In this conversation, Sam Parr interviews a guest (Speaker A) who critiques the current NFT market as largely speculative and akin to buying lottery tickets. The guest argues that most buyers lack genuine appreciation for the digital art and are driven by hopes of price appreciation or community hype, which he describes as a "greater fool" scenario. He shares personal anecdotes: buying a Kobe-themed NFT on Nifty Gateway for $600‑$800 and flipping it for $10,000, later holding it at $2,500; purchasing works by artist Boss Logic; and acquiring five AKU NFTs for about $700 each, selling four for $1,500‑$2,000 each, while the remaining NFTs in his wallet are essentially worthless. He estimates his total NFT spend at $5‑$10k, noting that most of his holdings are low‑value, unsellable assets. The guest concludes that treating NFTs as an investment strategy is flawed for most people, recommending that only NFTs genuinely liked for their art might be worth buying, while the rest are speculative scratch‑off tickets.
Chapters
My bad investment strategy that I hear often right now, and this is gonna sound weird because I'm doing the Milk Road, clearly I'm bullish on crypto, is, um, I'm gonna give you two categories. One is NFTs in general. Um, I think that so much money is gonna be lost and made, but lost— the losses will far outweigh the gains, um, for, for an— in NFTs, uh, when we look back like 5 years from now, um, I think it is nuts what people are doing with NFTs. Uh, they would, you know, like, um, if you, if you basically just described the same asset class but without the word NFT, um, you know, you would, you would say like, yeah, cool, how much money are you putting into baseball cards? How much are you putting into, you know, works of art? How much, how much money are you putting into these? Why do you believe that this digital art that you put, this picture of a penguin you bought is the better investment than those? Or how about let's just simplify it. Uh, I'm gonna give you 15 seconds to describe why you bought this NFT. And the only thing you're not allowed to say is that I think it might go up. Right. And like, you know, the, the answer for most people is this sucker's going up. Right. And then the second worst answer they give you is the community. It's like, oh, you really, you bought it for the community.
What does that mean? What does the community, are you, tell me about this community?
Oh, it's a community of people who all want this sucker to go up. Oh, cool. So you're all cheering for the same, you know, like, you know, greater fool outcome. And so I think for a huge number of— obviously there's going to be winners in NFTs, right? People are going to do well. Um, some projects are going to do well.
So if you like it, buy it.
Yeah, if you're literally buying because you like the picture of the art and you really want to own that penguin, fantastic. But be honest with yourself, almost everybody who's doing it right now is doing it because they think, you know, I'm hoping that this is the next one that goes up like crazy. And, um, just call it what it is. If it's a lottery ticket, it's a lottery ticket. And just say you're buying lottery tickets for, you know, $1,000 a pop. And, uh, if that's really what you wanna do, do it. But I just think it's generally quite a bad strategy, um, for people to do.
You were the first one who told me about NFTs and you bought one that I thought was awesome. And I'm not even a basketball fan, but you bought this Kobe one and he like was dunking and turning into an angel. And I was like, oh, that's pretty awesome. That's sick. Um, but you sold it and you made a profit, like $10,000 in profit, right?
Yeah. I bought it for maybe like, I don't know, $600, $800. And then I sold it for 10, 10 grand, like a month later.
What's it worth now?
It trades for about $2,500 now. Um, and I actually, the reason I actually think that might be an NFT, I'm proud of that one. That was A, just for to learn and B, I thought the art was cool, but I thought the art was so cool that I almost went back and bought it again yesterday. I was back on the thing and I was like, I think you should— I was like, I actually really like this. Like, this is just a really cool—
I agree—
uh, piece of art. And, um, this time if I buy it, it's not to, you know, learn or to see if it'll go up. It's because I actually like this one. But I have so many other NFTs in my, my, like, in a wallet that are just like, you know, you know, I bought it because, hey, maybe this is going to be the next one that people pour their money into and I get this fabulous run-up. Um, but those are scratch-off tickets. And like, do I really want to be buying $300, $500, $800 scratch-off tickets? Like Seems like a pretty bad idea. Seems like it's not investing at all, actually. It shouldn't even be called an investing strategy.
How much money? Um, what— what— I'm— I sound so ignorant. What's the— what— when you say that, like, when someone says that, um, you know, they've bought, uh, $1,000 of Bitcoin, although it's now worth $1 million, what do you call the $1,000?
Your, uh, your basis?
Yeah, your basis. So what was your basis for, um, how much did I put into NFTs? Yeah.
So these, uh, probably in total maybe like $5 grand, something like that, $5-10 grand. I didn't buy any of the like super expensive NFTs. Um, and, uh, yeah, so, you know, I did well because I— early on there was this thing called Nifty Gateway and they were doing curated drops. So it was like one of the good things that around was like, yeah, they're doing well still. Um, so that's where the Kobe one came out of. There's this artist that I had followed for a long time, this guy Boss Logic. He makes all the UFC posters, so you've, you've definitely seen his stuff because, uh, um, he's like— Joe Rogan will repost his stuff, uh, from time to time. So he— Boss Logic did the Kobe one, so that's why I was like, oh, I actually like this artist, I follow him, I've bought like, uh, you know, like a print of his before, I'll buy his NFT. So that was a good move. And then the other one, then I got caught up in the hype and bought like 5 of, of this like thing called the AKU. Um, it's just like a, whatever, you can Google it. It's just A-K-U. And, uh, I bought those just thinking like, oh, are these all just like, you know, positive flips? And so I bought 5 of them for, I wanna say like $700 each. And then I've sold 4 of them, uh, each one for about $1,500 now, $2,000. So I basically like doubled my money on 4 of 'em. Um, and then I kept the last one just to like, just to own, basically. Um, so I did well with those. And then I have other ones in my wallet that like, you know, I bought for a few hundred dollars and they're worth, I think, zero. Like, I think they literally, like, you could not, I could not give it away if I wanted to just give it away to somebody. I wouldn't, our friend, nobody would pay the gas fee to pick it up.
Our friend Jack was selling a, uh, it was like a lockbox. It was like a box that was like, and after you bought it, it would be unveiled like what the art was. And I thought that was actually kind of neat. Uh, I'm not like, Jack's my homie. I'm not like, if it was like, if I was like someone who's like, I'm a true fan of where I was like, I'd be honored to own anything you've made, then maybe I could see myself doing that. But people were doing that with him and it was pretty amazing.
Yeah. Yeah. I think NFTs are cool. They're going to have a place. I just think that most, the way that most people are investing in them right now is scratch-off lottery tickets. And I think that that's a bad strategy.
