RELEASE: Gary Vee DEBUTS VeeFriends NFTs!

Gary Vaynerchuk (aka GaryVee), serial entrepreneur and Chairman of VaynerX, today released his first NFT collection called VeeFriends. VeeFriends: https://www.veefriends.com/ ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/ 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ 🎖 CLAIM YOUR BADGE: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/-guide-2-using-the-bankless-badge ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 💰 GEMINI | FIAT & CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://bankless.cc/go-gemini 🦊 METAMASK | DEFI PASSPORT https://bankless.cc/metamask 🦄 UNISWAP | DECENTRALIZED FUNDING http://bankless.cc/uniswap 🔀 KWENTA | EXCHANGE SYNTHETIC ASSETS https://bankless.cc/kwenta ------ 📣 UPSHOT | Become an NFT Appraiser! https://bankless.cc/upshot ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  We're not live streaming now, are we?

• 0:04David Hoffman?

  Uh, we're about to be. I hit the button.

• 0:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 0:08David Hoffman?

  Okay, now we're, now we're live streaming on Periscope. YouTube usually takes it. Okay, here it comes. Alright, new link.

• 0:18David Hoffman?

  Um, Ryan, say something?

• 0:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey, it's Ryan. We're looking forward to starting this.

• 0:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Can anyone verify?

• 0:27David Hoffman?

  That was it. That was it.

• 0:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Ha, funny. Should we wait for, should we, should we give a few minutes for people to scuttle in here?

• 0:33David Hoffman?

  Let's hang, let's hang out with Gary while people figure out what we just did.

• 0:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Alright, um, do you have a link?

• 0:40Speaker 02

  You guys have the link that you can share with me?

• 0:42David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 0:42Speaker 02

  Put in the chat?

• 0:43David Hoffman?

  Into the Zoom chat, yep.

• 0:44Speaker 02

  Is that the YouTube?

• 0:46David Hoffman?

  Uh, that's the one, yep.

• 0:47Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 0:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  And you're, you're sure this one's, uh, working there, David?

• 0:53David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I hear it myself, yeah.

• 0:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Perfect.

• 1:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  You just give this, go ahead, David.

• 1:15David Hoffman?

  Yeah, we got a hundred people in the chat, so I guess we can go ahead and get started for the first time. Thank you, everyone, for bearing with us. Turns out I just, you know, restart my computer and things fixed. It's the best fix ever, but also the most frustrating. But now, we are here, ready to go. Already got 200 people back into the chat. If you know someone who, uh, was in the chat and is no longer in the, in the YouTube stream, uh, go ping them, tell them we, we finally got things, uh, fixed. Usually we're not, usually we're more tech savvy than this, but, uh, today, the gods were not on our side until now. Um, but now we are back with everyone, so. Ryan, shall we, uh, get started again?

• 1:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  We shall, and you know, that's a great intro, David, because I feel like we've got somebody on our side, on the side of crypto, and that is Gary Vee. We're gonna be talking about crypto, NFTs, a surprise launch, that is, Vee friends, it's super cool. We wanna tell you all about it. Before we begin, we wanna just give a shout out to our fantastic sponsors. These are protocols, crypto protocols themselves, Uniswap, Gemini, Quanta and MetaMask. Find links to them in the show notes. Gary Vee, of course, is a serial entrepreneur. You know him, you love him. He is a podcaster, NFT aficionado, an educator, a community builder. And now he is debuting a brand new NFT platform that we're going to talk about.

• 2:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  We're told he was just on Bloomberg, actually, doing an interview. So we're going from Bloomberg Bankless. Gary, how do you feel about that transition, man?

• 2:40Speaker 02

  I think it's the story of my life. You know, I think, you know, the emerging is going to be the theme of this conversation. And let there be no confusion for anybody who's watching. Bankless Nation, these men are on their way to doing the Bloomberg things. I have been lucky enough to be aware of what you guys have been up to. So I was honored to be asked to be on. And I'm extremely excited to chat with you. I'm very aware of the strength and education and OG-ness of your audience, the newsletter. I'm just honored to be here. Thank you for having me.

• 3:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look, man, we're honored to have you because this is all about communities doing the old like emoji handshake with with each other. And you've been a big proponent of NFTs for a while. We want to talk about how how you got into that at first. But before we do, guys, I just want you to know, Bankless Nation, that Gary Vee is single-handedly responsible for onboarding thousands, I'm not sure, tens of thousands, maybe more, to technologies like MetaMask, to Ethereum addresses, to getting them onboarded in the NFT space. And this whole movement is about onboarding people into crypto. So Gary, dude, thanks for what you're doing.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  I appreciate that. And you know, it's funny, I have a very broad audience. And when I started telling some of my inner circle of what I was building here with V Friends,

• 4:06Speaker 02

  when, and especially with Top Shot, you know, success and with all the things that are going on. When they heard that I wasn't going to do Fiat, they were surprised because I'm a big fan. You know, this was a little bit of a contradiction. I'm a big fan of do not create friction for the consumer.

• 4:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hear you.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  On the flip side, you know, I've got more gray hairs than you youngsters. I remember really trying to teach people that putting a credit card into a website in 1997 for wine library.com.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  was not gonna be the worst thing in the world and their identity wouldn't be stolen forever. I remember telling parents and friends that it was okay to have a social media account, that your, you know, daughter wasn't gonna get kidnapped at the mall if she had MySpace. And so I have a lot of compassion for the psychology of human beings around new technologies. And I'm, one of the most important parts of this project, by a country mile for me, was to give back to the OGs that have been playing in the NFT space from 17 to now. And I thought one of the more significant ways I could do is through my strength around education. I've spent months now educating people on what a non-custodial wallet is,

• 5:23Speaker 02

  teaching them to never give up those 12 words to anybody. "I will never ask you for them. I will never ask you for Ethereum." You know, like, "I will never ask you for your MetaMask password." Teaching them what a Rainbow Wallet is if they wanted to see cool versus, you know, like... And it's been a great joy. By the way, it's been a fun one for me because I myself am going through an education journey, right? Learning different chains, learning, you know, proof of work, proof of stake, you know, custodial, not custodial. Like, it's been an incredible journey because over the next several months, I'm sure D-Rock and I will start showing tons of content of me in 2017 and 18 talking about Ethereum. I've been watching. I just don't like to talk about things I don't know. I've been doing a lot of press, like you said. Everyone's asking me about Doge.

• 6:05Speaker 02

  I'm like, "Me and AJ got a lot of it the first day it came out. Years ago, we lost it because it was that way back then." And that's all I really know, other than I know why it's happening, human beings getting behind a mission. But, you know, for me, the Ethereum thing, on-chain, I mean, I built this with the NFT42 guys. Like OG on-chain, Jim, you know, like, it's very important to me to be authentic. And, um, and I, I'm excited to see some of the tweets from people this morning or getting some Discord DMs that look like the following. "Hey, I thought you were charlatan. I thought this was gonna be a piece of shit." I can't believe how many people are learning what a MetaMask is. This is good for all of us. Thanks for showing celebrities, and I always reply, I'm not a celebrity,

• 6:49Speaker 02

  but thanks for showing celebrities that there's a meaningful way to do this, not hire a digital artist and put your face on it and just sell a bunch of shit. And, you know, this was a very ambitious project for me. A, I want this to be my Harry Potter, my Pokemon, my Smurfs. Like, this is a very big ambition for me. I will spend the rest of my life building this intellectual property. B, I want it, people to get educated on what the smart contract can do. I have 555 gift goats. You buy this token, it's a rare token in my world, but it's also a token that allows you to put your address in it and literally get a gift from me randomly, six times minimumly, a year, over three years. When that first gift blows people's brains out of their head,

• 7:34Speaker 02

  I have a funny feeling the market's gonna adjust. And obviously, the underlying conference, the super conference, VCon, that I'm gonna put on once a year over the next three years. When I throw that first conference and the keynote speakers and performances are some of the biggest things in the world, I have a funny feeling the token owner has the ability to decide what they want to do in 2023, right? So, you know, I've given this a lot of thought, and I'm very excited to be in the space at this level.

• 8:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look, and for the crypto natives watching this who are familiar with Bankless, like, two things to me that scream legitimacy about what Gary's doing is, one, the Ethereum address. You're holding these on-chain in an Ethereum address. So, use MetaMask, use, you know, whatever crypto wallet you have.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  By the way, on the record, I'll predict it right now, because I know what I'm gonna do. So, I want to give some Bankless exclusive. He actually just walked in. Watch this. You want a real Bankless moment?

• 8:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  I want a real Bankless moment.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Watch this.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  I'm doing an interview, people. I'm doing an interview, people, but...

• 8:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  What's up? Hey, people. 69 million, brother.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  Can you please tell these people that I begged you to keep all the Ethereum? Can you just tell them? Can you tell them this is true? I'm lying. I'll come with you in a minute, but can you please tell them the truth that I did say to you? How much I wanted you to keep the Ethereum? Is that true?

• 8:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  People, did you keep a little? You gotta keep some to stay.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  This is the most important artist of our generation. Look how handsome he is. All right, let me get back to my interview. I'll be right there. I'll be right there. Love you, pal.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I, I believe in it. I don't know what else to tell you. What do you want from me?

• 9:12David Hoffman?

  Gary, there's a

• 9:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  The other thing is like you, you actually purchased the, the NFTs with ETH as a reserve asset, right? So one thing we talk about, yeah, it's ETH, it's all ETH. Go ahead, David.

• 9:22David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so there's a, there's gonna be two audiences, I think, watching this live stream. There's going to be the, the Gary Vee friends and family, right? Like your, your, your community, your, your clan. And then there's going to be like the, the crypto natives who will, I think, have kind of been, have gotten some NFT exhaustion. And they are, they're, they're, and I think they might come into this, uh, being a little bit skeptical. It's like, oh, just like another celebrity doing another NFT. And I, and I want the, the crypto natives to suspend their disbelief because Ryan and I got a little bit of a sneak peek of what's, uh, going on with, with V friends. And, uh, it's, it's, it's not just another, you know, here's my NFTs, like, and here they are. This is a, a brand commitment, it sounds like.

• 10:03David Hoffman?

  And Gary, it sounds like you have very strong, both opinions and convictions about the future of NFTs. And it seems to be that you're putting a ton of your weight behind this particular, your, your, this, this new NFT ecosystem behind that. And so, but before we go into specifically, uh, the, the V friends ecosystem, I want to ask you a question as to why you think, uh, why you think the NFTs are this brand new revolution that they are? Why are they so powerful? And why are you leading this charge into NFTs?

• 10:37Speaker 02

  I may be leading new eyeballs into it, but the, you know, the larva, uh, Roham with kitties before Top Shot. There's so many real OGs that have led us here. I, I think a guy like me represents a different thing, which is the next moment, right? Because it's happening with me currently in VR. I'm spending a lot of time looking at what's going on in the Oculus ecosystem and the metaverse and things of that nature. But it's, I, at least the way I move, need it to be like on the precipitous of mainstream. David, the reason is because it's time.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  It's just time, you know, like it's time, like it enough, there's enough smoke. People are getting enough comfort with it, right? Top Shot deserves a ton of credit. Um, sports cards deserve a lot of credit, you know, just people getting caught up into alternative investment, Reddit, Doge, Bitcoin. I mean, and let me go another place, how about Fortnite? You know, I'm in the business of helping people understand things, telling parents, I win all of my NFT debates with 55 year old parents that are friends and acquaintances in four minutes. Here's what it looks like. Do you want a blue checkmark on Instagram? Yeah, I'm like, does that actually exist? That's just a little blue checkmark.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  Why do you want that? Cause it's social currency.

• 12:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  And then I go, oh, by the way, so that's one, but let me put the finishing touch on you. Did you give your kid 50 bucks on your credit card this week to buy a Fortnite skin? Yes. Why? He doesn't own that outfit. The digital assets, so my big play, let me tell you when I went bananas and why. My brain decided to tell me, oh my God, everyone's going to have a public digital wallet. Social's going private, crypto's going public. And this is insane. Oh my God, unlike the internet and web 2.0, there's an internet at scale now supporting communication around the blockchain. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  And, and, and then it was 500 hours of larva labs, crypto punks, why, you know, Pepe on Bitcoin, um, discords, reading, listening, OGs on chain, gas, non custodial, education, education, education, you know, I'm a, I'm a hyper dude. So what, when, what ends up happening, one of the reasons your audience here is like, I actually understand, I'm also empathetic. I understand that they might think I'm full of shit because my energy can come off that way. I'm a Jersey, East Coast. I'm like, you know, what, you know, some people aren't able to see my, they don't know me. They don't know my humanity.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  They don't, they see my energy, they don't see the words out of my mouth. They don't hear me say 98% of NFT projects are going to be a bad investment during this era. They don't hear that. They, they, they feel this. So they think I'm saying the, it's insane to me. I'm saying way more conservative things than people that are, that people think are conservative. But it's the, it's, you know, it's the way I say it that will throw them. And by the way, I'm gonna stay me. I'm comfortable being me. You know, I have the receipts. And so I'm a, I'm excited about this and I think the reason is just timing, man. You knew, others knew, they were right. Like, and by the way, VR is gonna happen. Like, let's take it to the bank. There's no reason. This is all, you know, this is all a precursor to that, right?

• 14:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  It totally is.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  I mean, come on, it's, it's on its way. I hope that I can stay healthy enough to see some of that crazy shit. I hope I see something in 40 years that does confuse me. Cause right now, this has not confused me.

• 14:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, Gary, we're gonna get into the friends. Like, last thing before we do this. So we had Blau on the podcast. You know, Grammy Award artist. And he talked about NFTs giving him the ability to connect directly to his community in a way that he's never had. So previously it was, you have to go through middlemen, you have to go through record labels. But this is a direct connection to the community. Can you talk about that? Is that some of the power that's being harnessed in what you're doing? And is that powerful for other creators, other communities out there?

• 14:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, and by the way, let there be no confusion. You can be connected to your audience without NFTs. You can just call them and they can come over. Like, you know, Blau is the best, but like, you know, I'm like incredibly, you know, selfless. I have an incredible, you know, mother and luck of the DNA of who I am as a dude. But this is an economic aspect to those artists as well. You know, Blau is talking about two things. One, not having a dopey record label telling him he can't put that song out, or this is when we have to release because we have this other artist. So that's huge control. But it's also economic value. I mean, this is incredibly, one of the biggest reasons with my project, I made a conference,

• 15:43Speaker 02

  was I didn't want it to be just about me. But there was, there's obviously many tokens in there that are just about me. And so, yeah, it's a structured economy around the most valuable asset in the world, which is time and access. Do you know how much money I'm going to pay for the Novak Djokovic golden racket NFT?

• 16:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  How much are you going to pay?

• 16:04Speaker 02

  At least 100K because I've done well in my life and I want to play tennis with Novak, you know, the week before the US Open in New York and have dinner with him. And if that's what comes along in the smart contract, then stick with me, man. But then, is Novak going to do what I did, which creates a multi, this is where I really think I innovated, a multi-year level? And then I can do something with that token? I can go back?

• 16:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Seasons.

• 16:28Speaker 02

  Seasons, which gives you assets. Or even if it doesn't, if it's a one-time, which I think will be the far majority, well, guess what? Novak's Novak. And if that's his first ever golden racket, well, why can't that be like this $150 Thundercat behind me? Why can't, one, I pay 100,000 for that experience and then in 19 years, I sell that golden racket as a collectible derivative for, you know, 300,000? Or, by the way, 18,000. Let me tell you something about me that always, always confused people, and I think it's now going to end up being my biggest strength. I have been garage sailing for years.

• 17:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like literal, you're talking literal garage selling?

• 17:11Speaker 02

  Brian, have you seen Trash Talk, my five-episode YouTube thing? It is bananas.

• 17:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 17:16Speaker 02

  So, I learned a lot about pop culture. I bought this at a garage sale for a dollar. I learned a lot, much more. My fancy friends make fun of me. They think I'm too dirty. I like the dirt, right? To me, this is the dirt. This is the emerging with Bloomberg, right?

• 17:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, it's definitely, I mean, we're not mainstream at all yet.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  And so, and so for me, what's really exciting is, you know what I learned about garage selling? Is that I would argue that garage sale memorabilia purchasing is a hidden trillion-dollar industry.

• 17:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  What?

• 17:52Speaker 02

  I'll explain. I go to garage sales, I look for nostalgia 80s toys and I pay $31 for this action figure. But I watch another lady buy keychains that say Iowa on it, and marbles, and old Atlantia. The reason NFTs are so powerful is every business and every person is gonna issue an NFT for everything, because they should. It's going to be functional as the ticket or the thing. It's also then gonna be a derivative marketing material, because it's gonna be in your public wallet, and it's gonna show people affinities and social expression. And then finally, it's an asset. So if I throw a music concert, or I play a little club as a comedian, and my ticket,

• 18:37Speaker 02

  and I go on to become Kevin Hart, and now that ticket is selling for $97, because it was my first stand-up appearance in Philadelphia, that I'm making $9.70 on the 10% royalty every single time in perpetuity? Are you fucking kidding me?

• 18:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Dude, this is what's so exciting, man, because like, people don't understand, this isn't just digital collectibles. This is not just a JPEG that you're selling for like, millions of dollars. We're talking about programmable digital collectibles. You can program access, you can program experiences into these things. At some level, with like, CryptoKitties and that sort of thing is cool, but that's only like, Generation 1. This is where I want to get into like VeeFriends, Gary. So let's, let's pull this up because I think you've embedded some of these ideas in like a, another iteration of what a, an NFT can be. And the first thing you've got here is sort of different types under VeeFriends of, of tokens.

• 19:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Admission tokens, gift tokens, access tokens. Just tell us about VeeFriends and tell us about this organization, what you get beyond just buying the NFT on-chain.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  First and foremost, I'm going to say it again because literally yesterday it was all about the art. And now today that I put out the information, everyone's like, but what happens after three years? Is it worthless? I'm like, yesterday you were talking about the art being like, people are very, very, very funny. Okay. Admission tokens. Remember the other thing I launched, if you go to veefriends.com right now, hopefully we'll launch the auction very quickly here. I'm going to give plenty of hours, but if you go to it, and I appreciate you pulling it up. This is fun. As you can see, when you go to it, and you don't need to play this, if you scroll down, you know, right there, VCon, let's click that first.

• 20:24Speaker 02

  So every token is a token to this super conference I'm going to put on every year. So the admission tokens are admission to this conference. All of the tokens are. I'm even going to clean up. I was just looking at what you were sharing on the screen, the framework of the tokens. So Coachella meets South by Southwest meets Davos. I'm trying to throw the best conference in the world. And if I do that in year one, well, what do you think's going to happen, Ryan? And the only way you can get it is V tokens.

• 20:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Dude, it just gets better, right? It gets more valuable. It gets better.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  If you go back, my favorite one, just to, you know, I think we're all allowed opinions, is mine. That's why I did 555, my favorite number five, is GiftGo, because I'm going to have fun with it. This token gives you a ticket to the conference, but D-Rock, let's make sure this shows and admission to the token, because I want to make sure everybody knows all 10, 2, 2, 5, 5. So this also gets you into the conference, but the 555 of these tokens also get you the ability, before July on the website, it's clear that we'll have this up before the first gift goes out. You put your address, you connect your Meta, mask or your custodial wallet, you confirm your address, and I send you surprise gifts six times a year, AKA 18 times over the course of this project.

• 21:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Real, physical stuff you're talking about.

• 21:41Speaker 02

  That's going to make your head spin, Ryan.

• 21:44David Hoffman?

  Wait, you're putting in your physical address? Or into your Ethereum address?

• 21:49Speaker 02

  Your physical, David, or your P O box, because a lot of people... So you, David, buy a gift goat, right? So you buy it for fifteen each, real money.

• 21:56David Hoffman?

  Cute guy, too.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  Thank you. I drew every one. Because I, you know, again, I am providence, right? Big part of this. So I wanted to draw it. I didn't rent out a digital artist like a bunch of influencers or celebrities would. This is all me. Anyway, nonetheless, gift goat. And that comes with those gifts. But David, as you can imagine, what do you think's going to happen with the 555 people that get the first one? Get it in the mail or in their driveway?

• 22:29David Hoffman?

  Socials, baby. Instagram, Twitter.

• 22:32Speaker 02

  What do you think starts happening? And then finally, 300 access tokens, the big ones. 210 of them are virtual. 125 of them are hangout hawks. I think you can scroll down. Very cool.

• 22:44David Hoffman?

  These are the access ones?

• 22:46Speaker 02

  This is cool. Well, those are Google Hangout group of 125 people, right there on the right. That's virtual access. The other are literally a 10-person dinner I do once every three years with all the 10 people that own DinnerDeer. Physically, my time, the biggest thing I've got.

• 23:05David Hoffman?

  So all of these are experiences. I always like to remind people this is time is literally the world's most scarce resource that no one can ever get back. And so the value of Gary Vee's time is being instantiated in DinnerDeer or Hangout Hawk.

• 23:20Speaker 02

  That's right. And I built this with the whole... I used to think like, what if Randy the Macho Man Savage did this? What, you know, and was still alive? I would buy it immediately.

• 23:29David Hoffman?

  Oh, for sure.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  Now, the other thing I did here, Ryan, though, was I created the economy because it's not a one-year thing. So again, you buy a FaceTime box on the IPO on the launch tonight, tomorrow. Hopefully, we'll get it. You get the ticket to the conference. You get a five-minute FaceTime with me. We execute the FaceTime on-chain, Ryan and David. It shows that it's been punched. We did a lot of innovation. So it shows that there's two more in the future. You come along and you go on OpenSea. Forget about befriends.com. And you see it and it says, this comes with a five-minute FaceTime of Gary's with Gary, one-on-one. And it's, you know, like, so like, there's this incredible layer. And then if you keep scrolling down...

• 24:12Speaker 02

  It gets really crazy. These are crazy. If you go back up, I apologize. Like,

• 24:19Speaker 02

  Podcast Panther, you buy that token, I become a guest of your podcast.

• 24:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  What?

• 24:24David Hoffman?

  Ryan.

• 24:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  We don't even, you're doing it and we don't even have one, Gary.

• 24:27Speaker 02

  And listen, I, and listen, I'll continue to be a kind, generous human being, but, but some people are gonna be smart enough to be like, okay, wait, Gary B's trying for the rest of his life to build IP. So I'm gonna, I'm starting a new podcast. I'm gonna get him on my podcast, but I'm gonna keep the token even after it's been punched. Even after the second time, because I'll have them two years in a row. And then he go, if he pulls it off, well, my token becomes an art and collectible. This is a random, guys, a very random Thundercat. It is $150 on eBay all day.

• 25:01Speaker 02

  If I'm able, this is my rookie cards. This is my first. This is it. This is it.

• 25:07David Hoffman?

  You know, Gary, what I'm gonna get, we might have to get a, a, a podcast card.

• 25:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 25:12David Hoffman?

  Podcast Panther.

• 25:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. And like, what's lunch with you worth, David? I want to figure that out, man.

• 25:17David Hoffman?

  Oh, no, I'm not sure I'm ready to understand that.

• 25:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know how Warren Buffett every year, Gary, he like, he does this, right? Something where he, he auctions off a lunch with him for charity. I think people in the crypto space have purchased that from one year or another. This is like that only. Yeah, like experiences with Warren are worth 5 million, 10 million, 15 million. This is like that, except scaled.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  Correct. I mean, wait till athletes and musicians figure this out and I can go in studio with Post Malone. I'm gonna do that, become friends with Post, and then I'm gonna have the collectible and in 12 years, potentially sell for a profit.

• 25:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that's hot, man.

• 25:58Speaker 02

  I don't think, I don't think people realize where this is going. Do you know what Kino Koala does if you scroll up?

• 26:04Speaker 02

  Keynote Koala, literally, literally, is a ticket to travel to any public keynote I give and get a VIP seat and get green room access to me. You want to treat me like the Grateful Dead and Phish? Let's go. You can. I mean, it's different. It's very different. Poker Pirate, you and three friends get a poker night with me being the fourth or the fifth. Like, it's just amazing. I'm really excited about it, mainly because I'm trying to inspire people that I want to buy these from to not do bullshit NFTs and gouge people and stop already.

• 26:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. These have something backing them. Like, so let's talk about this.

• 26:44Speaker 02

  Not only does it have the experience backing it, it's I am trying to build G.I. Joe.

• 26:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  What do you mean by that?

• 26:53Speaker 02

  I mean, I've spent the last 12 years building Gary Vee. I'm Gary Vaynerchuk. I'm not Gary Vee. I have been the strategist, the creative director, the chief executive officer of building. It's not that I'm faking Gary Vee. That's just how people know me. They don't know me. They know me through snippets of content. That's like a nothing of actually me. I've been the chief architect of that, and I think I've done it as well as you can do it in the last 10 years. I've done it way up there, especially when you consider I've also built a $300 million a year agency as my actual job. I've done this as my side hustle. My building up Patient Panda, my building these FaceTime characters, I'm just going to biz them on the spot.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  I could go and make the deal with Samsung and have these characters represent the FaceTime button. I could. I don't know if they'd have me, but I'm going to try. Like, I'm going to build this intellectual property, right? Like, so, yes, it has something underneath it. It has a human being who has an incredible track record, having the ambition to build a literal intellectual property that why in the world wouldn't I aim for Marvel or Barney or G.I. Joe? I may fall short, but I promise you this, I'm going to fall a lot further along than any other person with a real audience.

• 28:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know, I want to talk all about how You've built this community up because I think that's so important. But before we do, we're getting a ton of people on YouTube just asking about the mechanics of this. They're like, I want, I want a keynote koala. How do I buy one? So tell us about that. Is there some sort of a batch auction process going on right now? Or coming soon?

• 28:30Speaker 02

  Yep. Hopefully tonight, maybe early tomorrow. My intuition says probably early tomorrow, but we'll see. I'm literally going to hang up from here and get to QA and working the site. I'm going to do probably a 10 day event in launching these, probably going to put out 25% on the day one and day two. And I'm going to do a Dutch auction. I know that there's a lot of people I have a lot of goodwill with that have a lot of money. And I was scared they were going to buy everybody out and create derivative second. You see what's going on with the good projects in NFT land. So I did a Dutch auction, first and foremost, I capped it.

• 29:07Speaker 02

  I also only released 25% on day one. And so I'm going to batch them out.

• 29:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's awesome. And when's that coming ASAP?

• 29:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, ASAP. I'd love, I'd love for it to be tonight or tomorrow morning.

• 29:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Gary, I gotta ask you.

• 29:24David Hoffman?

  What's the sale platform?

• 29:26Speaker 02

  I built my own custom platform with the team at NFT42. That's why, by the way, if I was, if I was doing this on Rarible or OpenSea or Bitski or some of these great places, this would have been launched already. We're doing a lot of innovation here with the multi-year, with the, you know, the website, you know, GiftGoat is not so easy to execute on Rarible. You know, like I've had to build my own platform.

• 29:50David Hoffman?

  Right. Can you comment on how you've tried to work around any like gas issues? Is this, is this going to be done in like a, kind of an off-chain, just kind of centralized website? And then it delivers on-chain? How's that work?

• 30:01Speaker 02

  It's, it's on-chain.

• 30:03David Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  You know, I, I wanted to go OG. I love the immutable guys. I love what's going on with a lot of the level two stuff. I love what's going on with a lot of other chains. You know, I like learning this. I, again, I think people will get a little more aha as they start seeing my content drip over the next couple of months where I'm like Ethereum. Ethereum, Ethereum, this has been something I've been watching and I'm very ambitious about future forks and other aspects, but yeah, I mean, it's going to cost me a little bit here on the minting this from the gas standpoint and there's going to be a little bit of that big when people purchase.

• 30:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  So this is cool. It's going to cost you and yet you are pricing these things out in ETH. So ETH is the reserve currency for this. We just saw Beeple here earlier and of course he got some ETH and he, he sold a lot of that. I'm hopeful that he kept some of it, Gary. What are your plans, man? Are you gonna, are you gonna hold some ETH or are you gonna sell some Fiat to fund all of this? Or what are you doing there?

• 31:03Speaker 02

  So obviously there's a tax event. So you have to sell some ETH because you can get murdered. I mean, I'm not in control of ETH's pricing. I'm really not interested in the tax bill if ETH collapses. You know, that's, that, you know, I don't want to go out of business on just what I'm getting going. So yes, I'll be thoughtful on the tax part of that. Then I have some real expenses because I'm looking to throw ridiculous conferences and I've got gift goats and, you know, I've got things to do. That, to be frank with you, I'm going to try to find vendors that are interested in taking ETH. Because I think they'd be smart to. And then for me personally, I'm going to keep ETH. You know, maybe, you know, who knows, you know, you know, I may need to do something in my life. I

• 31:44Speaker 02

  might have to do an investment, but like, I'm enthusiastic about ETH and, you know, I'm not, I'm not worried about how hot it's been the last two weeks, you know, whether it's 3,000, 3,500, 2,000, 1,200. I need to see something to stop me from being optimistic about it. That's how I work.

• 32:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  So are all of these?

• 32:06Speaker 02

  I still have, by the way, I've still haven't sold a share of Facebook that I bought in 2007. A share. Yep. Because I need to see something. Mark resigning? Hmm. Right? But all the hoopla around politics hasn't stopped me. Oculus. Oculus. If Facebook Inc. wins Oculus, what? Instagram's the most powerful social network in the world. I work with the biggest brands in the world. I see how much money they spend on, you know, advertising and now it's shifting. Like, I use my brain, not my ideological overreaction to a headline.

• 32:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right on, and you had to not have that ideological reaction in order to see crypto in the first place, because there's a lot of like, you know, crypto is a scam, this will never work, digital scarcity, these are just JPEGs on-chain, they're not worth what they're worth. You had to see past that in order to see this opportunity. And David, I think Gary is talking a little never sell gang here, a little bit like you.

• 33:02Speaker 02

  I'm a hodl.

• 33:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, hodl, man. And hodl and then stake. And so Gary, I'm curious, though, like, so zooming out for a second, obviously, you're bullish on digital scarcity, everything with NFTs. What's your take on DeFi in general? Or like cryptocurrencies in general?

• 33:21Speaker 02

  I don't love talking about stuff I don't know. I bought Bitcoin in 14. I did a little chatting in the Bitcoin Peter, some great podcasts, like, I, my big thing is Bitcoin's so big, if you're like, this is the currency, that gets in the sovereign nation talk, which has always been the big heady thing. But I'm not, you know, paying attention to Litecoin. You know, I'm, I'm very good at having a pulse. I can, I can speak to Litecoin having a moment last night, but I don't know what's going on there. I know what's going on with Doge, but I don't really know what's going on. Meaning, I know why the human psychology is happening, but I don't know the details. I've spent my time on ETH, because I understood

• 34:04Speaker 02

  that people were going to build on top of it. And I understand, and for me, the second ETH really crossed the chasm into social currency, AKA, social media itself. I knew that people, I know people, brother. That's what I know. I know people. I'm a human anthropologist. I understand them cold. I am not a financier. I'm not going to run hardcore numbers. I don't get enjoyment. Do you know that the far majority of the stock I own, like 90% of the publicly traded company stock I own on Wall Street, is because I invested in the company years before it went public?

• 34:41David Hoffman?

  Wow.

• 34:41Speaker 02

  It's not where my passion lies. I'm not doing things to make money. I'm doing things that make me super happy, that happen to have the potential to make me money. And so DeFi currency is not in my blood. Social communication, collectability, trading, I mean, me bits has my brain going nuts. I'm so pissed that I can't trade some of my me bits right now because I have to focus on V friends launch. All I want to do is go to me bits and make some trades. I'm like, hey, I got the pig. Give me the elephant. Like, like, you know, like, I, this I understand.

• 35:20David Hoffman?

  Well, it's always been our, our bull case for Ethereum is that at some point, there will be something for everyone. And the NFT like part of Ethereum that has really surged in the, in the last like six months has brought in a ton of attention. Uh, there, there is an unceasing amount of, uh, levels or requests for more details in the YouTube chat. And, and one of the questions that I briefly saw was if a, if a, if somebody wants a specific V friend, are they able to bid on a specific V friend? Or is it more of a random randomized?

• 35:52Speaker 02

  It's not like me bits. It's not randomized. You can, my concern is this project has absolutely gained more momentum than I anticipated.

• 36:00David Hoffman?

  Mm hmm. Tokens tend to do that.

• 36:02Speaker 02

  Now I'm, now I'm communicating and giving more. I wanted to drop it like with that. Obviously, I had all this press. I didn't want to cancel on everybody. So I decided to late last night when I was like, oh, we're not going to launch at 8am. Um, I just wanted to launch so that there could be a little bit more fairness. The more, don't forget Dutch, Dutch's upside is I'm not going to let people get priced the hell out.

• 36:27David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 36:28Speaker 02

  Dutch's downside is in essence, it's buy it now. Right, grab, grab, grab. You know, there's not that many characters. You know, there's all even the most max thing, there's forty of each of the core access to, you know, the, the, those tokens. The, the problem with, not the access, excuse me, the, the, uh, conference tokens. The issue there is there's only forty of them, twenty of which are core, right, the white, but there's five spectaculars, gold, lava, bubble gum, diamond, right, and hollow, and there's only one of ones of those things. So like, if you're like, really set on getting patient panda against a diamond background, that becomes a luck of like, did you grab it?

• 37:12Speaker 02

  And then you know what's gonna happen, because this is what happens. I was watching me bits very carefully. I didn't realize, it was so cool that they launched that way, so it gave me a preview. It's gonna, you know, it's gonna happen, and people are gonna try to wait, because there's a lot of supply at first. And then there's that tipping point moment, at, you know, mine's at three, mine starts at three, goes down to point five, does it stop at two point six? And then somebody already resold one, uh, open fee for five, and then everybody freaks out, because it's gonna be fascinating to watch how it happens. I have no idea.

• 37:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Gary, let's talk about this. I think one of the most, uh, the coolest things about your story and about your entire journey, and this is just the next step of it, is about like this, this one word. And to me, that word is community, right? So many people, when they start going into the NFT space, they do the NFT first, before they have the community, right? Huge mistake. Other peoples, the other people, you might see sort of the, the celebrities jumping on the, the bandwagon. They try to create an NFT and appeal to a community that they're not really a part of. So they end up with sort of a, just a crappy, um, illegitimate, unauthentic NFT, and they make that mistake.

• 38:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  But like, you've built this thing with the tech that's available, uh, to you for your community. And I want to ask the broad question here, which is like, tell, tell us first, because the, the common denominator across everything that we've been talking about is community. That is the heart of it. How do you build a community?

• 38:40Speaker 02

  By giving your community more than you ask for in return.

• 38:46David Hoffman?

  Wow.

• 38:48Speaker 02

  You're unmutated.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  Which is devastating.

• 38:52David Hoffman?

  Wow, that was simple. Yeah, can you also elaborate on that? It's a simple rule of thumb, and it makes a ton of sense. Give more value than you ask for. How have you done that?

• 39:03Speaker 02

  By thinking about every single thing I do.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  By never looking for a quick buck. By the people that have gone on the Discord that don't know me and saying, "Are you serious? What the fuck?" And then 600, "You guys are gonna buy this shit?" And 600 people replying, "I can count the times that Gary in the last 12 years has asked anything of me." And usually it's to buy a bottle of wine or a sneaker. And this is a way for me to invest in Gary? Are you fucking kidding me? You know, by being thoughtful, by trying to provide value, by putting out content that actually... Guys, I... Do you know why I haven't talked about... Let me give you an insight to how my brain works. Do you know why I haven't talked about that much about Ethereum and things of that nature or other things? And by the way, actually, while I'm on the show,

• 39:52Speaker 02

  probably the most exciting thing for me is to look at all the other blockchains. You know, one of the things I'm excited about in helping people learn how to get a MetaMask or, you know, or Portis or whatever they're gonna play with here is, to me, this is not even just about Ethereum. It's the one that I'm comfortable with and I've been watching, but I'm very aware of what people think about gas fees and things of that nature, scalability, all that. You know, I just wanted people to get comfortable with the game. And so if they wanna go, you know, you know, Polkadot, Flow... Well, Flow's got, obviously, Fiat, but, you know, like, Cardano and Solana. Like, pick you, do you. You know, you do you.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  But I wanted this to be authentic and really honest to the whole ecosystem. But as far as my community, it's consistency. I give... One of the reasons I don't... I never talk about being smart. I watch all these people put out content, basically talking about, "I'm smart." My crew, D-Rock shaking his head right now, pisses them off that people think I'm a motivational speaker because they're seeing the smarts in real time, always, constantly. I don't think me saying I'm smart brings any value for my audience. I'm teaching my audience perspective, insights. Hey, this is what's going on in audio. This is what's going on on TikTok. Do you know how many people are tweeting right now?

• 41:19Speaker 02

  This second, Gary Vee is the one that got me into NBA Top Shot. Even though I never talked about it, I got him into cards. We talked about Top Shot. I'm trying to bring value. And by the way, that is why this is going to be such a significant launch. There is an ungodly amount of people that have reached out to me and my brother in the last 48 hours with stories that are mind boggling. Hey Gary, you and your brother, AJ just gave me one. You and your brother gave me all this time when I was an idiot kid, had no value to bring. You guys were always gracious. You always helped. By the way, I got into crypto real early in 17. I'm living in Puerto Rico now. Rest assured, I'm coming in heavy tomorrow. You know, like that comes out of being a kind person. That came out of me giving more to that kid than asking.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  I think people are confused by my energy and my alpha and my jerseys and my aggressive communication style. I think, I think people will be stunned if they saw my word cloud. They would think it's hustle and money and business. It is not. It is empathy and kindness and patience and perspective. And not, you know, you know, I'm happy about that. And now I'm building a whole universe of characters. Because I know that I can't be the deliverable. Do you know how many people are watching right now who wished their plus one, their husband or wife liked me? But they hate me because they hear the cursing or the aggressiveness. And the reason they want their plus one to like me is because they know the things I say can really be beneficial to their kid.

• 42:45Speaker 02

  But they don't have the agreement that I'm a good guy. Well, I'm going to fix that. Because I'm going to make Patient Panda a superstar on TikTok. Because I'm going to turn, you know, some sort of character that talks about candor, candor cat into a winning streetwear brand. Like, or I'm going to turn, you know, like optimistic this, you know, or, you know, I'm just going to do it. I know exactly what I'm going to do. I know exactly what I'm going to do.

• 43:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Gary, this is something we repeat so often about everyone in their life journey, but in their crypto journeys, long-term games with long-term people. That's what you have to do in order to build a community. And what's crazy here is crypto and NFTs give you a whole new palette as a community creator to deliver value to your community. And I see that's what you're doing here. Hey, last thing, you gotta wrap it up. You've got things to do. You've got a whole product to ship, my friend. We're super excited about it. Do you want to say anything to either the Bankless community or to others that are in the position that you are in, that have sort of a community and they're trying to figure out what their strategy should be? Just say something to the people now that's on your mind.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  50 hours of homework.

• 44:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's what you have to do.

• 44:03Speaker 02

  50 hours of homework. You know, like, I just, I just am stunned by people's FOMO, buying things just because 10 people on Twitter said so. Like, do not buy a single thing I talk about ever for the rest of your life until you do your 50 hours of homework. There you go. There's an infinite statement of mine. Not a damn thing. I think I'm an extremely smart, good businessman with an uncomfortable track record. You know what those things are right there above the wrestling belt? That's Twitter and Tumblr stock from 2006. I have receipts. I know what I'm doing. And even with me and everybody else that looks like me, and there are many smarter and better, until you do your 50 hours of homework, don't do a fucking thing.

• 44:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  There you go, guys. Couldn't leave it in a better place than that. 50 hours of homework, that's what you should be doing on the crypto journey and the DeFi journey before you do anything else. Gary, where can people find out what's going on with V Friends?

• 45:04Speaker 02

  veefriends.com and the discord is unbelievable the level of you know again back to the community I built it's just kind it's you know it's nice it's thoughtful tons of noobs learning unbelievable OGs coming in and helping by the way public service announcement I will not ask you for your meta mass 12 words I will not ask you for eth unfortunately point 00001% of people coming in and spamming and trying to do bad things but anyway I'm happy to be here an honor to be on the show

• 45:33David Hoffman?

  thank you so much Gary for coming and joining us if you are interested in NFTs you can definitely get at least 50 hours of your homework in on the bankless YouTube so

• 45:43Speaker 02

  I got a run guys behind on something

• 45:45David Hoffman?

  thank you so much Gary and there if you want to learn more about what NFTs are and Ethereum at large the bankless YouTube is where you want to be Ryan do you have anything else you want to add to the Gary V fans that are joining us here on the bankless YouTube

• 46:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  guys that was hot like subscribe do your 50 hours of homework not only on the NFTs but on DeFi decentralized finance that is another revolution kicking off right now and you are early if you are listening to this right now of course risks and disclaimers guys we always do this on the show crypto is risky assets like NFTs are risky you could lose what you put in but we are headed west it's not for everyone but we are on the bankless journey and thanks so much for joining us today

• 46:32David Hoffman?

  hey we hope you enjoyed the video if you did head over to bankless HQ right now to develop your crypto investing skills and learn how to free yourself from banks and gain your financial independence we recommend joining our daily newsletter podcast and community as a bankless premium subscriber to get the most out of your bankless experience you'll get access to our market analysis our alpha leaks and exclusive content and even the bankless token for airdrops raffles and unlocks if you're interested in crypto the bankless community is where you want to be click the link in the description to become a bankless premium subscriber today also don't forget to subscribe to the channel for in-depth interviews with industry leaders ask

• 47:13David Hoffman?

  me anythings and weekly rollups where we summarize the week in crypto and other fantastic content thanks everyone for watching and being on the journey as we build out the bankless