Brett Malinowski Talks the Future of AI and Web3 | Digital Social Hour #102

Speaker 1 Tiffany did an NFT, didn't they? They probably did one of the best. I think a lot of NFT traders like will enable rugs.

Speaker 2 Those contracts were a hot commodity back in the 40s.

Speaker 1 I've seen some horrible stories. It's that.

Speaker 2 One guy with Aku Dreams get all the money stuck in this.

Speaker 1 Like, I've never seen that one before. $50 million just locked in the contract correct.

Speaker 3 50, 5-0, 5-0.

Speaker 1 Yeah. 5-0, 5-0.
Still locked? Yes.

Speaker 2 All right, welcome to the Digital Social Hour. I'm your host, Sean Kelly, along with my co-host, Ari Gold.

Speaker 3 What's going on, everybody?

Speaker 2 And our guest today, Brett Melanowski.

Speaker 1 What's going on, guys?

Speaker 2 Chilling, man. How are we doing?

Speaker 1 I'm pretty good.

Speaker 3 How are you enjoying Vegas so far? I just got here.

Speaker 1 Four-hour drive from Scottsdale. Oh, okay.

Speaker 3 Where are you staying this weekend?

Speaker 1 Resort World. Ooh, that's cool.

Speaker 1 I love Resorts World, man.

Speaker 3 Yeah, honestly, anything you need at Resorts World, they have a phenomenal staff. I think their culinary selection is

Speaker 3 prime. I think their tables are very clean.
I enjoy the... Dude, I just like being inside of Resorts World because when you go up to the room and you walk in, it's like

Speaker 1 a new carpet.

Speaker 3 You know what I mean? It's just very inviting and clean. I love that.

Speaker 1 I mean, a lineage is going to be Omnia tonight, so I'm pretty excited for it.

Speaker 3 Okay, so you're an EDM guy, huh?

Speaker 1 I mean, not really Alinium, just the best to ever do it. He's like the most art of our generation, bro.
Omnium. Oh, it's like the perfect venue.

Speaker 3 Omnia is a vibe too, man.

Speaker 3 They've got a sick visual display in there.

Speaker 3 Tell us what you do, man. Give us a background on yourself and let our viewers know what you got going on.

Speaker 1 I guess I'm just really passionate about digital ownership, you know? Super sexy stuff. So you're a Web3 pioneer.

Speaker 1 I guess that's the best word. It's all good.
I have a pretty big YouTube channel covering that.

Speaker 1 It's kind of more like future technology, so I talk a a lot about AI now, but is it more educational or more navigational?

Speaker 1 Yeah, probably the most educational and like web three, but more so like web three and how it's going to integrate into like businesses. Beautiful.
So like my dad's an entrepreneur.

Speaker 1 I've been entrepreneur my whole life, always like hustling just naturally. Sure.
And so like, I just have like this intuitive understanding of business just from being around it my whole life.

Speaker 1 And then also I've been in crypto since 2014, like the Call of Duty trick shotting age. We were in Skype channels.
Right. That's how we were transacting with each other as like kids in high school.

Speaker 1 And so the technology is like intuitive intuitive for us as well.

Speaker 1 And so it's kind of like that right age group with the right background coming together where I really just understand how it can be integrated like everywhere in life now.

Speaker 3 What are you most excited for when it comes to Web3 integrations in business?

Speaker 1 Well, like, so going back to like that gaming that I had as a childhood, like I understood how valuable or how much I valued it, like getting a cool skin in Call of Duty.

Speaker 1 Like I would grind for like six hours.

Speaker 1 stay up till 2 a.m just to get like fall camo right then flex on my friends in high school or like even rune scape in elementary school oh runeescape i would bro i i would stay i was in age i was horribly inefficient i did just mine all day

Speaker 3 but yeah just mine all day then just to flex on my friends i got like a rune like skim today or something and that was like a big deal for me within my like social circle i think i i think i'm most excited to see like big companies like epic come into the space um and and really create some sort of digital ownership to their skins and and i exactly i think that that sort of integration is is what because again it it's really more about the ease of integration and the simplicity of things.

Speaker 3 Nobody wants to go on, download a MetaMask wallet, learn their keys, do this. It's tedious and it's monotonous.

Speaker 3 And for the average user, they're just not going to do it or they're just not going to do their due diligence. However, you sign on to your PlayStation platform or let's take PlayStation out of it.

Speaker 3 You sign on to your secure, secure platform, right? You use your user tag or your ENS.

Speaker 3 And now all of the things that you've spent your real world money on comes with with digital ownership or an NFT to back it.

Speaker 3 And now, since they're not being produced anymore, they're already on chain. Each one that's digitized is now numbered.

Speaker 3 And now you create, one, a race to digitizing because you're the first to register. You're number one.

Speaker 3 And two, if you do it in a way where the ease is just press X to convert it.

Speaker 3 Think about how many people would just go on, do that, and then from there would want the cure, would have the curiosity to go in and dive in deeper and be like, okay, what is this?

Speaker 1 So I'm like a big believer that people aren't ever going to know they're buying NFTs. Like the

Speaker 1 top layer, the UX, the UI, has to get so seamless that you just can use your credit card, use an email, password account, whatever it is, and you just buy this thing. And now you know you own it.

Speaker 1 So you can sell it online.

Speaker 3 So that's the goal. When it comes to the, not RFID chips, what's the NFC? So when it comes to the NFC chips, this is something that I'm personally consulting on for a couple of companies.

Speaker 3 And I think that

Speaker 3 that is where that seamlessness will come in.

Speaker 3 I think when you look at a tag or you, you know, you pull down something in a shoe or in your pants, and you have that kind of tech where you can scan it, see where it came from, see how many are made, and then obviously be able to create a digitized version where it's like, all right, you own those pants in the real world, now you get it.

Speaker 1 It's like the Rolex like verification. Sure.
But now digital. And you can't, I mean, it's kind of easy to fake paper if you're really trying to.
You can't fake blockchain.

Speaker 1 You can't fake the blockchain.

Speaker 1 You know, that's the best part so that's the coolest thing about this tech is that it's not reinventing anything it's just a better way to do it it's not sexy but most people in the real world that CNFTs just think it's like a financial asset but the most powerful use cases are where it's just like a verification of authenticity of a transaction and so that's gonna be used in every aspect of our world in my opinion

Speaker 2 I see you're huge into AI

Speaker 2 That's an understatement. What AI tools are you using now and where do you see the future of AI?

Speaker 1 Yeah, so I just use this tool called Ingest AI. And what I could do with it is upload all the transcriptions of my YouTube videos, every AMA I've ever done, every Twitter post.

Speaker 1 And it's an automatic Discord bot. And so it's called Ask Brett.
And you can ask it anything, and it only answers in the way I've answered those questions before. And it's like freaky accurate.

Speaker 1 That's pretty cool. There's some like still like some hallucinations, as they say, but for the most part.
I don't know if you're going to ask the same questions like 80% of the time. Oh my God.

Speaker 1 And my educational platform. Yeah.
Oh my God. Same like marketing.
How do you market an FTP? All right. So after this,

Speaker 1 I'm definitely going to take a list.

Speaker 3 I'm definitely taking a list from him of all the

Speaker 3 AI programs you've been using.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so I'm not the deepest in AI.

Speaker 1 I just understand how you can use it again in businesses because ChatGPT and OpenAI, they literally made the product for you and just released it to anybody with an API, which is crazy.

Speaker 1 No one's going to make your own AI model. You just can use theirs in the unique way that fits your business.

Speaker 1 And so as far as tools, I mean, like Notion AI, these subtle little enhancements of convenience are really helpful.

Speaker 1 So in our business, we use Notion as our CRM, as our organization, whatever it may be.

Speaker 1 And so just having that right there super quick and just ai editing tools like runway to like take out the background for like thumbnails mid journey like my friends do youtube automation and they do like one does like history and so there's like no photos in history now he can use mid journey to make up like any scene he wants for like a good thumbnail or just like literally so many different ways to slightly become more efficient in life it's New era.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Like that's kind of what my channel's gone to.
Like future businesses, new era. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Do you see AI taking away a lot of jobs?

Speaker 1 It just changes the skill set. Like Google, like SEO agencies.
We have a lot of friends that make millions of dollars off SEO agencies. That was not a thing 15, 20 years ago before Google exists.

Speaker 1 And so prompt engineering is like the new SEO in that sense. And so it's like that's a new skill you can learn.

Speaker 3 You also have to look at what it took away from.

Speaker 3 You know, there's less advertising being done via television or less being done in newspapers or whatever that rhythm of motion was before the internet came in.

Speaker 3 And again, I agree with what you're saying. The adaptation has to evolve and there has to be people that can change their skill set and be able to

Speaker 3 blend in with the times. There will be people that will be left in the dust.

Speaker 3 There always are, and that just comes with

Speaker 3 new times, new ages, new technology. Some people are lazy.
Some people

Speaker 3 can't adapt.

Speaker 3 And again, it just leaves more room for these newer generations to kind of catch on. It's changing of the guard.

Speaker 1 That's it. And it's a huge opportunity.
If you understand it at a fundamental level, you have like a big opportunity to go straight to the top. It's really cool.

Speaker 1 And I think with AI, it's ultimately just coming down to who is going to learn these skills the fastest and who can be the first one to market.

Speaker 1 And then once you understand like the different ways to, like, if you give chat GPT an identity, tell them to talk to you a certain way.

Speaker 1 If you can prompt engineer, like you still need to know the psychology of copywriting.

Speaker 1 It's not going to replace copywriters what is the context what is your target demographic what do they respond to how do you communicate to chat gpt to output what you see efficiently what made you go all in on content i literally watched you grow your youtube from like 5 000 to all the way up to 300 000 some of your videos get millions of views what made you get into the content space so heavily so i've have a background in marketing i tried the whole smma like make money online niche when that was a thing in 2018 and learned a lot but at the end of the day there's nothing more powerful than a personal brand and having like organic traffic.

Speaker 1 And so again, I'm very entrepreneurial minded.

Speaker 1 And so I had the idea, I just had the concept that if you provide value to people for free up front, you help them with something, they're going to support you right back and no matter what you're doing.

Speaker 1 And so since I'm an entrepreneur, you see the effect that Elon Musk has with his personal brand and his businesses. If you can

Speaker 1 give people value, get a good reputation, people will support you in whatever you're doing. And that's just a superpower.

Speaker 2 And did building that brand help you make millions in the NFT space?

Speaker 1 I don't like to say that I made millions in the NFT space because it's it's not necessarily your money.

Speaker 1 People are putting this into you to fulfill your roadmap to make a project. So the company made that side, exactly.
So on that side,

Speaker 1 yes, we did very well. And then where we made our money was we actually, like it was very hard to figure out how to make a smart contract when we got in because there was no education out there.

Speaker 1 And so once we figured out how, I just helped all of my friends or all of my YouTube friends or anybody that needed help with development.

Speaker 1 That's where we made a lot of our money is just being like a Web3 development agency. And now that's transitioned into helping the biggest brands in the world.

Speaker 2 Those contracts were a hot commodity back in the bowl around that.

Speaker 1 There was

Speaker 1 zero resources. I could not find one single YouTube video.
I couldn't even, like, you don't even know the questions to ask back then. Of course.

Speaker 3 Once you're pioneering something that's never been done before.

Speaker 2 And once all the contract messes up your whole product, everything.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 the medium is gone. I've seen some horrible stories.
It's that.

Speaker 3 Well, how do you get it? Mortation, money, everything's gone.

Speaker 2 Didn't that one guy with Aku Dreams get like all the money stuff? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, I've never seen that one before.

Speaker 1 $50 million just locked in a contract forever 50 50 50 yeah five zero five zero still locked yes still like it's like it was like a permanent function you lost 50 million dollars yes but even how much has evolved in one year like now there's like upgradable contracts right yeah dynamic contracts so so much has evolved it's crazy it's really exciting but man that's insane do you see nfts ever recovering i think what we saw the whole pfp phase was absolutely like lunacy like that will never happen again never yeah that was like think about we just saw iterations and so if you were there from the beginning you just saw like the very first NFT tied to art.

Speaker 1 And then the very first NFT used to token gate a community on Discord, which is like B-A-C. And then people started adding, okay, token plus community plus DAO, okay, plus.

Speaker 1 staking with a utility token. And we saw all these like continuations of like one-upping each other to the point now it's like, all right, it's maxed out.

Speaker 1 This is not a just NFTs are not a product themselves. They're not financial instruments.
This is a truly agnostic technology that is just bettering digital or enabling digital ownership in real life.

Speaker 1 And so now it's like tie these two existing products and services and just use them as the vehicle to deliver that. I feel that.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I can see that. I see you're huge into watches as well.

Speaker 1 What's your

Speaker 2 favorite watch right now?

Speaker 1 Did I own or just in general? Both. I have an AP.
It's a Leo Royal Oak 2014 10500 Leo Messi. So I was really cheering for him in the World Cup.

Speaker 1 So I think that'll appreciate pretty well, even in this market. Definitely bought at the top.

Speaker 1 I think we all did. Yeah, I'm pretty sure we all did, buddy.
It's all good. It happened.
But it's actually held up really well compared to the rest of the watch market.

Speaker 1 As far as favorite watch, I mean,

Speaker 1 my dream watch is the Nautilus Tiffany. Oh,

Speaker 1 it's like $3 million, though.

Speaker 1 No, I actually saw one on sale for $2.5 in New York. Oh,

Speaker 1 I got a plug.

Speaker 3 I got to reconnect, you know? Do you want to leverage out a house or something?

Speaker 3 No big deal.

Speaker 1 Tiffany did an NFT, didn't they? They probably did one of the best, which I'm really glad you brought that up because this is one aspect of the business. Do you think they did it the best?

Speaker 3 I'm curious to see why.

Speaker 1 Because they, first off, okay, so let me explain the strategy real quick. It's called a decentralized permissionless brand collaboration.
And this is the single-handed most valuable aspect of NFTs.

Speaker 1 If anyone asks you why it should be an NFT, it's because of what they did. So basically, they are, Tiffany is a luxury jewelry company.

Speaker 1 And what they did is they made an unofficial partnership with CryptoPunks. And they said they're going to sell 250 NFTs for 30 Ethereum each.
It's like 50 grand.

Speaker 1 And saying, if you own a CryptoPunk, you can validate it. You can connect to our website and you can buy our NFT.
Right. So, they didn't have an official partnership with Yuga or anybody.

Speaker 1 They just said they just made a token-gated website. If you have this CryptoPunk, you get the right to buy.
Wow. You get the, you get permission to spend 50 grand on our jewelry.

Speaker 1 And then, if they did, they purchased the NFT, they could submit their CryptoPunk, and they could come in and a custom piece of jewelry for them.

Speaker 1 And why this is so genius by them is that they're a high-end jewelry company. CryptoPunks, the floor is like 150 grand.

Speaker 1 So by default, if you own a CryptoPunk, you already are willing to spend $150,000 on a JPEG.

Speaker 1 So you have dispense what's the term uh you have money disposable income disposable income and so those people already care about status because they're using this as a profile picture jewelry is status and on top of that now they can flex within their community so when you go to one of these community events like the board apiacht club ape fest they can actually rock their tiffany crypto punk p or actual necklace so

Speaker 1 it's just a flex of the highest degree in your community of nerds so interesting i think that's genius and that just makes it sold out so i mean they did something right What is it?

Speaker 1 50 grand times 250? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's like, what, 20 mil? I suck them up. 10 mil.

Speaker 1 Zero marketing.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 It wasn't zero marketing. I mean, honestly, because I'm in the punks community.

Speaker 3 And the second that the news broke, I just remember the telegram going absolutely bananas.

Speaker 1 And it was, yeah.

Speaker 3 The crypto punks have a telegram. Board Ape Yacht Club, the high guys have a- I didn't know that.

Speaker 3 There's a couple groups that I've been fortunate enough to be added in and over time just appreciate the value because there are

Speaker 3 it's it's very

Speaker 3 like it's very there's there's definitely gatekeepers and and in these communities because again nobody wants to allow access to somebody to multi-billions or millions or whatever it is and you know they come in and promote a scam now the finger gets pointed to who brought them in and how that happened and you know certain things like that the interesting sorry to cut you no no the interesting thing is that like they just made a token gated website and said if you you have a punk, you get in.

Speaker 1 So it's like not like an official endorsement by the crypto punks whatsoever. So obviously there needs to be like awareness within the community that this exists.

Speaker 1 But think about what that implies like for regular businesses.

Speaker 1 Like if Netflix, even if it's just a subscription NFT where you pay your subscription, the NFT stays in your wallet, and then you just use that to connect your wallet to get access to Netflix, as long as you keep paying, the NFT stays in your wallet, then a popcorn company could just be like, hey, new video series is dropping.

Speaker 1 Anybody that has a Netflix NFT gets 20% off our pop tonight. These are just marketing tactics that we see in the regular world.

Speaker 1 Like a similar example is like American Express, like points or benefits. You can get like 10% off Starbucks once a month if you choose that perk.

Speaker 1 That's the same thing, but now it's interoperable, decentralized for any medium, small size company. Any NFT holder can get discounts and promotions at any store.

Speaker 3 It's utilization tactics, basically. I mean, you go in and you understand that one company has more relevancy or more popularity than another, and you go in and exploit it, essentially.

Speaker 1 It's like complementary products can now collab. So typically, like, say, let's say the Chicago Bears and a other like merch company wanted to collab or do some sort of like discount code.

Speaker 1 What would happen is two teams need to come up with an idea. They need to communicate, settle on the plans.
Legal needs to get involved. They need to have contracts.

Speaker 1 Then the development team has to actually make that feature in the app to give this merch in the Chicago Bears app. That's like six months' worth of work.

Speaker 1 Where now, all one team has to do is come up with the idea, make a token gated website, and then just put it on their website.

Speaker 1 There's no like more, like it eliminates like four or five steps it's crazy yeah do you see crypto making a comeback so this is the thing i actually don't believe in crypto like as i think there's i don't like that they're coupled like why is digital ownership and overthrowing government-backed currencies why are they dependent on each other and so like that kind of bothers me and so like when we work with our clients like i'm really big on like allowing nfts to be paid with credit card and then making sure people can just sign up with an email and password because most people are going to hear about a product online and they're just going to want to go buy that product and then get access to it.

Speaker 1 They don't need to know it's an NFT. If they own it, that's a huge plus for them and they'll spend way more on it.

Speaker 1 Whereas crypto is super painful. That's what people associate with scams.
I guess NFTs have a bad reputation too.

Speaker 1 But ultimately, those are like two completely different problems that we need to be solved. I don't think they should be related necessarily.

Speaker 1 And so, yes, crypto I believe in because you need ether tokens to transact Ethereum blockchain NFTs, but the consumer doesn't ever have to know if they just pay in credit card, you do that crypto transaction in the background, and then the NFT is on-chain, but it's just displayed to them as like a digital asset.

Speaker 1 You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 1 So it's like disguise all of it, just give them the benefits of ownership.

Speaker 2 What are some controversial takes you got?

Speaker 1 That's probably the most controversial. I don't really like believe in crypto too much.

Speaker 1 I just know that Web2 people, these big brands, will never respect Web3 culture or values.

Speaker 1 Like I used to be the biggest Web3 maxi, like following the satoshi block or bitcoin white paper and like saying like digital being anonymous is so important i just know that the world's not going to accept that and this is like a neutral technology that anybody can use and so as maxi as i used to be as much as i believe in it and think that's important let's be realistic it's not going to happen in our real world and so people need to get past that because people are like really gatekeeping web three communities because of like this whole cultural thing.

Speaker 1 And they all criticize how big brands enter or use the technology or say they're extracting value.

Speaker 1 Oh, another one is I think a lot of NFT traders like will enable rugs. Like you could like a lot of traders will know with almost eight, like 99% certainty this project is a complete rug.

Speaker 1 But since there's a lot of hype and they think they can make money off of it, they'll mince it and then go on Twitter and completely complain about the project being a scam because they lost money.

Speaker 1 But if they make money, they don't say a thing.

Speaker 1 And so the speculators are the ones that are enabling these bad actors and then they're the same ones complaining about the bad actors.

Speaker 1 I agree with that. No one would have bought a Pixelmon for three ETH a pop.
That's like 10 grand at the time if they didn't think they'd make money.

Speaker 3 I'm feeling personally attacked. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So it's like

Speaker 3 how many?

Speaker 1 Oh gosh.

Speaker 1 And it's all because we think we're going to make money. And so same thing.

Speaker 1 I don't want to get really controversial, but with any NFT project, you see a lot of these people that buy in acting like victims.

Speaker 1 When in reality, they're only buying, like, you could say what the roadmap is, execute on the roadmap perfectly. Say you're going to provide this service, this product, and whatever community.

Speaker 1 Do all of that. If the market narrative doesn't like it and the floor doesn't go up, everyone's going to call it a rug, even if you nail all of those.

Speaker 1 So this expectation these are financial instruments that have to appreciate in value or it's a scam is horrible for the industry.

Speaker 2 Twitter seems pretty toxic with that.

Speaker 1 Especially Web3 culture or like people in crypto Twitter. Yeah, it's the worst.
And everyone's just calling each other out. So

Speaker 1 I kind of try to separate myself, stay out of the drama.

Speaker 3 It's definitely toxic.

Speaker 1 Help the big companies implement it the right way where it's not all about the money.

Speaker 1 money like i think every single big brand should have a free nft unlimited supply just so their customers have wallets and they have those nfts for those decentralized brand permissionless collaborations for that purpose alone which big brands other than tiffany you think have executed well

Speaker 1 nike set a really good standard but they also just nailed timing and then just partnered with the right artist

Speaker 1 um to get like that halo effect.

Speaker 3 They moved quick and that was that was why they

Speaker 1 played the meta.

Speaker 1 So like they crushed it, but their forward mission so many people are like don't know what to do right I think Gary V Loki killed it I think a lot of people don't understand that these PFP projects are just IP brands and the only way to grow IP brands is to grow brand awareness right yeah like make different types of media TV shows kids toys books crayons uno decks like he's doing he's actually making toys and so he has like a good head on his shoulders he understands that he's building an IP brand and then NFTs are just like a new medium like a new form of media to grow that brand but again nfts are not equity or ownership in the brand it's just you supporting the brand and you own this thing online

Speaker 1 i tweeted this yesterday if you if you buy a shirt like milk boys like i have one of their shirts from their very first uh merch drop right and if i sell that i paid like a hundred bucks for it i could probably sell it for like three four hundred on ebay right now but i didn't buy that shirt necessarily expecting a return on that or like it was some asset you bought it a shirt to support my favorite creators and just happened to appreciate because it was a limited supply right same thing with nfts you're just buying this pfp that's a product use it as your online identity on Twitter.

Speaker 1 And if the brand grows, great. But not a single NFT project has done anything to warrant anything over like a $10,000 floor.
Like what tangible value does any NFT project do?

Speaker 1 The only thing, only thing that you get from a BAYC or a punk is it looks, it's like the digital version of a Lamborghini.

Speaker 1 Like if I have a Lamborghini and I drive it around, anyone who sees me, they know I'm rich. I'm just signaling.

Speaker 1 Same with watches. I'm just signaling to the world that this person is someone you should listen to.
Now that I don't BAYC, PFP,

Speaker 1 you you have $150,000 to spend on a PFP, people are going to listen to you on Twitter. How else would you signal your status?

Speaker 3 Listen, again, I agree with some of what you say, not everything, because again, at the end of the day, no, here I'll explain why.

Speaker 3 If I buy a Bored Ape, that now allows me access into the Board Ape Yacht Club community.

Speaker 3 And with that, so if I'm growing a project or I'm looking for connections or I'm looking just for people that are relatively smarter than me or have more information or more knowledge, that's a perfect place to be because

Speaker 1 by community.

Speaker 3 You are making that judgment based on that everyone is in here can afford a hundred thousand dollar PFT, not just that, but at the same time, that each person that either if they paid the exuberant amount or they got in early and saw the vision and they invested,

Speaker 3 each person that I've met through the Board Ape Yacht Club community or whatever NFT project that I've been in that has relative value shares very similar commonalities.

Speaker 3 And they all are that each person has a very different story of why and how they got in.

Speaker 3 And each person that you interact with, you can definitely learn something new because you'll never know the guy that's sitting next to you that's 45 runs like an oil and gas company.

Speaker 3 And he just bought one because his son said it looked cool. And he was like, all right, cool.
And then the guy sitting across from him, he runs SEO for a Google. And you're like, oh, shit.

Speaker 3 He bought one because everybody in his engineering department said, yo, we need to buy these things. So, you know, and there's different.

Speaker 1 It's not necessarily why you buy, but it is a good signal that if someone owns one,

Speaker 1 they are of quality.

Speaker 3 Not all of them, though.

Speaker 1 Of course. Not all of them.
I'm making a generalization.

Speaker 3 Okay, but again,

Speaker 3 and I feel like the stigmas that are attached to most of them are unwarranted in a sense that it is maybe an ego thing at some point.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 3 there's

Speaker 3 at the end of the day, I'd like to believe, all right, so that's my opinion. I'd like to believe that.

Speaker 3 Within these groups, there is some level of information and knowledge that can be ascertained and utilized for the same value of what you're spending.

Speaker 3 And maybe it might not come in the sense of business or it might not come in the sense of information or maybe it might just come in the sense of creating a valuable bond or relationship. 100%.

Speaker 3 And whatever it may be, each person has their reasoning. So I don't want to completely put it into one pot and say, for sure.
You know, it's all a dick swinging contest.

Speaker 1 Only context I would add is that BAYC didn't start as like a niche interest. No.

Speaker 1 Where if it's a community around a specific industry or specific niche group of people, like ours is my first project was mushrooms. So it's a group of people that are interested in mushrooms.
Sure.

Speaker 1 It's like that's the common interest. And this NFT is just access.
And if you use it as a PFP, you signal that interest to the world.

Speaker 1 And so that's my only gripe with BYC is that it's kind of just like it was like NFTs. Nobody gives a f about monkeys.
But it was like an NFT community, people that are into NFTs.

Speaker 3 It didn't start as one, but it's definitely created its own internal family. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'd say that.

Speaker 3 I definitely have friends. Like I'm going to LA Sunday because there's a, we do a board ape yacht, like an actual yacht.
We do a board ape yacht club.

Speaker 3 It's the Southern California Board Ape community.

Speaker 3 So we, we have like a whole, everybody in LA.

Speaker 3 We go, the guy from Medcom is there.

Speaker 1 Like, they're, they're, and we're all Web3 blockchain nerds. And I do want to say everybody likes to go nerd.
That is a valuable utility. So that's what I'm believing in.

Speaker 1 Like a Lamborghini is a valuable asset. A Lamborghini.

Speaker 3 I can't learn anything from a Lamborghini. I have a Lamborghini.
You have a Lamborghini.

Speaker 1 All I know is that. I mean,

Speaker 1 there's groups where you have to have a Lamborghini to get it. No, but all I know.

Speaker 3 That's a thing. When I see you, all I know is that one of three things.

Speaker 3 Either you had enough money to buy that Lamborghini, someone, your mom or dad, or someone in your family gave you the Lamborghini, or you're renting or leasing it.

Speaker 1 That's going to be massive, by the way.

Speaker 3 But again, you can't rent or lease an NFT. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh my God. You actually,

Speaker 1 that's a lie.

Speaker 3 You can.

Speaker 3 You actually can rent and you can lease.

Speaker 3 There is a very cool leverage app. I don't know the name of it, but you can actually leverage your NFT.

Speaker 1 Do you know who Fubar is?

Speaker 1 Yeah. He has a platform that allows something similar to this.
It's a weird word. I think it's called, I want to say delegate, but it's becoming a thing.
And NFT renting will be massive.

Speaker 3 I think that's going to be a whole new status symbol, like you said.

Speaker 3 It is a flex. And at the end of the day, once people start, you know, wearing them on like Apple Watches, or, you know, we saw that one where it's an Apple Watch on a chain, you know, put on.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's what I mean.

Speaker 3 I think that's also going to create new, you know, new steps and new changes within jewelry and fashion that will have 100 like we were just talking about those those chips when you scan someone's t-shirt now an you know an active ai or v or sorry ui pops out at you and you're like holy you can interact with it you can hold it you can yep and it's kind of helps that problem with like fake gurus like when people like show a big house or a lamborghini behind them saying i'm successful buy my car or buy my course but you don't know if the car is rented or the house is rented if we have nfc chips in watches in cars you can see where the ownership

Speaker 1 and that can be like an instagram feature where you can actually all right is that guy's lamborghini he has in his profile his or not and then you can just literally check his watch that'll be that'll be next level your whole watch collection shoes everything and millions of people will see it instead of just the 20 people on the street i feel that i see you go on these technology breaks where you don't use any technology for what was it a week Two weeks, probably.

Speaker 1 Two weeks.

Speaker 1 How did you pull that off? Because I feel like I'd go crazy. It's just like, as an entrepreneur, like you have like so many people working for you.

Speaker 1 It's like your obligation to make sure you're at your best. And objectively, like phones and technology are made to addict you.

Speaker 1 And so you need to be like at all times making decisions to optimize your mental performance. And if there's times where you feel like you're too distracted, these things are made to addict you.

Speaker 1 So objectively, everyone's going to get addicted to them. Or my screen time's going up.
I'm like, okay, self-aware.

Speaker 1 I need to cut these out and just focus on learning in the regular world, focus on getting my mental health better so I can like be positive, project positive energy to my team.

Speaker 2 So what were you doing during those two weeks? You were just...

Speaker 1 It's just like reading or going up to Sedona, Arizona, and just enjoying spiritual.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we'll say that. Maybe some mushrooms.
Of course.

Speaker 1 Just realign with my business partner or something. We'll do like isolation trips.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Any closing comments or where people can find you?

Speaker 1 No, I mean, I think that a lot of people... Don't buy me.
Don't look for me. I don't want to be any of you.
Don't find me. But just Brett Malanalthi is my name.
At the Brett Way is my handle.

Speaker 1 But I would just say that like a lot of people have this dichotomy or this like

Speaker 1 they don't want to like switch from Web3 to AI or something, but they need to just be aware that AI is going to be in every aspect of the world and it's here and it can help everybody.

Speaker 1 And so, don't like separate the two. Like, AI is going to be in every business and every industry every day of your life.
Digital ownership is going to be every business every day of your life.

Speaker 1 Embrace both of them. Facts.
That was a great closing comment. I know.
I'm Ari Gold.

Speaker 3 Sean, tell me where to find you.

Speaker 2 Sean, Mike Kelly, Digital Social Hour. Thanks for tuning in, guys.