually. It's going to come to you in one way shape or the other. So it's a crazy market. And I think it's one of those two. All comes back to belief right now. And if you're struggling with that belief, do your own research, don't listen to anyone else. Go watch documentaries, go read some articles about it. And check out Hard Fork Gaming's YouTube as we start to cover as well. Because I think one big thing that I did at roadbandit and I feel like we're gonna do it here, is we're gonna educate, we're gonna entertain, and we're gonna hopefully inspire you to take some sort of action. Lean into this a little bit. This is a chance for you to scale up whatever you're doing in your life. And I truly believe Blockchain is gonna give you that fair shake and the fair chance to truly do something special. And it's really changing the game on a lot of levels. So. So I know I can get a little bit like preachy and sometimes feel like one person says, like one person told me, he's like, man, I was listening to your radio show. And it's like you really get like Tony Robbins vibe, but then you also get a little cult leader vibe. You know, that's crypto, baby.

Yeah, it kind of is crypto in a way.

Yeah, it really is.

Talking about like Hard Fork Gaming and the business model and what we're trying to build here a little bit. One of the things that Joe and I have noticed over and over and over again, talking to different people. Like, we've talked to so many different people in the crypto world now, from developers, game developers, software developers, blockchain developers, the actual gamers, the various influencers. We've talked to like all of these different people in the space. And the thing that seems to keep coming up over and over and over again is that there's a severe lack of marketing in this space. So when Joe and I came in from like this traditional digital marketing place of we know SEO and we know media buying and we know copywriting. We know email marketing, we know all this kind of stuff. Like, we started going, ooh, there's like, A, we love gaming. B, we love marketing, and C, we love making money, right? So we look at the crypto space and we're like, they have a severe lack of marketing, and we love to play games, and we love to do the marketing stuff. Maybe we can bring this to the table. And when we saw what. What you Buffalo, were doing over at Lad City with Nifty Q, and we saw that that production value that you were putting out, that the videos were just getting higher and higher and higher quality with each new video that you released. We're like. Like, there's something here. There's something that we can do here that could be really exciting, where we take this production value that he does and we merge it with the marketing skills that we have, and then we go into the crypto space and we talk to all of these companies that they have developers, they have capital, they have artists, they have all of these. These elements. But the one element they all seem to be missing is we don't know how to get more attention. We don't know how to get eyeballs. We don't know how to get people to pay attention to what we're putting out. And I feel like that's the real genesis of Hard Fork right there, is just like the combined skill set plus what we saw as a severe need in the market. And so I wanted to bring that up and just, you know, from your perspective, how do you see Hard Fork coming in and actually making, like, waves in this world?

Oh, man. My favorite line to say in a lot of the partnership meetings we've had lately is leverage us. Because when you have a content network and you have shows that produce stories at high quality, what's your story? And I guarantee most of these projects aren't putting that time and energy out there like that. And I think it's one of those where if you're creating content that's at a high standard and they're. They're actually really, like, they love it. They want to host it on their website as well. They want to share it. I'll give you guys a great story of how this really came together for me to lean into the content creation in crypto is Vulcan Verse. So I reached out to Jamie Thompson, and he is the CEO of Vulcan Verse, which is a medieval metaverse world. It's actually done really well. I'll be blown away at how well that he's really created this like. Like, it's not like Dungeons and Dragons, it's more like almost like Diablo in a sense. Right? It's kind of like that. Right. And so you have this world like that and you have a lot of people that love that. And it's the whole lore of the space was written in on books that were already created years ago. So I'm like, okay, this is something special here. I reached out to him in a Telegram back in 2020 and said, Hey, I would love to do a story on vulcanverse. Is the CEO or anybody in charge around? He pops in right away, he's like, I'm the CEO, let's talk. And I was like, wait, you really are the CEO? Like Google's name? I was like, oh shit, he is. And he said, yeah man, I'll chat with you. And so I just learned VMIX a month earlier, which is what we're using right now to record this. And it's just like obs. It's a really interesting software for broadcasting. And he is over in the UK and I stayed up late at night and I had a two box where he dialed into vmix and we just had an interview. And all I did was interview him about his project. But at the same time, after the interview was done, I put a bunch of B roll, which is a lot of video that I would overlay on top of us talking about the game. So he had a new game, which is this massive, complex project that he had no way to really explain it well, that I just put together a seven minute video for him and this is what really clicked for me. He took that video and he showed it to his dad. And he's been telling his dad about this project for months. And his dad couldn't understand anything of what he was trying to do. When he showed him that video, he said, my dad finally gets what I'm working on, bro. Thank you so much, man. And from there I realized that's it. That is the leverage that I can do for people is to tell their story in a high production video that they can share to their dad or their whole community to explain this complex thing. Because let's be honest, Blockchain is super complex and there's so many different elements to it, but videos. And that's what converted me was a documentary is like, if you, if we can create videos that really educate and entertain people, man, we're going to be there for many years to ride this wave and be a huge part of the gaming space. Because we're there not as Investors. And not just as gamers, but as friends of the space, as learners and educators and partners with anybody that wants to grow with us. And I go back to the line, I love to say, just leverage us, man. You have a story that's not being told. Come on board, let's talk about it. Let's do a video for you.

That's it. And that's exactly. I feel like that's how we've all worked in business so far up into this point. And we say this often. We're like, man, this is our time. I mean, this is all of our times listening too. But like, if you're here now, still with us in this podcast, hearing the stories you've heard us, Matt and I over the years, I mean, the mission is still stronger or is stronger than ever now. Is like we want to be this bridge for everyone else to at least start learning a little bit of web3 and gaming, if that's your thing. This is a hell of a time for you to hop in and start learning because there's so many cool opportunities and it almost like just forces you to just learn about it, you know, at this phase, like, read some white papers. Yeah, that's probably the best form of education right now. When you go to like, say, Vulcanverse, go check out the website. We'll link all this stuff up. I mean, they got a white paper and then you can learn about the economics inside of these games and all the different pieces of the roadmap that are dropping out NFTs. And some of these games, you need to own some NFTs to play. Sometimes you don't. It just depends. Check it out either way. Start immersing yourself in this because I don't know, I just feel like this is the time where, yeah, it's early adopters, but like, we're all interested in this sense. If you're still here, we're going to start spreading the word out to more and more people. And I feel like that's just going to foster more innovation, more gamers, because it's such a tiny market right now, blockchain in general. Yeah. So, yeah, I think that's really the mission as I think we all see it as being the ones that kind of shepherd this into the space and do it with the production background that you bring, the content creation that we bring together collectively, the marketing. It's just like, this is the time. It's so damn exciting.

It really is, man. I think it's endless too, of where this can go. And I think that's the one thing so many people, I missed it. People thought in 2017, Bitcoin to 20 grand, I missed it. And then it comes back down 2018, they go, Ah, it's dead, you know, and then it's now up to like 40 again and got up to 60 or whatever. And again, if you're just looking at the dollar value too, that's not even the big point here. If you understand the scarcity of it and there's only 21 million bitcoins that will ever be in circulation, it starts to become a store of value in itself that's trusted more than anything on the planet. And you're like, oh, wait a minute. And I know that's a bold statement and to each their own on how you feel about it, but I think it's one of those transparency with the blockchain is really interesting and it gives you this faith in something where, like I said, the dollar gets printed out and during COVID they just turn the printers on and dollars are just flying out with no care in the world. And everyone knows if you keep printing out money, the money that was already in circulation becomes less valuable. And it's just one of those things where why can't we have something that's not being corrupt? And again, we're all humans and power and corruption and greed is just a part of how we operate sometimes if you let your brain go too crazy. But I think it's one of those, if we can at least have a fair platform to work on and become from a user that's trusted to another user. It's exciting to me and it's a utopian type of mindset that I go into because I really look at it and go, I can get behind this. I couldn't get behind the old stuff. And I think the old stuff is fading. And I think eventually the dollar will be no more. But will it be in our lifetime? Who knows? I'm not going to be that guy who's like, ah, my cap. I say this is going to happen. It's like, I don't know the timeline of any of this. I just know intuitively it's happening and it's still very, very, very early. And if you're listening right now again, and you haven't looked at it at all, just jump into some videos, man. What is your favorite thing that you love to do? I guarantee blockchain eventually is going to be involved in it.

So I'm curious, other than we obviously, everybody listening to this obviously knows obviously that Hard Fork gaming is the best place to get alpha on gaming and NFTs and all that. Like, if they went to Hardfork GG whitelist right now, they can get on our whitelist, and we're going to be doing airdrops and we're going to be dropping alpha to the email list all the time. So that's obviously the best place. But besides Hardfork GG whitelist, I'm just shouting out the URL a whole bunch of it. Other than that, where's a good place that you keep up with alpha? Where are some resources that people can check out to kind of keep their fingers on the pulse?

I love Twitter. I didn't use Twitter that much back in the day, and when I got into crypto and really the last couple years, I mean, I'm not very active in the sense I tweet, but, oh, man, am I a stalker on Twitter. And I'm researching everybody, and I love Twitter threads. I love people that do all the research, and I can literally capture what they just spent two days on in like, two minutes, you know, and learn all this alpha knowledge. And when you really have a fee, that's everybody in the space and especially the sector you're in, and they're just dropping alpha left and right. It almost becomes like, holy crap. Like, I don't have enough funds and liquidity to get involved in all this stuff. But at the same time, researching in Twitter now and understanding how it works, I think Twitter's had a really big revitalization, which is probably why Elon's like, hey, can I have you, please? And we'll see what happens with that one, because that is pretty crazy. But I think Twitter has been a big one for me. YouTube as well. And you get some really good projects and people that do do their due diligence and they actually break down a white paper, and they're not just talking about 100x returns and their thumbnail is them naked or juggling knives in their kitchen or all the crazy some of these KOLs do. Telling you, I want to see the research. I want to see actually understanding what's going on instead of just hyping up everybody to get clickbait crap. I'm like, there's some of that, and there will always be some of that. It's just, you know, how. How the Internet is. But there are some true people out there that do great research and they give it a while away for free on Twitter.

Dude. I feel like Twitter is a great place to get sort of Genesis information. Like start on Twitter. Like you'll see people tweeting about something and that's kind of like the, the point a for doing research into that thing, right? There's a lot of people on Twitter as well that you got to be careful of that are just kind of pumping their own bags, right? There's people that are like, hey, here's some alpha everybody needs to buy, you know, the, the Smelly Skunks nft. This one's going to be the next they dropping today, right? Yeah, Smelly skunks right now.

Oh no.

I'm going all in.

You got the Smelly Skunks NFT dropping. You gotta get that person owns that nft and they're just trying to get liquidity out of, you know, their followers. So you do get some of that kind of stuff. But I feel like Twitter's a great place to go. Oh, I haven't heard of that protocol yet. Ooh, I haven't heard of that game yet. Ooh, that NFT sounds interesting. And then start going down the rabbit hole. Go read the white paper, go look it up on YouTube. See what other people are talking about it. See if people that you highly respect that haven't steered you wrong to this point are talking about it. And Twitter is like, that's usually the kind of Genesis point. That's where I kind of get that little spark that leads me down the rabbit hole to decide if I should invest or not.

Yeah, yeah, it's great. You can see the trend in real time as it unfolds with people like you said, that are trusted in the space and they give their two cents on it. And especially a lot of hacks that have happened and free airdrops that could be scams. And you have a lot of people break it down exactly before you do anything. I mean, now Twitter in my opinion is really operating the way Twitter was meant to be, you know, in the sense of sharing information and connecting within there. And it's going to be really interesting to see what happens with Twitter moving, moving forward. I know they're going to try to embrace NFTs like they have been with their profiles and try to really embrace crypto in general. But to me it's yeah, Twitter is a great one. Medium Articles is another great one. When you have a project that really does good write ups about their announcements or their different roadmaps and then YouTube too. But again, like we were talking about earlier, a lot of these projects, they're in build mode, so they're not marketing well, they're not describing their complex project well.

Well, here's really quick to get people on Twitter, because I know Twitter, because I've talked about this with people and like, most people are like, I never see anything about crypto or anything on Twitter. So how should, like, obviously you should definitely follow Hard Fork gaming that you started in the right direction on Twitter if you haven't been on there. Because I'm going to just mirror that. Like, yes, I'm absolutely addicted with Twitter and literally it's one of the first things I pick up in the morning. I know it's a horrible habit, but I'm like, which on Twitter, which training? I'm like, oh, yeah. Then you get all these scams of people tagging you like crazy. I mean, there's shit to avoid too. But who are a few, like, projects? I mean, obviously yourself, what your crypto buffalo on Twitter follow you. How can people, like, prime the Pump or maybe some topics or pieces, you know, Lad City is another good one to follow as well.

Yeah, Lad City, Nifty. Q. Ronan the Collector Cagillon, you've got Zeneca. Zeneca is a great one. Who. I mean, he came into the space, he was a professional poker player and he came into the space last year right after that SNL bit in February, and he absolutely crushed it. And he was literally not sleeping at all. The dude was up every day and he would create charts that were literally just. Here's your analytics of the NFT project right now. Exactly. He has a membership and a whole community on Dude. Discord. The man is amazing. And those kind of people are on the pulse as much as physically possible. They're on the pulse. And if you can get enough of those, you really only need a handful, honestly. They're going to give you everything. You're going to get the alpha because they're going to be flowing through them and they're not going to, you know, ignore it because it's their job. And so I think if you can get enough of those trusted people where they're truly embracing the education and not selling you on it and not hyping up any of their own personal projects, you're going to get some really solid alpha. And I think Zeneca was a big one for me, where I fall him a lot. And Ben Jammin, he's another big person that has done some really good projects last year. And every time that he tweets, it's very honest and very transparent. And, you know, I'll get some Shillers too, because I really like to watch some of the ways that they shill and there's like, was it crypto bitlord or whatnot who does this absolutely crazy stuff? Or one time he set his like floor on fire or something. I thought he burned his house down because he cuts away from the video at the end. You're like, did he just kill himself? Like, what the hell just happened? He's like one of those. Yeah, it's like, you know, it just like it's more entertainment. You're not gonna get a lot of education in those sense. But I still follow for a good laugh. I don't really take it too serious. But yeah, there's some really good people. I wish I could name some more because honestly, I've been backing away from it though too because it is like you said, it's addicting in the morning to get on it and. But when I get into research mode, that's the first place I go. I go on Twitter and I have bro.

Yeah, follow some of those. Those get passed around, look for the little spool. Yeah.

But I know you mentioned this. This is be the last question that we can go ahead and wrap it up. I have a feeling this will be the first of many crypto buffalo sessions that we have on hard fork gaming.

Do it every day.

Anything, anything we didn't get to, we'll get to in one of our future buff sessions. But what, you know, you mentioned Vulcan Verse. Are there any other projects that you're really excited about? Like any. Let's, let's just keep it specifically to gaming and NFTs. But are there any gaming NFTs, gaming coins, non gaming NFTs, anything in that realm that you're just like, this is the thing, you know, we have this thing among our team members that we call the coaches challenge, right? Where basically the coaches challenge is if one of us says coaches challenge, you got to buy this. We all kind of have to buy it, right? Like it's a must buy. We're that confident in it. Are there any things right now that you'd be like, this is borderline almost a coach's challenge.

I wish. I've been in such build mode lately and we've done a lot of stuff behind the scenes that people are going to find out in the coming weeks that I haven't really been in Buy mode. I got in early at the beginning of the year in Buy mode and ended up getting into a PFP project called Fox Fam, which is a really high end graphic animation company that has Done. Work with all the major companies like Burger King and Starbucks and Verizon and you name it as commercials. Big time stuff. So they're like high end. And you don't get a lot of those companies coming in and embracing NFTs like they are. And so I came across that through a guy named Cryptolander who told me about Cyberkongz last year before it even blew up, which would have been millions upon millions of dollars if I jumped in.

He's got a guy, man, He's Alpha Lander.

I'm renaming that guy because when he calls it, it's like some. So he called it and he's like, dude, look into Fox Fam. I said, done. I already started buying them because I just know. And I bought like a couple, which this is what I do. I'll buy a couple and say, okay, I got a couple. And then I'll go, well, no, I got a couple. I better research and I'll do some research. And then I go, okay, I'm going to buy a couple more because I like what I see here. Well, now I got to research even more because I own a couple more. And before you know it, I'll put a position in up to where, you know, my appetite's at and especially the research that I follow. And you know, for me it was one where I was like, this has got blue chip written all over it. And for anyone new in the space, we're essentially raiding now, almost like beef. And we're like, this is prime blue chip NFTs. And these are the ones. These are the ones that are part of the culture and Bored Ape and crypto punks. And you think a lot of these projects that, you know, maybe not crypto Dick butts, I'm sorry, there might be more choice, but prime or anything of that. Yeah. But you know, metaverses, I think there's a lot of them still coming around the mountain. And so Land Play is always going to be a solid one. I haven't gone wrong on that World.

Wide Web and like, yeah, World Wide Webs. Because there's like metaverses in games too. Like.

Exactly, exactly. Axie had Land Play. And it's still something depending on where the market's at right now that you can get involved in because that's a whole ecosystem. You think of it like Super Mario Brothers when they first came out and how many things have been built off of that original game. And that's the same thing with Axie. They're going to be doing that down the Road and you know, there's PfP projects and then there's play to earn games. I haven't leaned too much yet in the actual play to game assets, except for land. And I think it's one of those right now that I almost take a break from time to time because it's hard to stay on the pulse and you only have so much liquidity, you know, and you don't want to feel like you're in the casino every day and you got to hit the winners. So a lot of what I do is I'll find a winner and it's a long term hold. Like all my major profits have come for holding for over a year, you know, and they just lock it in. And you have to understand though there's a roadmap and you have to understand what they're trying to accomplish. And then you also have to understand the market because when I entered into the market in 2020 for Covid, none of those projects were doing bad. They were actually rocking. Like everything was going great. But Covid happened. So that was. That was a buying opportunity. So if you're researching right now, it doesn't mean you need to be buying. You know, even though I told you I buy before I research sometimes at the same time. If you're literally just cash poor right now, but got a lot of time, I'd say research into projects that are brand new, understand the roadmap when they're going to mint. Understanding a white list, which is getting in line essentially. Like before other people can mint, you get to mint in case they sell out, you still have a chance to buy one. That's been a crazy thing, but I think it's one of those. It's endless, man. I wish I could tell you one right now that I have because I love dropping that kind of stuff. And look forward to some hard fork gaming alpha videos that we're going to be doing and releasing to the white list first. And it's one of those that I got nothing for you guys, really. I wish I did.

Shameless plug back to hard forklift.

Gg, get on it.

Whitelist the lower third up. Give me that call to action. Yeah, there it is. You're so fancy.

Yeah, I guess if I wanted one last one to really go off of would be. I really liked cryptoads. I got into it literally the day after it. It sold out. And I was buying on the secondary. And what I love about them is it's. It's a cultural thing within the space where it's A cco. So essentially the public. Anybody. Right now, if you could take a crypto and literally create your own business from it, crypto sneakers, crypto website, you have access to it all. It's public, public domain. You literally could create a business off of these. So they're essentially going to become almost like I think of that meme frog, you know, like where you're literally part of the culture of the space. And I think these early NFTs eventually will have that feel for a long ass time. Even if they have no utility, they still have that unique aspect, you know, I mean, shit, dogecoin and all these other projects that are just really started as a meme. The Internet is insane and sometimes a meme will have more value than something that literally has you.

Well, think of the community. I know it's like the, you know, people, the community, but it's like the community is legit. The thing that's like, it's the megaphone, you know, behind these brands. So like Bored Ape, now that they have these celebrities, a lot of celebrities are touting them around on Twitter and talking about it on their late night shows or wherever. I mean that's just all marketing right there. So that's, that's definitely something to jump in on the discord, see what that's all about. I'm sure everyone's heard this before, but it's, it's so clear like now. Cryptoads. Yeah, you have this public domain thing. Well, shit, think about the community is going to help the marketing of your thing. If you have an idea of maybe E commerce or some swag or something, you want to start making some crazy frogware, you could do it with Bored apes too. I mean, frogware. You like that? Maybe we can. I like that. So I don't know, there's just so many opportunities. That's where yeah, I think you can let your mind go in so many different directions. But it's smart to kind of hone in on what you're into and maybe have something going already in your life that you can kind of piggyback and kind of bolt on crypto and whatever's happening here into do that.

I think it's just unlimited. There's unlimited opportunity, you guys. Like I said, we could dive into something today that we never heard of and we're in the space and I mean when I was doing NFT Live, I was covering projects that were emerging like Board eight and you would think, oh, how did you not see it? There wasn't a lot of people that saw that it was the beginning. It was the first major PFP membership site, like a project that has now been cloned a million times over. And I feel like there's so many firsts coming around the mountain here that we're going to hopefully have a chance to be involved in. And those are the game changers. And I think there's so many of them, it's unlimited. And you guys were all still early.

We'll be coming around the mountain. All right.

Dude, this was fun and I feel like we can keep going, but I feel like we should definitely cut this off and do a round.

Two and then a round three, and.

Then a round four, and then all the above and, you know, all the.

Way up to round 69.

We're gonna get this video on. Yeah, we've got to stop at 69, though, for some. So this video, definitely. If you're not watching the video version, if you're just hearing us on audio, go there. Go check it out. HustleAndFluidchart TV will get you there quickly. Maybe there's some hard fork redirect we'll make one day, but for now, that'll get you there. And you can see Buff and his craziness and what Matt's been doing here. On the production side, you can see a glimpse of what we're going to do more of now that we're building out this kind of like, yeah, this is early days, but hard fork gaming, it's going to be a fun ride. And I feel like this is just our little sector of crypto. But stick with us on all the channels, follow us on the hard fork socials. We're trying to be everywhere but YouTube and Twitter go there at least.

Yeah.

Matt R. Wolf on Twitter, Joe Fear on Twitter, Crypto Buffalo on Twitter and Hardfork Gaming. Come on. You can follow four accounts. It doesn't take much effort to follow four accounts. Click, click, click.

Good point. You got to build your Twitter list and follow the right people anyway, so that's a good place to start.

And then, of course, we've got Hardfork GG whitelist. We're actually going to be doing some NFT drops in the future, and we drop alpha all the time. We're making new videos, new podcasts, new new breakdowns, new gameplay videos, all sorts of cool stuff. We're going to be sharing it with that white list. That's our newsletter. Plus the ability to get airdrops and all sorts of cool stuff. So if you're not already, make sure you go to Hardfork GG whitelist and join the whitelist. We will be hooking you up. And thanks for tuning in.

Buff, any final words for this episode?

Yeah, just do your own research. This wasn't financial advice. And life is short and I am tall. That's all I gotta say.

Covering our asses and yeah, let's all have fun.