♻️ The BEST Explanation of NFTs (Featuring Joel Comm)

This is an intro, intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and Flowchart with your boy, my boy, Matt Wolf.

Joe.

Hey.

Hey. Welcome back to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. In this episode, we're going back to September of 2021 last year when we interviewed Joel Calm. Now, Joel was really like the first person that sent me and Joe down this NFT rabbit hole. And this conversation was literally the first time we ever even heard the term play gaming. So this episode is very, very special to us. It's one that had changed our perspective and really shifted the course of our career. So we thought it would be an important one to kind of bring it back to the surface and share it again. Now that we've been down this rabbit hole for almost a year now and really, really focused in this crypto. Crypto gaming, blockchain gaming space that we're in, this episode was the catalyst to. So let's take it away.

Yeah, I'm happy to be here.

Are you? I'm always happy to be here. You know why? Because this is going to be fun. And it always is.

It always happens to be fun because we say it's going to be fun.

Yes.

And dang it, this episode is going to be really fun because we're joined by another fun guy. Yeah, this guy's a 12 year old. Yes. That's. That's what his bio says. At least. I think I believe it. And after this episode, I definitely believe it.

Yeah.

So, well, really quick, what are we talking about? Just give me the quick hits. What are we going to get out of this? And I'll tell everyone who this is individual is.

On today's episode, you are going to learn about some Internet marketing history going all the way back to the early days of Internet marketing. You're going to hear about Internet marketing reality shows from 14 years ago and.

Grew up watching these.

We grew up watching these. And then we're pretty quickly going to shift the conversation into NFTs, cryptocurrencies, DeFi all the various, like, blockchain technology stuff. And we've got somebody who is. Well, I couldn't imagine a better person to talk about this with right now.

Yeah. So Joel Calm. Joel Calm is on the. On the podcast, on the show. Wherever you're watching this thing, he's joining us. And Joel's been around the block. So his first Internet company was in 95, and that thing sold to at least the 1 in 97. I mean, sold to Yahoo. I'm not reading his bio yet, but it's pretty Damn impressive. So Joel Calm is a New York Times best selling author, blockchain enthusiast, professional keynote speaker, social media marketing strategist, live video expert, technologist, brand influencer, futurist and eternal 12 year old. 12 year old, that's right. Joel's a sought after public speak and leaves his audiences inspired, entertained and armed with strategic tools to create highly effective new media campaigns. There you go.

I mean that worked. It. Read the bio off the phone and look at that.

I'm so professional when my diesel.

So here's what you're gonna get out of this episode again. Yes, after listening to this episode, you should have an idea of how to get involved in NFTs. You should have an idea of some altcoins that you can look into and how to get started from like a very beginning phase. If you're a company that's pivoted a whole bunch of times over the years. We're going to ease your mind on that topic because we've pivoted a lot and so has Joel. And we're going to talk about a good way to think about that and approach all of these pivots.

And also we're going to learn how to have fun with our work. If you feel like you're not having fun, he's going to break down his fun formula for work in life.

And we might talk about farting a little bit too.

A little bit of farting snuck out, let's be honest. Little fart probably snuck out as you're watching or listening to. So yeah, at least you don't have.

To be in the room with Joe when it happened. Well, and then let's go talk to Joel.

Joel, thank you for joining us this morning.

It was my pleasure, Bellas. It is not morning here though. In Puerto Rico it is afternoon.

Oh, that is correct. You're not in. Used to be in Denver, I believe. Colorado.

That's correct. I was in Denver. I've been. Been here on the island since April and love it.

Yeah. No, I heard that you were on a JLD show recently and I heard. Yeah, your, your neighbors or you're pretty close to him. It seems like he's.

Yeah, we're just, I was just at his pool earlier this week.

How's the Internet like infrastructure down there? I know I had some friends that moved down there probably 10 years ago and 10 years ago they said that they couldn't get good Internet so they ended up moving back.

Oh yeah. No, I mean I've got. They're laying fiber soon, but right now my Internet's 500 down.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

That's good.

So they solve that problem.

Yeah, it seems like they solved that.

Problem as they should, because money's flowing down there, right? Yeah, man. Well, I know we've been following you for years and years and years. We have a lot of mutual friends and TNCs. Back years ago, we probably crossed paths. I know we did through Sean Vossler and whatnot. But big shout out to George Bryant to make this happen. And stepping in.

Yeah, George is great.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think. I think actually the very first introduction that I had to joelcom was, I believe you did like an Internet game show or something. It's gotta be, what, 11, 12 years ago or something.

Keep going. Next Internet millionaire was 2007. Oh, geez.

Yeah.

14 years. 14 years ago. Now I feel old. That's crazy.

Thanks, Matt.

Hey, I was watching it back then, so what does that say about us?

So I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah, it's funny, I still. Several times a year somebody will bring that up and it just boggles my mind. That's something we created, you know, that was really something just for that time. It wasn't intended to live on because it was a reality show based on. This is what Internet marketing is here in 2017. And 14 years later, somebody's still bringing it up. That's just, wow, what an honor.

Yeah. Well, you were taking on, I think. What weren't you? It was. Everything was online. You had the production. It was like top notch production. I think it was kind of modeling Apprentice back in the day.

Yeah, it was. I was very much inspired by the Apprentice and by the rise of YouTube. And I went to my JV partner, Eric Holmlund. Eric's another. He's a great guy. And we had done several successful products together. The instant AdSense templates and a couple other things did really well. And we were like, what's next? I remember him saying he wanted to get into video. And I had been doing videos on YouTube since 2006. I want to say is when I did my first one, and after having watched a season the Apprentice, I think I was in the shower. That's when the best ideas come from. Right. The shower or sitting on the toilet. I don't know, something about being in the bathroom. And I thought, oh, what if we did a reality show? But it was really professionally done. And then I reached out to Armin Morin and Perry Marshall and Ray Edwards and all of these. They were already legends of Internet marketing. And it's interesting because all but one of them is still relevant in that space today. So I chose wisely. And they came out to Colorado, and we auditioned, you know, a couple hundred people for the show and picked 12, you know, 12. Six men, six women from different countries and put them through the task. And still we ended up getting an honorary Webby Award for it, and I'm pretty proud of it. But I look at Joel from 2007, and I'm like, who is that in the suit and tie?

What?

No, cut that out. That's gotta end.

Is that the only thing that's different now? I know you're wearing a laughter or something shirt. You know, something's written on there.

Well, I had a goatee and glasses that weren't quite right for my face. I think I was taking myself too seriously. I was also married, so lots has changed since then, but, you know, no regrets. It was a great ride.

Well, you. I mean, you have a huge history in terms of, like, I want to get into, like, the fun. What? You wrote, like, 15 books. Maybe you have more out by the time.

15.

15 is a number still. Okay. That's holding true. So. But I think the thing.

And by the way, no plans to write anymore. Oh, yeah, no plans. I've actually. I've been, you know, pitched on, and I had an agent want to, you know, for me to do another book. And it's just. It takes so long for a book to be published, even if you crash it to market. And things change, especially now in the blockchain and crypto world, that by the time, you know, your book comes out, it's already incredibly dated.

Yeah.

I find that there's other ways to get your information out there. And I've already got the New York Times bestseller title. I did it once back in 2006. And so once you're a New York Times bestseller, you're always New York Times bestseller. So what am I going for? I mean, what's. What's the point?

Yeah, yeah. Makes sense. I mean, I saw right when Clubhouse just started to get more popular. Four or five people all put out, like, books on Clubhouse. Like, immediately I'm like, come on, let.

It breathe a little bit.

Let's see if this thing. If it pans out right.

Yeah.

Well, you did the Twitter book. I remember that. So I think you.

Three editions.

That's right. In the first.

And there will not be a fourth, because Twitter is part of the problem now.

Yeah, it's interesting, man. It's a whole different. I mean, there's a lot of NFT talk on there. I'm sure you're still perusing on Twitter.

Which is really the only reason that I use Twitter now. In fact, I. Earlier this year, I wiped out my entire Twitter history. I was like, you know what? There's no reason for them to have all this. This stuff is temporal and I'll probably wipe it out again. It's like it's there and then it'll be gone. I don't need a whole history. But I've been on Twitter since 2008.

I want to say it seems like you've pivoted a bit out of social media, out of Internet marketing, out of talking about a lot of that kind of stuff, and moved more into the crypto and NFT and DeFi and all that kind of stuff. Why. Why the transition? Why did. Why did you kind of kill a lot of the social media? Why did you stop talking about Internet marketing as much?

Yeah, well, my whole career has been pivot. You know, I'm. I'm what we call a functional futurist. I like to say I don't just see the future, I get there first. Which is a fancy and smart way of saying the reality. The reality is I'd like to play with the cool toys. And so I play with the toys. And every now and then I figure out something that's fun and that works. And so I play with it some more. And then people start going, how'd you do that? And then I teach them, right? So, you know, I got into. I built my first website in 1995. We had one of the first online shopping sites because where people saved money with coupons. Dealofday.com not because I saw, oh, this is going to be a great way to make money because. But because I liked saving money online. I called, you know, I would go and buy and use these coupons and get these great deals. So I started putting them into a site. Turns out I was right, and it was a huge hit. I like playing games. And so I partnered with a game developer who had built one of the first multiplayer game sites that were on the web back in 1997. And we partnered up, called it classicgames.com ended up selling it to Yahoo. And so, you know, I got into affiliate marketing, then I got into Internet marketing, then I got into social media marketing early. And once I'm there and I do my thing for a while, I get bored with it. And that's right around the time that the masses start coming in. I'm like, you know, there's other people who are interested in teaching this now, let them be the experts. What's interesting to me now? And so, you know, a little over four years ago, crypto got my attention. And once I understood it, I'm like, that's it. I. I'm home for as long as I'm here. And then NFTs got my attention. And so I play with pixels most of my day. It's hilarious. And I don't think that there's any true visionary aspect to it. It's just that the way I'm wired, I tend to pay attention to what's happening and in dabble.

Yeah. Cause it's interesting. Cause it's very obvious that you pivot like crazy and you like to be the first adopt or maybe even a pioneer. Cause I think what's pioneer? Early adopter. And then further to mass. What's like, what's your secret sauce to doing it big? Because I feel like you do it big. Like even with the nft, or maybe it's the Bad Crypto Cryptocurrency podcast. You have something like 10 million downloads already on that.

Yeah.

And that's just chatting about a brand new thing. It hasn't hit mass adoption or anywhere near it.

Right. The secret sauce. I really. So my last book that I wrote, book number 15, was called the Fun Formula, in which I attempted to disseminate and reverse engineer the secret sauce. And here's what I discovered. That the hustle and grind is a load of bs. Right. In fact, I actually tweeted this morning, the hustle is a dance and the grind is for coffee beans. Anybody selling you this mentality and this lifestyle of work, work, work, work, work, work, work to get to the top, you're just going to burn out. You might get there, but you're going to make a lot of sacrifices that you don't want to make along the way. And so I looked at all the things that I tried and I realized that if I wasn't fully invested in something, like if I was doing it just to make money, the odds of it succeeding were very small. Very small. And if I had to work, work, work my ass off to get there. Also the odds of finding success and fulfillment, not only in the business, but in my life at that time, it was at risk. It was when I was following my own curiosity and creativity, when I was willing to take a risk, and when I was willing to trust the process that things worked out the best. And so as it turns out, the home runs that I've had in my career Came from the least amount of effort. And not just once, not just twice, but again and again and again and again and again. And I call it the fun formula, and that's the name of the book. And it's not a mathematical formula, but it's a. It's a philosophical approach to how you work and how you live. And I'm just really fortunate that I cracked the code for that in my life. Everybody's going to have their own fun formula, but I really encourage people to question conventional wisdom on education and entrepreneurship and doing business and seeing business as one thing in, you know, your play, your. The rest of your life is another. We're holistic, integrated humans. And it may look like I work a lot, but I don't work smart. You know, it's the right moves at the right time, and they don't always succeed, but it's stopping failure when you're failing. You know, it's knowing when to. What was it? The gambler? Know when to hold them. Know when to fold them.

That's right.

No one to walk away. Know when to run.

Like Kenny Rogers. Right.

There's not a one size fits all. But I do think that the philosophy that I live by can work for most people.

I think that's fair, man, because you remove the friction.

Right.

You're just your true self. And I know everything is fun for you, like your podcast. Everything you do, you hear the fun, the energy's out there, and I feel like that attracts a lot of momentum around you as well.

Yeah, it's the hustle and flow. So, I mean, I like that because there's no grind. It's not a grind chart. Right. The hustle is taking the action. The grind is the part that'll kill you. And that's not fun. You know, you talk about grinding in games like World of Warcraft, and that's like, mindless, you know, just grinding away to level up, to get to the real game. Nonsense. This is the real game. Right here, right now, today. This is all we've got. Past is done. Future isn't guaranteed. So, you know, if you're. There's people that I see that work decades to get that retirement. I'm like, what? Why would you waste the best years of your life on something that you don't know you're going to get to?

Yeah, I love it. We actually have this mantra that's actually written all around our office. You can't see it on video, but there's one on our mixing board that says, this is going to Be fun. There's actually one on my computer. There's one on Joe's computer. It's just a reminder to ourselves that we're here to have fun. And the making money just kind of follows because people, you know, they, they get attracted to the personalities, they get attracted to the fun. They watch us have fun and go, I want me some of that. And that's what attracts people to us.

Exactly. And that, that's actually in the book. People want to be around others who are having a good time because so many are not having a good time. You know, they're having to get up at the crack of dawn and go to this job that they hate. And they don't realize that there's a way out. They don see a way out, but they're scared to take risks. They're scared to fail. I'm not scared to fail. I embrace failure. I have failed so many times. I have wasted so much money on efforts that went absolutely nowhere. But I knew going in that it can go nowhere. And the people who need the so called security, they're not secure. They've just created a nice comfy little prison for themselves.

That's right. Oh, man. Well, I know a big thing of like, so with your pivot, having fun is you launch something fast, you get it out, and you get it out to the world and it has momentum. And I heard you tell the story. I think it was one of your keynotes about your fun formula. And you talked about iFarm, you know, the app back way back in the day and how it was like it was just an idea. And then the thing was launched. It got a ton of downloads and I think you sold it as well. Can you kind of like.

No, I still, I still, I have partners. We still own it. But yeah, that was, you know, I bought one of the first iPhones in 2007. They came out with it immediately. I went, ooh, new toy. This thing is awesome. I have to have one. And I paid $599 for it, which was the original price. And just a couple of weeks later, Steve Jobs lowered the price, 200 bucks. And people were like.

I paid. And they rebated people 100 bucks. I didn't complain because I saw the value. I paid 599 for it. I'm good. I'll take your rebate too. So they rebate anyway. A year later is when they made the announcement at their big announcement thing that they were going to open up the SDK for developers. And so I pulled the team into the conference room. And the first app we built was called I Vote. It allowed people to, you know, vote for popular opinions on stuff. It was one of the first thousand apps in the App Store. But after we were done with that, my team was largely composed of men, and we all started whiteboarding all these ideas, and we had. It's funny because I remember we had the idea for what somebody else developed that became Foursquare.

Oh, wow.

But instead we chose to develop a fart machine.

Yeah, it's a little easier.

And I remember when somebody on the team mentioned it, I think it was Dan, my. My executive vice president of ideas. Still the best hire I ever had and still a good friend who. Who helps me. He had the. I think he had the idea. And I turned to my developer. I say, how long would it take to develop it? Three weeks. Turned to my graphic designer. Can you get the graphics done? Three weeks? Yep. Did it. December of 2008, it came out, and I used what marketing chops I had to tell a story, and 12 days later, we were number one in the world. And still. It's hilarious to this day, it still.

Sells, the fact that you're laughing when we brought it up, like, still. And it's been this long.

Oh, it cracks me up. I mean, if they put on my tombstone, he farted. Okay, great, whatever. That's what. Some people. It's funny because when you do a lot of different things, people remember you for different things. Some people, it's the next Internet millionaire. Some of them, it's Yahoo Games. Some of them it's iFart. Some know me from crypto. Some know me from Twitter and social media. Some know me from, you know, being on stage at Tony's or Harv Eckers or one of these. Some remember me all the way back to 1995 from my first website, World Village.com and, you know, it's. It's funny because I've played in so many different sandboxes that I've met so many amazing people across all these different industries. I feel hyper connected, you know, to so many different people. And I feel incredibly blessed. Like, what a life to be able to just play and try things and do what you want. And people actually care, right? They actually want to listen what you have to say and. And then you find out that you actually impacted somebody's life. I got a. I got an email from a guy a couple of weeks ago because he listened to our show. He got. He bought some NFTs and made something like $4 million.

I haven't made that in NFTs. Maybe I should listen to my show.

Exactly. Well, I mean, what, you've minted what, over a million NFTs?

We have minted over a million NFTs. Yeah.

That's crazy.

Original properties and we're getting ready to do more here. Got several properties in series ready to not ready. That will come out over the next four to six months.

Yeah, I think this is a good spot to kind of shift into talking about NFTs and crypto. I have a very little bit of experience in nft. I own one nft. I purchased it because I heard that Jake Paul was gonna get behind it. Right. That's always a good reason to invest in something is Jake Paul's name's Attach.

So I bought this NFT thinking, okay, this is going to get pumped up. Well, I bought it for. I minted one and then I minted it. The price was 0.06 ETH. And then what I didn't realize when I was getting into NFTs and using ETH to purchase NFTs is this thing called gas fees. Well, the gas fees were another like half the price again of the NFT. So I ended up paying another $100 plus US dollars for just the gas fees. So now I'm in it for like 0.08 eth. And the floor place price that it's selling for everywhere is 0.06. So I just instantly lost money on my NFT after my first purchase. And so far that's my experience with NFTs.

Well, you haven't lost money yet because you haven't sold.

No, I haven't sold it yet.

True, true.

And when did you buy it?

A month ago.

Oh God.

Yeah.

I mean this is. But this is the mentality that we now are living in is that people expect a quick flip on whatever they're buying. And if they can't flip their NFT the next day for a profit, then they start complaining. I watch these, these, they're like children on these discords, complaining to the developers when they don't sell out in, you know, two hours. I like you people have no concept. You know, people go to work every day for 30 years in a job just to pay the bills. And you whiny little brats are over here complaining because your cute panda, you know, doesn't sell for an extra 200 bucks. Get a grip on reality, people, please.

Yeah, I think, I think I know. My expect expectations were set by YouTubers and all of the pumpers on Twitter. So, you know, but I am, I am still holding onto it. Haven't lost money yet. Ideally it'll go up.

What is it?

It was called a sacred devil.

Oh yeah, I know. I think I have, I might have a sacred devil or two. I buy so many NFTs, I, and I don't. My sacred devils, I do not like the way they look. I was like, really? I got these crappy ones.

They show you all the best ones on the website, right? And then you get one, it's like, man, it's kind of ugly. I think I'll sell that even at a loss. But you gotta give, you gotta give these NFT communities time to develop. They have roadmaps, right? They're building games with these. They're, they're, they're turning things into physical pieces of art and other redeemables. They're attaching experiences to them. So I don't, I look at my NFTs just because I, I look at them, I think they're cool. I buy ones that I like and I'm socking them away, you know, imagine having bought some comic books, you know, the first five years, Helen. Comic book lingo, the first 25 years, you know, that they came out, those are all valuable. Now if they're in decent condition. Think about NFTs is they never go to bad condition, they're always mint. You know, people that are shortsighted right now and trying to flip, they're missing out. It's kind of like having bought Bitcoin, you know, at 10 cents and going, it's going to a dollar and you sell it at a dollar, right? $44,000 today, gang. So how did that $1 work out for you? You got, you got to look at things that you're investing in for money with a more long term point of view, in my humble opinion. I am not a financial advisor. This is not financial advice. Go do your own research, kids, and be responsible with your own money.

Dang right, man. So if you're talking about NFTs to someone fresh, which I'm assuming a lot of the folks in our audience haven't, deep dove, obviously not to your level, I would imagine maybe 1%. But how would you describe NFTs and some of the applications that are maybe on the horizon with NFTs as well, and why we should.

Well, first of all, I think it's important to understand what an NFT is. NFT stands for Non Fungible Token. Now, knowing that might not provide any better explanation of what it is A lot of people don't even know, you know, what the word fungible is. And it's no one's fault if they haven't been taught. I didn't learn either until I got into tokens. But something that's fungible, they're all the same. So, you know, if I said to you guys, hey, I need a dollar bill, and you opened your wallets and you got all these dollar bills in there, you wouldn't go, oh, which one? You just hand me any dollar, and I would be satisfied that I got my dollar from you. Right, because they're all treated the same. They're not different. Right. But if I were to say to you, hey, I want to. I want to buy a house, then you would go, oh, which one? Why? Because they're all different. They're all unique. No two are the same. The address itself is a different address, or the apartment number is its own apartment. Those are non fungible. They're different. So a non fungible token, same thing with a bitcoin. By the way, a bitcoin is fungible. If I say, send me a bitcoin, you say, a bitcoin's a bitcoin. They're not like divided up into 21 million of them. Bitcoin's a bitcoin. But an NFT, something that's non fungible. Each one is unique. Even if you have some that look the same, they all have a unique identifier and a mint number attached to them. So there might be 20 of a picture of Joe. Same NFT, same picture, but they're mint numbers. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, all the way up through 20. Each one is unique. So the. It's really. It's on blockchain. And the beautiful things about it are numerous. First of all, who collected cards? Either one of you guys collect baseball cards?

Definitely, right?

Of course. What goes wrong with baseball cards that brings down the value corners?

You know, something getting bent, lost, all that stuff.

Yeah. The players not having good careers, fire damage, water damage. They have to grade these things to determine how much they're worth. Right. On a scale of 1 to 10. Then they put them in this little, you know, acrylic thing to package them, to sell them NFTs, they're on blockchain. They never degrade. The only way they get lost is if you lose the keys to your wallet. Other than that, unless, you know, you get hacked because of your own lack of attention to securing your stuff, they don't get lost. They don't degrade over Time. Your mom can't throw out two bags of your baseball cards while you're at school one day. Yes, that really happened. And yes, I forgive my mom, but it makes for, it's a great example, right? So unless you lose your wallet, you can't lose it. But unlike your baseball cards of old, today's baseball cards that tops are putting out have video on them, they have animation, they have sound. It's not just static. And so you can think of an NFT as programmable media. It's this package, a box if you will. Think of it as a virtual box that you can put anything into. It can be a still image, it could be an animated image, it could be a video, it could have audio with it, it can be 3D rendered, it can be attached to an experience, it can be attached to a physical good, it could evolve over time. All of these things are just the beginning of what's being pioneered in the NFT world. And in the not too distant future we are going to see NFTs incorporated into all of the popular games. So that this sword that you own in World of Warcraft, you actually own that sword. That NFT is representative of that item that only you have. And you can sell that. And another game publisher, you know, maybe in Guild wars or something will say, oh, swords here are cross game. You could use that same sword, that same cloak, that same wand, that same power, ability, pet. All of these things are going to become NFTs. And that's just the gaming and the art side of it. The, the mainstream. Once NFTs truly permeate, the day is going to come where your driver's license is an nft, your insurance policy is an nft, you own it, it's in your wallet. It's the ultimate certificate of authenticity that we can use to authenticate any piece of information, data, good service, you name it. And that's why this technology is amazing. It's going to be ubiquitous and it's here to stay. And I will take a breath now.

Take a breath because yeah, like the art is one thing and I think that's where it's, it's early days. You know, people are kind of practicing with the tech and all that stuff, but it's like the utilities and how it's, it's going to, everyone's going to own an nft. I think I heard you say that before. And it's like oh yeah, of course.

And it's like there's like a mental ramp up, right? Like the art thing is easy to grasp. I feel like. I feel like that's the easiest way to explain how NFTs work. So it's like the art stuff kind of came before it to get people ready for what NFTs are capable of. And this is the entry point in the consumer's mind of like, here's the best way to explain NFTs now. Let's get crazy with them.

Yeah, I think, yeah, we're definitely at the beginning. We're seeing the, we're seeing the first inundation happen because right now we're still in the early adopter phase of NFTs. I feel like January 1st of 2021, we turned the corner from pioneering to early adopter. Okay. Now that early adopter part of the tech curve, that takes a few years before you get to the very beginning of the mass adoption part of the curve, and that takes a whole bunch of years to bring the masses on. Now, technology accelerates faster than it used to. And if you look at how long it took for smartphones to permeate, to go from, you know, pioneering. When we bought our first one in 2007, we were pioneering. When you got one in 2009-2012, you were early adopting. I'm just kind of pulling years out of my ear here, but that's kind of like. And then when you bought one in 2013, 14, you were the beginning of the mass adoption. Right. So technology is moving quicker, the adoption curve is happening faster, but we're still in the early adopter phase. And there's not a big enough market to sustain all of the people that want to create now because they see an opportunity to make money. And so we're now seeing an inundation of projects, some of them really not worth creating, some of them awesome. But only a small handful are selling out, you know, at least immediately. And so you're going to hear people say, well, NFTs are over, it's done. And of course it's not. It's just you got in at a time where a bunch of other people got in and you're all trying to sell to the same audience, which is each other. Yeah, but as the mainstream comes in, the audience will be there and the audience will be massive.

Do you think that NFTs are a game for people with, with money right now? Or do you think there's a place for people that just have, you know, little bits of extra money to play around with? Right. Do you think they should be looking at it too? Or, you know, if you've got Money to play with right now. It's kind of for those people.

Well, I mean, look, it's clearly an NFT is not anything that's going to, you know, your life's going to depend on. Right. If you're buying an NFT and your life does depend on it, perhaps there's other things you should be doing with your money. I am not a financial advisor, so here's what I tell people. When it comes to crypto or NFTs, it's very risky. All of it's very risky, high risk. If you're risk averse, then it might not be for you because the ups and downs of the crypto and NFT world are not for weak stomachs. If you are prone to be emotionally, you know, on the roller coaster when things take a deep plunge, then you might not want the heartburn that goes with it. So what I tell people is if you want to invest in either crypto or NFTs, what amount of money from your stash would you be comfortable putting on the table in front of you and setting on fire? Don't do any more than that. If that amount of money will not impact putting food on your table, clothing on your back, shelter over your heads, your children having what they need and your well being, then go ahead and play. Educate yourself. Don't fall prey for the hype though. You see it on Twitter, you see it on the Discord, you see it on YouTube. Is this next thing going to the moon? Those people, they have no right unless they are financial advisors and most of them are not. Yeah. To be telling you they're just, they're being sensationalists. They're trying to get eyeballs or listeners or readers and they're doing more harm than good by, by telling people to invest in things. Figure it out though. Take your time. It's not like hurry up and get in now or you're gonna miss the train. We are still early. There is so much time. Be wise with your money. Educate yourselves because there are people out there that want your money and don't care about you.

Yeah, yeah, a lot, a lot of that. I don't think a lot of people realize it, but a lot of the hype that you see around a lot of these NFTs are. So it's sort of engineered behind the scenes in discord. You know, if you get into some of these Discord groups before these NFTs launch, you could see these people all collaborating, saying, this person just asked a question about NFTs. Everybody pounce on them, everybody, like spam them with 100 messages about our NFT. So, like these discord groups are actually engineering these pumps that you're seeing. So when you see these big pumps on Twitter and Reddit and places like that, I think it's good to start skeptical.

Always you're talking about money. Where there's money, there's greed. There's people with nefarious motives as well, but there's also a lot of legitimacy. There are people out there that are creating some really cool projects that are very innovative. Some of them are making powerful change and doing good stuff with their profits for the community or for charitable causes. And so this is why it's important that you have critical thinking and go engage and learn about this stuff. Ask questions, don't FOMO into stuff. Fomoing in rarely ends well. Every now and then it does, but it's kind of like going to Vegas and picking black or red. You know, the house wins. Always newsflash, the house wins. So. So just be careful.

Yeah. With all the different projects and price points. You alluded to it earlier with Ethereum. What are, what are some of these blockchains? I know, like when you're minting yours, I think you said you use. What is it? Wax.

Wax, yeah.

Is that your go to for all of your nft?

It has been. We are definitely looking at going cross chain and multi chain on some of our projects because the consumer base is in these different areas. But while the world has been accustomed to using Ethereum, really, because Ethereum was the first mover, because it was the first smart contract blockchain in the first to have NFTs on it. NFTs are horrible. Use case of Ethereum because of these gas fees. Ethereum is fantastic for smart contracts, but it's absolutely horrible for NFTs. And so wax comes along and it is an EOS fork, which is a different blockchain and it's a proof of stake chain. And so rather than proof of work, it doesn't require gas. It requires a little bit of RAM to mint your NFTs, but it's negligible, you know, especially for the bulk of NFTs that we do. And there's no gas fee on the buyer side at all. None. And not only that, but unlike Ethereum, that can get backed up and clogged and instead of, you know, five minutes for a transaction, it could take 20 or your transaction might not go through at all and you've ended up wasting your gas fee. Wax or instant. I can if you Go and buy one of my NFTs off of wax Marketplace right now in just a few seconds. I mean, it settles. Boom, it's done. The wax is in my wallet, the NFT is in yours. And so it's a much better solution for NFTs. And it's being discovered. I mean, there's actually more daily users on Wax than there are on Ethereum for NFTs. Well. And people don't know about it. And there's more stuff launching and there's a lot more money on Ethereum too. Right. Because you've got all these people that got into Ethereum early and so the prices of these NFTs are automatically higher. Wax is probably the best kept secret in the NFT world.

Yeah. And I was hearing you talk about this, I think it was on your bad cryptocurrency podcast. And just the difference, I was like, oh, it makes sense because the NFTs, like what you were saying was like 200 something bucks, but your fees were just like so high where it was just negligible and it was just kind of even or loss in that case, kind of. But then on your side with wax, you have Topps on there. You have all these big companies. I think what hot shots, the NBA.

NFTs, NBA is not on. They're not on wax. Top shot is on Flow, which is Dapper Labs is. So that is what we call a layer 2, an L2 sidechain of Ethereum. And so they basically took the Ethereum code, forked it and made it so it works without the gas fees. Right. There's a bunch of those that are taking place. Flow is one, Phantasma is another. There's a whole list of them actually that are, that are surfacing. But Wax is built on its own chain. They were on Ethereum initially and then they moved their coin over to this EOS fork, which is basically a way of saying a duplicate of the code that the EOS chain uses. And it just, it works and it works great. And there's been more innovation too, I think, on wax. For example, the reason we started minting our Blockchain Heroes cards there is because these guys had developed a system where you could buy a pack of cards that you would then open and out of that pack of cards you would get these NFTs. It's only been done a few times on Ethereum and it's too costly. You can't spend, you know, $100 in gas when you're buying a $10 pack of cards. Doesn't make any sense.

And that's what I was thinking. I was like, okay, when it gets more mass adoption, I would imagine some of these types of projects would take off with less fees. You know, something like wax. And you know, now I know. Obviously not financial advice again, but I was checking out the price. I'm like, it's like 20ish cents.

Yeah, it's down from. And the reason that it's even where it is, it was languishing between 8 and 15 cents for a long time and they finally got listed on Binance and a couple other exchanges making it. There's more liquidity to go around for all of this. And so wax is, is the one to watch. But they're not the only ones. You know, Cardano is getting into nft. Solana is, I feel, come on extremely strong and I think is the next big winner in the NFT space because the gas fees there are negligible. It is a side chain, its own chain. And it doesn't cost nearly as much to mint or to buy NFTs on that one either. The NFT wars are just beginning. It's so early.

Yeah. Well, isn't Ethereum 2.0 supposed to switch from proof of work to proof of stake?

Yes.

Cheaper.

And when nobody knows. I mean, they keep saying it's coming, it's coming, it's coming, it's coming, it's coming. When it finally arrives, then I think there will be much celebration and we'll remember. Remember when we used to spend $500 in gas on a $200 purchase?

Remember those days, Matt?

I do on my one purchase. Well, did you have more on the NFT stuff? Because I want to talk about some altcoin stuff as well.

I was curious, Joel, if you have any projects or specific utilities with NFTs in the future up to come that you're just keeping your eye out for us, for you? Yeah. Just your curiosity too.

Yeah, well, there's a couple. The one project that I'm on the team right now is and if you go to dustminers.com, magic dust, crypto Dust is a cryptocurrency that Kurt Braggett has created on Telegram. So basically there are certain groups on Telegram that become dust mines. And if you link your wax wallet on this telegram and you just chat normally in that telegram, every time you chat, you're earning cryptocurrency called dust. Well, they are branching out to Ethereum and Polygon, which is. Polygon is a side chain on Ethereum with low gas fees. And they're going to be offering 11,111 dust miner characters. There are these pixel characters. Each one of them is a one of one. And by owning these, you'll be able, in certain discord channels to mine dust. So there's over 100 dust mines on Telegram right now. And I'm sure that as people discover this, they're going to go to their discords there and say, hey, can I, you know, can we connect this to the dust mine? And so what happens when people start getting their hands on crypto? Well, what happened to Dogecoin? It was a community coin. And just today we covered in our news that AMC movie theaters is thinking about accepting Dogecoin as payment for movie tickets. So this project is really interesting because it puts the power of mining in the hands of people that interact in these social channels and own these NFTs. And we've been developing Blockchain Heroes, which is our flagship product on wax. Since last a year ago summer, we've had three series of cards. Each one has sold out completely and we're releasing our next set in November. And in First Q of 2022, we are planning on releasing a mobile game based on the Blockchain Heroes. It's not going to be a card game, even though our NFTs are cards, but you'll need to own cards in order to unlock characters in the game. So I'm not going to say what kind of is yet, but it's going to be a mobile game for both iOS and Android. And we know that our, our people are going to be really excited that the characters that they've come to know and love through their collections, they're going to be able to utilize these in this game.

That's rad.

That sounds really cool. Yeah, we'll have to. I'd love to. What's the best way to get notified about that drop when it happens?

Well, all of our stuff, you know, we have a Discord. Everybody's free to join it. I'll give you a URL. It's a short link. Just go to badco b a, d, c o.in.com forward/discord spells bad coin, but it's badco.in forward slash discord. And the official site for Blockchain Heroes, which is due for a facelift, is bcheroes.com and so people can learn more about the, the collectibles that we've offered. And it's really, it's epic and it's been great because I get to, you know, I'VE built these with my co host and friend Travis Wright. And in our sons it's been a father, son, father son project. My son Zach is 29. He's our creative director and he is a master storyteller and writer. And all of the charact come from his imagination and they're just, he is so much, he's so talented and so much smarter than me. I love seeing it and he's becoming more and more integrated with what we're doing. And Travis's son Jarek learned how to Photoshop and was able to assist in making all these cool variations for our heroes and villains cards with all of the, you know, exciting animations and lighting effects that we've done on them. Rad. Rad.

That's so cool. So I wanted to ask about this is kind of changing topics a little bit more to like the altcoin discussion. Are you familiar with helium? Because that's one that has been coming on our radar a lot lately.

I've heard of it but I don't know anything about it.

Okay, so basically what helium is, is they send you these boxes. You set up these boxes in the corner of a room. They claim to use about $5 in energy per year and these boxes cost about $500. And they claim that just by setting up this box and putting it in a corner you can make about 500 bucks a month, you know, of this helium coin which can be converted out. And the idea behind all of these boxes is they're trying, they're, they're basically like nodes for like a WI fi network essentially. So it's trying to create this sort of universal 5G. Well, some of Wi Fi, some are 5G. They're trying to create this like universal network of nodes that are just in individuals homes and by just setting up the node you can earn crypto on them. Looks really interesting to me. It's called helium. That's one that we've been kind of paying attention to. But I guess my follow up question along that is are there any altcoins that you're really interested in that you're paying attention to right now that have a utility that you're excited about?

Well, there's a lot of them. I, I'm afraid to say that I probably have too many different coins, you know. So really the thing to do is to look@coingecko.com, you know, for somebody that's wanting to invest in crypto and check out the ones with the big market caps. I mean there are now, let me see I'm going to scroll down here. There are. Wow. This is the top hundred. Okay. Of of coins are all. They all have a market cap of over a billion dollars now.

Geez. Yeah, they do. I'm looking at it too.

The total crypto market cap is $2.1 trillion. Now that sounds like a lot and it is, but that's nothing compared to, you know, gold, for example. I think gold is probably what, a 50 trillion somewhere in there. Dollar market cap, the stock market more than that. Real estate more than that. This is still an emerging asset class and we're just at the beginning of this. But the coins that I pay closest attention to are the ones that are the rails for the chains. Right. So the exchanges, for example, you know, Binance has their own coin, Kucoin has their own token. Uniswap has its own token. And these, the FTX has their own token. These are all the exchanges and the services that are the rails for people to be able to, to buy, sell, trade their crypto. I think those are, those are hot properties.

Yeah. And those coins, because I'm just kind of looking at these, some of these names. I like those rail kind of altcoins that you were saying, because what. Those are the utilities attached to an exchange. So they're necessary in that whole thing.

Right.

Well, what happens is if you own their token, you get discounts on the exchange fees. Right.

Okay.

So people. And then you can stake those tokens and you can earn more. Play to earn is getting big. Games like Splinterlands and Star Atlas and Axient Infinity are paying people to play. Like there, there's. There are groups of people in the Philippines that are making a killing playing, you know, because they got an Axie Infinity early. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There. The opportunities out there right now for somebody to make money are more multitudinous. I think I just made that word. Than they. They've ever been in history.

Yeah, that's what it seems like, man.

I know Alex Becker, I don't know if you follow him at all or not, but Alex Becker, he makes a lot of YouTube videos lately about crypto gaming and where crypto is going into the gaming world. You know, a lot of what you talked about, where you can own items that will cross, could potentially cross over games, but also just getting paid to play games. You know, there's a lot of cryptos where the mining is the playing of the game. By playing the game, you're mining crypto, you know, so there's stuff like that popping up that I think is really, really interesting. One question I did have about, like, altcoins. Are there any red flags that you look for anything where, like anything that we should watch out for when looking at altcoins and go, okay, if it, if it says this or doing this or anything, that's a red flag to avoid certain cryptos?

Well, I just. I would avoid hype. I would avoid anything that promises, you know, ridiculous returns without proof. Right. I would avoid cult, like, mentality. There's nothing wrong with being a little tribal, but I think being open, you know, people are always this coin or that coin, that soda or this soda, that hamburger or that hamburger. You know, five guys are in and out. It's like, why not both? Why not? You know, I've used PCs and Macs since the beginning. I own both. I'm on a PC right now, and when I go downstairs and sit on my laptop, I'm on my MacBook and my iPhone that I'm casually throwing around, you know, why not, instead of being tribal about it, take the best of what you can from all worlds?

Yeah, no, that reminds me of BitConnect of what, three or four years ago.

BitConnect. We actually had Carlos, that guy on Bad Crypto, here a couple months ago. Was actually, you know, we thought that we'd be doing this show with this guy and. And he would be the butt of jokes, perhaps. I mean, we weren't going to treat him like that, but turns out the dude is super inspirational. Like it was. The interview did not go like I thought it would. It was really delightful. And if you get a chance to go back and find Carlos Matos on Bad Crypto, there's actually, I think we did a video version of him because he's so charismatic. We put that one on YouTube. Really surprising.

Well, that's what I was going to shout out for you because I've been ever since I realized, okay, you're deep in NFTs crypto. All this stuff I've just been nerding out on Bad Crypto podcast. Oh, what you have the Nifty Show. I think that's a lot more specific around NFTs, but, man. Yeah, if you want to kind of dispel a lot of. Or dispel a lot of these myths and see what interesting projects are coming up, watch both of those shows or listen to both.

Yeah, we go live every. In fact, we've got a show in a few hours today, every Thursday at 5 Eastern at Nifty Show, YouTube. We go live and we have usually three or four guest segments where we bring in projects from across the NFT spectrum and talk about either what they've done or what they're getting ready to do and just really trying to educate people on what's up.

Thanks for making it easy to understand for us laymans, the noobs, but it's.

Not for we just love it. It's so fun. I mean, I get to play with pixels all day.

It's going to open up into so many cool things and everyone's going to be a part of it someday. Some might as well start learning now. Get your hands in it, Joel. Anything else that we could shout out of yours that would be helpful for folks?

I'd say follow my stuff on my blog, but I haven't blogged in so long. I don't Twitter though.

Right. You're on there.

Yeah, I do tweet. So at joelcom on Twitter, how active.

Are you in your. In your Discord? Discord. Something I'm still trying to wrap my head around because every time I log into Discord, it's just so much coming at me so quickly. But are you pretty active on your Discord?

I am more active on the Discord now. And in fact, we have. We've had a Telegram channel for blockchain heroes and we migrated to Discord. This because there's a lot more you can do on the Discord. Assigning roles to people, tipping them and crypto having channels and threads and Telegram just doesn't allow you to do that.

Yeah, sweet. We'll catch you on there then too. Joel.

Yeah, man.

Appreciate you, man.

Awesome. Thanks, fellas.

Yeah, have a great.

Sam.