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How to build a successful crypto alpha community with Hax
114 Plays2 years ago
Hax is a trained psychologist, trader, community builder and self proclaimed troll. He's the cofounder of a community called Alpha Gang who was very successful in securing partnerships with big names and calling future successes, whether in NFTs or crypto.
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Transcript
Introduction to Mr. Hacks and His Journey
00:00:00
Speaker
Mr. Hacks in the building with the shades on.
00:00:03
Speaker
How are you doing, man?
00:00:05
Speaker
I'm doing well.
00:00:05
Speaker
Thank you, brother.
00:00:06
Speaker
How about you?
00:00:08
Speaker
I'm doing fantastic.
00:00:09
Speaker
Better now.
00:00:17
Speaker
Yeah, I'm really excited because I've seen you doing your thing all across Twitter.
00:00:22
Speaker
I've been in your Discord for a bit as well.
00:00:25
Speaker
And I love the energy that you bring to the space.
00:00:28
Speaker
So I was really happy that you said yes.
00:00:30
Speaker
Yeah, my pleasure.
00:00:32
Speaker
How do you get started?
00:00:33
Speaker
How'd you get here?
00:00:34
Speaker
Okay, so I'll give you like...
00:00:37
Speaker
Long story short.
00:00:39
Speaker
No, you can keep it long, man.
00:00:41
Speaker
I have all night for you.
00:00:43
Speaker
I've been in crypto since as long as I can remember.
00:00:49
Speaker
I think I was maybe like 15 at the time when my friend was telling me about it because he actually used to buy stuff off Silk Road.
00:00:57
Speaker
So yeah, I got into Bitcoin like super early, like in the sense.
00:01:02
Speaker
And from there, kind of just...
00:01:05
Speaker
You know how things go.
00:01:05
Speaker
You know how it goes.
00:01:07
Speaker
So, yeah, after that, really, I didn't really like get into NFT still two years ago.
00:01:13
Speaker
And also I couldn't afford much Bitcoin at the time because I was very, very young.
00:01:18
Speaker
So it's kind of like watching on the sidelines, learning, I would say, you know, but buying a little bit, but paper handing every time just because, you know, I got in super early.
00:01:26
Speaker
But yeah.
00:01:27
Speaker
Yeah, that's it.
00:01:28
Speaker
From there, past two years, I've kind of been working on just community building.
Community Building and Founding Alpha Gang
00:01:32
Speaker
I used to be a streamer before, so I've actually been familiar with managing discords, managing communities, and all that good stuff.
00:01:38
Speaker
Yeah, I think in 2016, I used to have a discord server with about maybe like 8,000 or 9,000 members, I believe.
00:01:47
Speaker
And I used to be sponsored by
00:01:51
Speaker
Nexon, Tencent and Pearl Abyss at the time.
00:01:54
Speaker
So just through my sponsors, I was able to kind of, you could say, get an audience or a bigger audience.
00:02:01
Speaker
And from that, you know, people would come into the Discord, we'd be gaming, we'd be voice chatting.
00:02:07
Speaker
So yeah, just got really familiar with that type of vibe.
00:02:10
Speaker
And I feel like when NFTs came around, it was like, I was already kind of doing that stuff.
00:02:14
Speaker
So it was just, it felt natural, I would say.
00:02:17
Speaker
It felt natural.
00:02:19
Speaker
So yeah.
00:02:19
Speaker
That's really cool.
00:02:21
Speaker
From there, I actually started as a market analyst in CyberSnails and then in the Habibi server with Ramo.
00:02:28
Speaker
Yeah, just due to like maybe feeling, you could say, underpaid.
00:02:34
Speaker
I was very underpaid in CyberSnails.
00:02:36
Speaker
I was getting that 0.15 ETH a month that they were giving me.
00:02:39
Speaker
And I was basically like managing the whole server.
00:02:42
Speaker
The whole community was like basically under my hands almost, right?
00:02:45
Speaker
So yeah, people were asking like, why don't you just make your own server?
00:02:49
Speaker
Why don't you just make your own server?
00:02:51
Speaker
And the answer was, I just wasn't ready to launch a project.
00:02:53
Speaker
So I was still working on a roadmap at the time.
00:02:56
Speaker
And I knew what I wanted to make because I know what I'm into.
00:02:59
Speaker
Like you can just tell by the Bob Marley shirt, you know, I'm all about the music and just like stoner vibes, positive energy, love.
00:03:07
Speaker
So yeah, it took me a while to really figure out the roadmap, how I want it.
00:03:11
Speaker
to put it on the blockchain, what were the utilities that I had in mind, getting all the partners and the collaborations in place too.
00:03:18
Speaker
So yeah, it was quite the journey.
00:03:21
Speaker
But almost one year after being in Cyber Snails and Habibis, I already had a community, you could say, and people who knew me and just knew I had a decent reputation in the space.
00:03:32
Speaker
So from there, that's where we started almost one year ago.
00:03:36
Speaker
Actually, it'll be a year and a few weeks.
Skills from Streaming and Gaming to NFTs
00:03:39
Speaker
We started the Alpha Gang server.
00:03:41
Speaker
It was a free mint.
00:03:42
Speaker
It was a free mint, the Genesis collection.
00:03:44
Speaker
And yeah, it was mainly just honestly like my friends, my community, the people that I came across through my Web3 ventures, I would say.
00:03:53
Speaker
And yeah, that's a quick intro story from there.
00:03:56
Speaker
That's really cool.
00:03:58
Speaker
How do you get from the streamer to market analyst to community?
00:04:05
Speaker
Like how did you learn those skills?
00:04:08
Speaker
How did they translate into...
00:04:11
Speaker
each other like i said i was i was managing a discord with about 8 000 people in it and i would mainly be in the voice chat or just texting them you know like while gaming right because i used to play a lot of mmo rpgs essentially is what they were um that's actually how i got the name hacks right um it was through my my clan uh whenever like all the games i played would be pvp so whenever um
00:04:38
Speaker
we'd play like they'd call me a hacker.
00:04:40
Speaker
So, uh, essentially everybody thought I was hacking the game.
00:04:43
Speaker
Cause I could like, uh, basically infinite combo just by timing things really well.
00:04:49
Speaker
Uh, or like, you know, skill chaining, you could say.
00:04:52
Speaker
Uh, so yeah, that's how I got the name.
00:04:55
Speaker
Uh, but yeah, just through that and just through like, you know, uh, winning a few tournaments, right.
00:05:00
Speaker
Getting sponsored.
00:05:01
Speaker
Uh, I was able to kind of build that reputation for myself, uh, as a gamer and as a streamer.
00:05:07
Speaker
Um,
00:05:08
Speaker
I had a YouTube channel, actually.
00:05:09
Speaker
It's still there, but it's just I just don't post on it anymore.
00:05:12
Speaker
But yeah, I used to get about like maybe 30,000, 40,000 views per video on some of the good ones.
00:05:18
Speaker
So it wasn't bad and it was good exposure.
00:05:22
Speaker
And actually through that, I was selling digital collectibles, all kinds of dropshipping back then because I was maybe 16, 17 at the time when I had just started all of this.
00:05:34
Speaker
So I paid myself through university, through my bachelor's degree in psychology, and then eventually through my master's while doing dropshipping.
00:05:43
Speaker
Had a part-time job as well, actually.
00:05:45
Speaker
But yeah, always been in the digital space, you could say.
00:05:48
Speaker
Always been kind of in the gaming space, Discord, and SEO and just online sales.
00:05:54
Speaker
Dude, it's insane because you're...
00:05:57
Speaker
You and I were not that... Like, I'm 30 years old.
00:06:00
Speaker
I don't know how
Evolution of Virtual Culture and Social Media
00:06:01
Speaker
old you are.
00:06:01
Speaker
I'm turning like 27 in 18 days.
00:06:08
Speaker
You're 27?
00:06:09
Speaker
You're three years younger than me?
00:06:11
Speaker
But I feel like you hit that spot in where all social media and everything virtual just...
00:06:22
Speaker
absolutely blew up.
00:06:23
Speaker
Like I got Facebook when I was 16.
00:06:26
Speaker
You must have got it when you were 13 or 12.
00:06:28
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:06:29
Speaker
And like, it makes the whole difference because you were born into it and you were able to like, obviously capture the opportunities that it had.
00:06:37
Speaker
And it, and it like, it seems to have prepared you for this.
00:06:42
Speaker
Yeah, 100%.
00:06:43
Speaker
Honestly, if I wasn't an avid gamer and just so used to Discord and messaging people all the time, I wouldn't be able to do what I do.
00:06:49
Speaker
I'm working literally sometimes 18, 19 hours a day in the Discord.
00:06:53
Speaker
I see you.
00:06:55
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:06:56
Speaker
And the ping is nonstop, right?
00:06:57
Speaker
Always announcements, announcements.
00:06:59
Speaker
So yeah, we're always doing something in the gang.
00:07:01
Speaker
And that's how I like it lively.
00:07:03
Speaker
I like it that there's always something to do because we kind of think of it as our home base, right?
00:07:08
Speaker
We know exactly what's minting.
00:07:09
Speaker
We have the calendars.
00:07:10
Speaker
We have the trackers and, you know, we have all the members from all these different blue chip projects that are just discussing alpha knowledge and sharing the Web3 opportunities out there.
00:07:19
Speaker
Right.
00:07:20
Speaker
But we're not an alpha group.
00:07:21
Speaker
We're actually like a musical NFT collection.
00:07:24
Speaker
So we make our own music as Alpha Gang.
00:07:26
Speaker
We make our own productions, our own beats.
00:07:29
Speaker
Everything is fully original.
00:07:31
Speaker
All of our art is hand drawn as well.
00:07:32
Speaker
That's how we're actually able to use like similarities between the artists.
00:07:36
Speaker
Right.
00:07:37
Speaker
We don't name them the artist's name.
00:07:38
Speaker
but there's always the similarities and the looks, right?
00:07:41
Speaker
And that's because we use a fair use disclaimer and all of our arts hand-drawn, original made.
00:07:48
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:07:49
Speaker
So how does it all come together?
00:07:51
Speaker
What's the plan?
00:07:52
Speaker
Because it is named Alpha Gang, and there is some solid alpha.
00:07:59
Speaker
I've seen you make quite a few.
00:08:01
Speaker
I'm in two different groups right now, and I just ended up here because I like the people behind them.
00:08:08
Speaker
I'm only in your Discord because I like your vibe, and I'm not even actively participating because I'm building my own stuff, so I don't really have the time.
00:08:16
Speaker
But it's the only reason.
00:08:18
Speaker
And you have a, that other guy, he's coming up with stuff and it's like few, but huge moves, but you're like coming at it with consistency.
00:08:29
Speaker
And every day there are, there are, there are wins.
00:08:32
Speaker
Like, how does that happen?
00:08:33
Speaker
How do you, how did you get to this place?
00:08:36
Speaker
Honestly, I would say it's
Networking and Partnerships in NFTs
00:08:37
Speaker
a network, right?
00:08:37
Speaker
Like I have a lot of people who share information with me and then there's also like 20 other shot callers in the server, right?
00:08:43
Speaker
So it's just, it's basically,
00:08:46
Speaker
power numbers, you could say, right?
00:08:48
Speaker
The more eyes that you have scanning the markets and analyzing stuff, the more successful you'll be and the more opportunities that you'll catch.
00:08:56
Speaker
For example, there's DTK Crypto.
00:08:58
Speaker
I'm not sure if you're familiar with him, but he's actually one of our partners.
00:09:01
Speaker
And we kind of have, we kind of have like, you could say information relay between the two servers happening at all times.
00:09:08
Speaker
So even between different alpha communities, we get like their information information
00:09:14
Speaker
And then they have my wallets tracked.
00:09:16
Speaker
So basically we're just a big collective, right?
00:09:19
Speaker
Even if we're kind of divided by these different collections or passes or whatever you want to call them, we still work together across different communities.
00:09:27
Speaker
And within the community, we just have so many talented shot callers who are always trading, right?
00:09:32
Speaker
Because that's what they do for a living.
00:09:34
Speaker
Just like myself, they're full-time traders.
00:09:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's honestly just having those eyes always out there, right?
00:09:39
Speaker
Whether it's a community member, whether it's a shot caller, whether it's a staff member, whether it's a partner from another project.
00:09:45
Speaker
I've had Alpha given to me from basically just about everyone, right?
00:09:48
Speaker
From friends to advisors to other founders.
00:09:52
Speaker
other projects.
00:09:53
Speaker
And yeah, like I don't really try to focus too much on that.
00:09:57
Speaker
I actually mainly focus on the crypto side myself.
00:09:59
Speaker
I don't know if you've seen our crypto channel.
00:10:00
Speaker
Yeah, I've seen a few.
00:10:02
Speaker
Yeah, that's usually what, because that's what I do for a living, right?
00:10:05
Speaker
I'm mainly a leverage, like a futures trader.
00:10:08
Speaker
So yeah, NFTs, I kind of do it for fun, just to build the communities.
00:10:12
Speaker
I hold a lot of shit to zero, bro.
00:10:14
Speaker
Like I don't always sell stuff.
00:10:15
Speaker
You know, sometimes I'll flip, right?
00:10:17
Speaker
If it's profitable and, you know, like there isn't a community, it's just all hype.
00:10:20
Speaker
Yeah, I'll definitely sell it.
00:10:21
Speaker
But other than that, like if there's a community, if there's something strong, I like to get to know those people, right?
00:10:26
Speaker
Because those connections kind of mean more to me than just, you know, 0.03 or 0.04 or whatever it is.
00:10:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:32
Speaker
So, yeah, mainly we're a trading group, right?
00:10:36
Speaker
We're a trading group.
00:10:37
Speaker
But yeah, what I usually tell people, or if you look at the OpenSea description, for example, we're hip hop and artist themed musical NFT collection with trading utilities, right?
Bridging Web2 and Web3 with Alpha Gang
00:10:47
Speaker
So what are trading utilities?
00:10:48
Speaker
It's the alpha, it's the bots,
00:10:50
Speaker
It's the nodes, it's the analytical tools, right?
00:10:53
Speaker
So, but why did we pick this theme?
00:10:56
Speaker
Well, it's because it actually brings a lot of webtooth people in.
00:10:59
Speaker
Like you could actually just randomly hop into one of our spaces and you'll see that there's like random musicians who know nothing about NFTs, nothing about crypto.
00:11:07
Speaker
And this was my whole vision of bridging Web 2 and Web 3.
00:11:10
Speaker
Because when I first started, I wish I had, like when I was coming just from Web 2, I wish I had like a community like that, that could actually help me out, look for my benefit.
00:11:17
Speaker
Just, you know, somewhere where I felt like I could vibe and not maybe fall as victim to as many scams or just bad projects, right?
00:11:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:28
Speaker
That was my whole vision behind it.
00:11:29
Speaker
I was hoping to have art that attracts the musicians, the Web2 people, the people who are into celebrities, who are into the music.
00:11:37
Speaker
And that's actually the case.
00:11:39
Speaker
A lot of people in Alpha Gang, they're brand new to NFTs.
00:11:41
Speaker
They're brand new to trading.
00:11:43
Speaker
And they're just looking for somewhere to start.
00:11:45
Speaker
And that's actually what we are.
00:11:46
Speaker
We're a very great starting community for new traders coming into Web3.
00:11:51
Speaker
Honestly, I've been in crypto for a while myself and it would be hard for me to imagine a better place for people to start.
Community Focus and Transparency in Projects
00:12:03
Speaker
I mean, I have a project and we have an amazing community and it would also be a great place to start.
00:12:09
Speaker
I don't want them to listen to this and think like, what the fuck, what about us?
00:12:13
Speaker
So yeah, that is a very good place to start.
00:12:15
Speaker
But your project is, your community is as well.
00:12:18
Speaker
Like there's,
00:12:19
Speaker
There's true empathy and there's true, like people do seem to care about each other.
00:12:24
Speaker
And how did you, how does that happen?
00:12:27
Speaker
How did you make sure that, because now it's you and it's 20 other shot callers and it's probably moderators.
00:12:33
Speaker
Like there's, there's a bunch of people.
00:12:35
Speaker
How do you, how did you instill that?
00:12:38
Speaker
We started as a community focused project, right?
00:12:40
Speaker
Like there was a free mint.
00:12:41
Speaker
I wasn't doing it for the mint, like for the mint funds or the money, right?
00:12:45
Speaker
It was a free mint.
00:12:46
Speaker
And all the royalties went back.
00:12:47
Speaker
I was actually paying $2,000 on my credit card every month before I made a single dollar off Alpha Gang just to actually fund the project, right?
00:12:54
Speaker
So, you know, they knew that I had good intentions in mind.
00:12:58
Speaker
They knew that the other co-founders, the Lou brothers, sorry, they're actually the triplets from the movie Pacific Rim.
00:13:06
Speaker
They're Canadian.
00:13:06
Speaker
What the fuck?
00:13:08
Speaker
Yeah, so they're very well connected.
00:13:11
Speaker
They're very well connected in the space.
00:13:12
Speaker
It's actually how we were able to get so many partnerships, right?
00:13:15
Speaker
Where you have the most partnerships through Alphabot, like in all of Web3, right?
00:13:20
Speaker
Exactly.
00:13:22
Speaker
that's definitely through them because they have a lot of connections.
00:13:24
Speaker
I'm, I'm, I'm well connected in this space, but they're very well connected in web too, right?
00:13:28
Speaker
Cause they're millionaires, they're celebrities.
00:13:30
Speaker
They've worked with Jackie Chan, right?
00:13:31
Speaker
Arnold Schwarzenegger, like all these big names.
00:13:34
Speaker
So it's a different game.
00:13:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:36
Speaker
When we first started, they actually had a little celebrity agency.
00:13:38
Speaker
They were able to bring a couple of celebrities into Alpha Gang.
00:13:41
Speaker
So many founders of like so many different hype projects were minting our OG free mint and holding like
00:13:47
Speaker
imaginary ones the founders they minted alpha gang um pxn their founders nanopass and the whole phantom network that they minted alpha gang right that's crazy right from the start as a free mint before we even minted we got 50 imaginary ones whitelist when like every single group in the space is like fighting and trying to get them
00:14:06
Speaker
And this is how we're able to do it.
00:14:07
Speaker
It's just because us as founders, we're very well connected in this space.
00:14:11
Speaker
And people respect us because they know that we're not cash hungry.
00:14:14
Speaker
We're not just trying to get people's ETH and that we're actually just trying to establish ourselves and make a name for ourselves on Web3 because that is what we're doing, right?
00:14:22
Speaker
And they know that they'll get it right back.
00:14:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:25
Speaker
And it's not even just about getting it right back.
00:14:28
Speaker
I think for them, it's mainly like they see it as a new space and they want to make a name for themselves in this space, right?
00:14:33
Speaker
They want to establish, cement themselves in the space as credible people who are into Web3.
Challenges in the NFT Market
00:14:42
Speaker
And it helps when you make those networks because after that, everything becomes easy, right?
00:14:45
Speaker
You just get handed stuff almost because it's about who you know and
00:14:50
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:14:53
Speaker
It takes a little bit.
00:14:55
Speaker
It took me so long to figure this out, to be honest.
00:14:59
Speaker
And even with my previous business, I always thought that if you build a cool product, the people will naturally come to you.
00:15:08
Speaker
And it was kind of a naive, overly optimistic way to look at things.
00:15:13
Speaker
And then you realize that it's...
00:15:18
Speaker
I low-key laughed a little bit when people were saying your network is your net worth because it seems so simplistic.
00:15:26
Speaker
Yeah, it does.
00:15:27
Speaker
It really does.
00:15:27
Speaker
It sounds so simplistic and especially because it's said in the context of like, if you watch the people around you, if they're worth 5 million, then you're set up.
00:15:36
Speaker
If not...
00:15:39
Speaker
But the truth is, if you want to start a business, if you want to get good opportunities, if you want to do anything good in the world, you need to surround yourself with people who share your values, who themselves can help you set up.
00:15:57
Speaker
Like you need to help.
00:15:59
Speaker
It does take a fucking village.
00:16:01
Speaker
For sure.
00:16:01
Speaker
This is actually like a very basic principle of social psychology that you're referring to.
00:16:06
Speaker
It's like you are the sum of the five people that you hang around with the most.
00:16:09
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, it is a little bit cliche, but at the same time, like if you surround yourself with positive energy people who work hard, who are go-getters, you're more likely to be like them, right?
00:16:19
Speaker
Because you're just associating yourself with them and spending so much time with them.
00:16:22
Speaker
You're in the same environment and just presented the same opportunities as them.
00:16:27
Speaker
So it is definitely true.
00:16:29
Speaker
When you surround yourself with hard workers, you yourself are more likely to become a hard worker.
00:16:33
Speaker
Cause that's all, that's all it comes down to at the end, right?
00:16:35
Speaker
If you put the time in, you put the commitment in and you put your mind to something and you don't just keep repeating the same stupid mistakes, hoping that the results are going to be different, right?
00:16:43
Speaker
You actually like try to strategize, you plan things out.
00:16:48
Speaker
Then, yeah, it's just, it's usually tends to be the nature of things, right?
00:16:51
Speaker
It's like a hard work is rewarded.
00:16:53
Speaker
Sometimes it's slept on, but eventually it'll be rewarded.
00:16:56
Speaker
And as you said earlier, right?
00:16:57
Speaker
Like in this space,
00:16:59
Speaker
It's an attention economy, right?
00:17:01
Speaker
So it's really an attention economy.
00:17:02
Speaker
So even if you're building an amazing product, even if you have so, so much utility, like people will still sleep on you for a picture of a rock, right?
00:17:11
Speaker
Like that's just how it is.
00:17:12
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:17:13
Speaker
That's just how it is.
00:17:14
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:17:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:16
Speaker
Yeah, Zagabon tweeted a few days ago about pay attention to how attention pays.
00:17:21
Speaker
It's like, it sounds like a joke, but when you think about it for a few minutes, it starts to make a lot of sense.
00:17:27
Speaker
And it is the nature of our world.
00:17:30
Speaker
And Web3 is just that almost physical rule on steroids.
00:17:38
Speaker
Go ahead, Simon.
00:17:40
Speaker
It's a culture of just instant...
00:17:43
Speaker
It's the culture of instant gratification.
00:17:44
Speaker
That's all I wanted to say.
00:17:46
Speaker
That irks me sometimes, because it's really like nobody understands the way for gratification in Web3.
00:17:51
Speaker
Very little people do.
00:17:53
Speaker
Very little.
00:17:53
Speaker
Do you think they'll win?
00:17:55
Speaker
Do you think we'll win?
00:17:55
Speaker
Because I'm 100% delayed gratification.
00:17:58
Speaker
I'll work for something for ages.
00:18:00
Speaker
I'll keep investing.
00:18:03
Speaker
And it's fucked me over a few times.
00:18:05
Speaker
Do you think that eventually when it matures,
00:18:09
Speaker
We had our time, honestly, we had our time back in the early days, right, when everybody was just diamond handing everything.
00:18:15
Speaker
But you don't see that happen anymore because a lot of people kind of realize the consequences of that.
00:18:20
Speaker
So even if they were diamond hands, now they tend to flip more.
00:18:23
Speaker
And nobody wants to hold.
00:18:26
Speaker
Everybody wants to stay liquid, especially when the market was as uncertain as it was last year with the price of Ethereum and the price of Bitcoin.
00:18:33
Speaker
People don't want to hold on because they don't want, even if their NFT doesn't dump, they don't want the price of ETH to dump, therefore the floor price to dump.
00:18:41
Speaker
So it's getting really hard.
00:18:43
Speaker
Honestly, it's getting really hard.
00:18:45
Speaker
We'd need to see a lot more adoption happening and we'd need to see a lot less rugs happening.
00:18:51
Speaker
I'm truly convinced until we stop minting open editions for 2.2 million and just letting the founder go buy a GP
00:19:00
Speaker
two days later while the floor price is at a quarter of a cost, right?
00:19:04
Speaker
You get where I'm going with this, right?
00:19:06
Speaker
Until shit like that stop happens, we're just going to keep getting punished, bro, because it's flipper culture.
00:19:11
Speaker
It's flipper culture.
00:19:13
Speaker
The projects aren't actually really building anything.
00:19:15
Speaker
And even when they are, it takes too long to deliver that when they finally do, people are disappointed and they don't.
00:19:20
Speaker
Look at doodles right now, right?
00:19:21
Speaker
Like Genesis, Duplicator, it's gone to shit.
00:19:25
Speaker
And it's because that's what happens.
00:19:27
Speaker
You have high expectations and then it leads up to disappointment.
00:19:30
Speaker
Yeah, and because speculation thrives on, well, speculation, because you're speculating about what they're going to do, and as long as you don't know what they're going to do, you still have, like, I think Artifact is such a great example of that.
00:19:45
Speaker
And they've just, like, taken slaps after slap, like slap after slap.
00:19:53
Speaker
For sure, it's sad, but.
00:19:56
Speaker
It's sad.
00:19:57
Speaker
I think it, I think, honestly, I think they'll come out on top, not just because I'm wearing a clone X right now.
00:20:02
Speaker
I genuinely, I genuinely believe that they're going to, that they're going to come out way, way, way on top because they're, they're looking way beyond the, oh my God, 50, 50, 20% floor price dump.
00:20:17
Speaker
Yeah, no, for sure.
00:20:18
Speaker
It's a long-term play.
00:20:19
Speaker
Like, anything that's, you know, blue-chip status in a sense, right?
00:20:22
Speaker
Like, Nike's involved, right?
00:20:24
Speaker
And they've already, like, artifacts already established themselves in the space, like, countless times with multiple drops.
00:20:29
Speaker
So, um, with those, I usually actually buy into the FUD like I did with the clone, right?
00:20:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:34
Speaker
Because it usually does make good entries.
00:20:37
Speaker
It usually does make good entries, bro, right?
00:20:39
Speaker
Like, to get that clone for a seven and a half, you would have never got that if it wasn't for the FUD, right?
00:20:43
Speaker
If it wasn't for the incidents that took place.
00:20:46
Speaker
So, um,
00:20:47
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:20:48
Speaker
Honestly, just I don't sleep on projects that have delivered in the past, projects that I know are capable of delivering.
00:20:55
Speaker
And everybody's going to mess up, bro.
00:20:57
Speaker
Like nobody's perfect.
00:20:58
Speaker
Not a single project can go their entire Web3 experience without making at least one mistake that upsets at least 10% of the holders.
00:21:04
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:21:05
Speaker
Like it's just, it's bound to happen.
00:21:07
Speaker
And it's better.
00:21:08
Speaker
It's better because you, honestly, if anything, it reinforces the strength of the people who stay holders.
Trading Psychology and Strategies
00:21:17
Speaker
It's a shakeout.
00:21:18
Speaker
There's a loyalty.
00:21:19
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
00:21:20
Speaker
For sure.
00:21:21
Speaker
It weeds out the weak hands.
00:21:22
Speaker
And at the same time, it makes for good volume.
00:21:26
Speaker
And at the same time, like it's it does strengthen the community because the people who actually stay, they want to stay.
00:21:30
Speaker
They're not just there because their bags are pumping or because the floor price keeps going up, you know, like they're there because they find something of value.
00:21:37
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:21:39
Speaker
Oh man, I am.
00:21:40
Speaker
As we were saying, sorry, just to go back before we totally get started.
00:21:43
Speaker
As you were saying about speculation, that's what drives all of these pumps, bro.
00:21:46
Speaker
Like it's 100% speculation, right?
00:21:49
Speaker
Always.
00:21:49
Speaker
That's the thing.
00:21:50
Speaker
we're in a very greedy space where speculation literally determines value.
00:21:55
Speaker
Because when you see those people sweeping 12, 13, that's when floors actually start to move.
00:22:00
Speaker
And all those people are doing are speculating that the price is going to go up.
00:22:02
Speaker
So they ape in and they go in with mass, right?
00:22:05
Speaker
Like they go in 10K, 15K, 20K sweeps, all based on a speculative airdrop, on a speculative NFT that's coming, on a whitelist that they might get, right?
00:22:14
Speaker
So that speculation creates greed, which in terms creates volume.
00:22:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:19
Speaker
And it all is because we're a bunch of retail investors who don't know anything about what we're doing, basically.
00:22:26
Speaker
Like 95%.
00:22:27
Speaker
Yeah, because a lot of us are degening and we're hoping to make that 10x, that 5x return, right?
00:22:33
Speaker
Because it happens a lot and it happens every day in NFTs, right?
00:22:36
Speaker
You can literally 5x within 20 minutes if you just get in the right play, right?
00:22:40
Speaker
Right play, right time.
00:22:41
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:22:42
Speaker
But I think it's...
00:22:45
Speaker
all of us go through the phases.
00:22:47
Speaker
You go slowly from a degen to an investor.
00:22:50
Speaker
Even when I got started, I've said this, I don't know how many times, but I got into it in 2017.
00:22:56
Speaker
And at that point, I'd already been like doing Forex for like a couple of years.
00:23:02
Speaker
I'd played a bunch of online poker.
00:23:04
Speaker
And so I knew about due diligence and I knew about like keeping your emotions in check and staying, like playing the mental game and having a strict mental...
00:23:15
Speaker
bankroll management but then you see the crazy valuations like turning 5k into 45 in what four weeks yeah for sure through the acos and and it just it drives you crazy and then you forget everything and then everything dies down and that's when you're like okay you know what not gonna repeat it the next cycle let me humble myself again exactly i'm gonna learn the lesson 100 and that's how it goes right so it's a game of psychology like
00:23:43
Speaker
That's all trading is, honestly, at the end of the day, especially when you're trading against other people, it's a battle of the minds, right?
00:23:49
Speaker
It's a psychology game.
00:23:51
Speaker
So, yeah, I am a clinical psychologist by trade.
00:23:55
Speaker
I actually was working as a clinical psychologist up until last year.
00:23:57
Speaker
That's when I decided to quit because I was basically losing money to go to work, right?
00:24:03
Speaker
Especially during the bull market, you know what I mean?
00:24:05
Speaker
Like, I was losing money to go to work.
00:24:07
Speaker
Just through One Mint, like GNSS, right?
00:24:11
Speaker
Just because they had
00:24:13
Speaker
some connections, the artifact, right?
00:24:15
Speaker
At the time, I was able to mint 20 of them, right?
00:24:19
Speaker
So 10 on each wallet, two wallets.
00:24:21
Speaker
I was able to mint 20 of them for 0.3 ETH each.
00:24:24
Speaker
And they got up to 1.3 ETH within one day.
00:24:26
Speaker
So literally within a day of 5X my money.
00:24:28
Speaker
And it wasn't like a small amount of money.
00:24:30
Speaker
It was like you go from 6 ETH to...
00:24:33
Speaker
you know, like over 2060, right?
00:24:35
Speaker
So it's, it's a huge, huge profit margin.
00:24:39
Speaker
And you can only do that in the bull run, right?
00:24:41
Speaker
You can only do that if you know how to trade, if you know how to gas work, because that was a very limited drop.
00:24:45
Speaker
Like everybody was trying to go for it.
00:24:47
Speaker
Um, and most people weren't successful.
00:24:49
Speaker
Right.
00:24:49
Speaker
So, um,
00:24:51
Speaker
we try to teach our community stuff like that to prepare them.
00:24:54
Speaker
So even when the bear market was here, we'd still be trying to teach them stuff for the boat.
00:24:58
Speaker
Like even with the alpha gang mystery drop of the red boxes, there was a little bit of a gas war for that, but I set it up that way because I want them to practice.
00:25:05
Speaker
I want them to get used to gas wars.
00:25:07
Speaker
So when the bull market comes, they're actually able to make those really big plays.
00:25:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:10
Speaker
It's actually one of the things that I was, that I was thinking about, because I haven't spent enough time that I know the full scope of, of everything that you do and how you do it.
00:25:18
Speaker
And, and then there's calling alpha,
00:25:21
Speaker
telling people, hey, this is a cool opportunity.
00:25:23
Speaker
And then there's teaching people how to invest, how to take profit, how to manage your bankroll.
00:25:31
Speaker
How much emphasis do you guys put on that?
00:25:32
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
00:25:33
Speaker
Also...
00:25:34
Speaker
uh i i don't manage anybody's assets i'm not a financial advisor i never claim to make anybody rich i don't tell people hey join alpha gang you're gonna make 10 eath 15 eath people have done it people have done it people do it every day almost but not every day but in the bull run they did it every day literally like people were printing eath but that's not what we pitch alpha gang as right we're we're a musical nft collection with trader utilities and we just have a really strong trading community like a
00:25:59
Speaker
a lot of good traders and you can learn from these good traders, right?
00:26:02
Speaker
And a lot of them are willing to teach you stuff.
00:26:05
Speaker
So me, myself, for example, I mainly host live streams in the Discord about crypto trading, leverage trading.
00:26:11
Speaker
And then I also, you know, we'll do a little breakdown of IC tools, NFT nerds, all these different tools and just teach them about how they can actually analyze floors, sell walls,
00:26:21
Speaker
and stuff like that with NFTs.
00:26:23
Speaker
But yeah, obviously, like, I'll tell them, like, get this whitelist, you know, this might be a good opportunity.
00:26:27
Speaker
It's just presenting Web3 opportunities, like get this whitelist, keep an eye on this collection, it might move, you know, stuff like that.
00:26:32
Speaker
Mainly, I'm more focused on the community building side, the crypto trading side, and the education side, which is either live streams, or just info.
00:26:42
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, vibes, of course.
00:26:44
Speaker
And yeah, most of what I do, honestly, is kind of like, I'll prepare little psychology tricks, right?
00:26:50
Speaker
It's kind of like a, you could say it's like a fire alarm or like a fire drill, right?
00:26:55
Speaker
So I'll post like a webhook in our announcements and I'll troll them, right?
00:26:59
Speaker
I'll be like, you know, like the person who- Yeah, exactly.
00:27:01
Speaker
That's fucking hilarious.
00:27:03
Speaker
Yeah, so I'll do things like that just to get them like, don't interact with webhooks, right?
00:27:07
Speaker
And then I'll give them another option and be like, you know what?
00:27:10
Speaker
I'll give you guys another chance.
00:27:11
Speaker
Just scan this barcode.
00:27:12
Speaker
And then they, they, they fall for it.
00:27:13
Speaker
They vote, let's scan this barcode.
00:27:15
Speaker
I'm like, no, never scan barcodes.
00:27:16
Speaker
Right.
00:27:16
Speaker
So it's again, another lesson.
00:27:18
Speaker
And I just try to find different fun ways to kind of incorporate this for the new people that are coming in where they're still having a laugh, but they're learning something.
00:27:25
Speaker
Right.
00:27:26
Speaker
So, um,
00:27:28
Speaker
essentially uh like what alpha gang is it's just an embodiment of web3 to be honest we have the gamers we have the musicians we have the rappers the freestylers uh we have the traders the dgens like everything bro we're very welcome encompassing community we have 50 year olds we have 16 year olds we don't care bro you're here to trade you're here to have fun with nfts you're here to learn about crypto right just not manage your own risk we always tell them manage your own risk uh and
00:27:52
Speaker
you know, like, yes, we might even give them an exit or we might give them a stop loss.
00:27:55
Speaker
For example, when you're crypto trading, I always tell them only traded 5% of your total portfolio, never risk more than that.
00:28:01
Speaker
Right.
00:28:01
Speaker
So we do give them some advice for risk management.
00:28:05
Speaker
Uh, but we're not like, um,
00:28:07
Speaker
a portfolio manager in terms of like, I'm going to tag you until you dump, make sure you sell.
00:28:13
Speaker
That's up to you, right?
00:28:14
Speaker
We give suggested exits, we give suggested entries, but you're free to follow whatever you want to follow at the end of the day.
00:28:20
Speaker
And most importantly, you're not just there to make money.
00:28:22
Speaker
You're there because you want to be part of the community.
00:28:24
Speaker
You have some value to offer back to the community, right?
00:28:27
Speaker
Because...
00:28:28
Speaker
We give a lot of value to our community.
00:28:29
Speaker
So if you're in our community, we hope to get some value back from you, even if it's just positivity and good energy and good vibes.
00:28:35
Speaker
Right.
00:28:35
Speaker
So that's kind of how we build the community.
00:28:40
Speaker
It's such a good balance.
00:28:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:42
Speaker
I'm very active in the community too.
00:28:43
Speaker
So that definitely helps.
00:28:44
Speaker
Right.
00:28:45
Speaker
That's the euphemism of the century.
00:28:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:49
Speaker
yeah it definitely helps build a strong community when they see like the founder is active and he's friendly because that's that's that's almost like an example like a role model you could say for them to shadow right because if if
00:28:58
Speaker
if they see the founder being an ass, he's being a jerk, he's being very down and negative all the time, then the community is probably not going to vibe too well with that.
00:29:05
Speaker
Right.
00:29:06
Speaker
When they actually, and if he's not there, you feel cheated as well in some way, because you feel like you bought into something for one person and, and yeah, and they're not there.
00:29:14
Speaker
It's really cool.
00:29:15
Speaker
Cause that's such a, what you're describing is a, is a very important balance.
00:29:20
Speaker
And what I think most Western nations have got wrong where, um,
00:29:27
Speaker
citizens have kind of become babies of like you're showed the way you've, you're told what you need to do.
00:29:34
Speaker
You're told that you need to study, that you need to get that job, that you need to do all of these things.
00:29:40
Speaker
And then when something bad happens, you're not really equipped, um,
00:29:44
Speaker
and how to deal with it.
00:29:45
Speaker
But it's really cool that you're mindful of this and that you're actually putting them through the drill.
00:29:52
Speaker
Honestly, when I saw the webhook thing, I laughed a little bit.
00:29:56
Speaker
It was a genius learning experience.
00:29:59
Speaker
For sure.
00:30:00
Speaker
Well, we're always thinking of just like fun ways to kind of
00:30:03
Speaker
engage with the community and actually provide value back to them, right?
00:30:07
Speaker
That's the most important part.
00:30:08
Speaker
Like if you're going to hold my project, if you're going to be part of our community, I want to be able to offer you value.
00:30:12
Speaker
Otherwise, why are you holding this JPEG?
00:30:13
Speaker
Why are you holding this MP4 file or whatever it is, right?
00:30:15
Speaker
So,
00:30:17
Speaker
Yeah, definitely.
00:30:18
Speaker
We've always been, since the first day, community-focused, community-driven.
00:30:22
Speaker
And our main goal at the end of the day is to offer value in utilities, mass utilities, mass value to all of our holders, and to actually allow them to express themselves, whether it's artistically, musically, no matter what value they can bring to the gang and help us just be a community.
00:30:41
Speaker
we're accepting of it so we have people making memes we have people making fan art we have people making music we have people rapping we have people freestyling producing beats right it's just all these different talents coming together and it's like hey this is the value i can bring so i want to bring some value to the community let me share this with you guys and all of us do this the whole the whole staff team and sometimes just community members right they're willing to share uh so yeah it just makes for a very
00:31:07
Speaker
intrinsically rewarding experience.
00:31:11
Speaker
You don't do it just because of an outer reward.
00:31:15
Speaker
It feels self-rewarding on its own.
00:31:17
Speaker
Yeah, it's amazing.
00:31:20
Speaker
There's a couple of things that I want to touch base on in here, but one of them is
00:31:24
Speaker
like what makes an organization, what makes a business is the values of the people that make it up.
00:31:30
Speaker
And that's easier said than done usually because you usually do need a very strong business case.
00:31:36
Speaker
But in your case, it's like you have these values that one of your biggest assets is yourself because you're extremely vocal, you're extremely present, you have a good energy, you have good vibes that people resonate with.
00:31:50
Speaker
And so it does make it easier to build something around.
00:31:55
Speaker
But you are... Sorry, the most important part, I think, isn't just all of that, but it's to be relatable.
00:32:02
Speaker
I think the community...
00:32:03
Speaker
wants to feel like they can relate to a founder and not that just he's behind some, you know, like he's building in the background all the time because that's bullshit, bro.
00:32:13
Speaker
You can build, you can be present at the same time, even if it's just little bits of time.
00:32:17
Speaker
You don't need to disappear for six months.
00:32:19
Speaker
You don't need to not tweet for six months, right?
00:32:21
Speaker
Like nobody's building that hard where they can't grab their phone and just send a tweet that takes two seconds, right?
00:32:27
Speaker
So it is about that balance, again, at the same time.
00:32:32
Speaker
But it's also like,
00:32:33
Speaker
If you're building a project, if you're doing something in this space, you have to be passionate about it.
00:32:37
Speaker
And if you're passionate about it, you're not neglecting your community.
00:32:41
Speaker
That's the first thing that actually makes the project, is the community.
00:32:45
Speaker
Without the NFT holders, why is there the NFTs?
00:32:49
Speaker
Exactly.
00:32:49
Speaker
So I feel like a lot more projects, especially coming in from Web2, they neglect this.
00:32:55
Speaker
They forget to...
00:32:56
Speaker
You know, they bring in the allure, right, of like the VCs, the big spenders, the investors, but they forget to nourish and they neglect their community.
00:33:05
Speaker
So they're left with nothing at the end other than flippers or people who, you know, they just bought in hopes that their investment would go up and they don't care at all what happens in the server or what happens with that brand, right?
00:33:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:19
Speaker
Yeah, all the strong communities that I've seen, honestly, with like NFTs, you know, they say it's like the community is the main utility, like Azuki, the community is the main utility, right?
00:33:30
Speaker
It's sad, but it's true.
00:33:31
Speaker
You know, like these founders could be doing a lot more.
00:33:34
Speaker
Don't get me wrong.
00:33:34
Speaker
These founders should be doing so much more, especially the type of funding that they have.
00:33:38
Speaker
But it's
Beyond Hype: IP and Storytelling in NFTs
00:33:40
Speaker
true.
00:33:40
Speaker
It's true.
00:33:40
Speaker
They have a strong community and it's just because the community came together.
00:33:43
Speaker
So it doesn't matter what the founder does because the community is just so united.
00:33:47
Speaker
The community is just so strong.
00:33:50
Speaker
It obviously helps because all their bags are going up, right?
00:33:53
Speaker
So it's hard to tell.
00:33:54
Speaker
Sometimes the line gets a little bit construed, right?
00:33:58
Speaker
It's a whole chicken and the egg thing.
00:34:00
Speaker
Where did it start?
00:34:02
Speaker
Did it start with the... Like the community got here because of the founders.
00:34:07
Speaker
No, it is really, really interesting.
00:34:09
Speaker
And that's where we are, I think, in our cycle.
00:34:13
Speaker
We're in a place where you...
00:34:16
Speaker
I don't know if this will still be the case in 10 or 15 years, because at some point you have to build a business.
00:34:22
Speaker
I love, like, I love what I see from Mizuki.
00:34:25
Speaker
And I, I gotta say like the, the, the community itself is so, is so inviting and you kind of want to be a part of it.
00:34:33
Speaker
And I look forward to what they do.
00:34:35
Speaker
So vocal.
00:34:36
Speaker
Yeah, definitely.
00:34:38
Speaker
But in a good way, not in a, in your face.
00:34:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:43
Speaker
Yeah, definitely.
00:34:44
Speaker
No, they're good vibes.
00:34:45
Speaker
They're good vibes.
00:34:46
Speaker
Mainly what upsets me, to be honest, like when I see these big projects that get so much funding with like so much royalties on second day, it's not envy.
00:34:54
Speaker
Honestly, it's not like I wish I had this for my project, but it's just...
00:34:59
Speaker
I don't see them building as hard or actually offering as much utilities or as value as anybody else because they don't have to, because they simply don't have to, you know what I mean?
00:35:08
Speaker
Like they don't have to offer value or utilities to compete because they can just release an airdrop and based on speculation, pump everybody's bags, right?
00:35:16
Speaker
Because when they're releasing an airdrop, most of the time, these airdrops don't really have much value.
00:35:20
Speaker
They could be just at PFP, but other parties who FOMO in because the Genesis is at a high floor,
00:35:26
Speaker
So now all the bag, all the holders get their bags pumped.
00:35:29
Speaker
Right.
00:35:30
Speaker
So I don't, I don't have a problem necessarily with this airdrop utility, but it is, it is essentially just dumping on other people.
00:35:38
Speaker
Like that's all it is.
00:35:39
Speaker
You're creating something out of nothing.
00:35:41
Speaker
You're giving it to your holders unless, unless it has actual value and it's, but, but most of the time they'll release it just like speculation, right?
00:35:48
Speaker
It's just like speculation here.
00:35:50
Speaker
There might be an airdrop.
00:35:51
Speaker
You're going to get a dark Azuki.
00:35:52
Speaker
Right.
00:35:52
Speaker
And it just leaves like,
00:35:54
Speaker
room for things to happen, magically happen, right?
00:35:58
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely think we're still early.
00:35:59
Speaker
Like, just to summarize it, to keep it short, we're still super, super early.
00:36:03
Speaker
And, like, the space is not ready to see a change in, you know, the top 100 NFT market caps.
00:36:11
Speaker
Like, the top 100 coins in the space, crypto coins, they're all actually building something.
00:36:16
Speaker
Or they already have built something.
00:36:17
Speaker
Or they've provided some kind of value to the space or the blockchain or whatever it is.
00:36:22
Speaker
But with NFT projects, it's not like that at all.
00:36:24
Speaker
Right.
00:36:24
Speaker
It's not like that.
00:36:25
Speaker
They don't have to offer any value.
00:36:26
Speaker
They don't have to create anything new.
00:36:28
Speaker
You know, Azuki's right to fame was that they made the 721A, but that wasn't even accurate.
00:36:33
Speaker
Right.
00:36:33
Speaker
That was like a copy contract from another.
00:36:36
Speaker
So essentially, essentially, it's like we're super early.
00:36:40
Speaker
And right now, the people who are like made it is people who made it back in the bull run.
00:36:44
Speaker
And now they're just kind of maintaining their floors.
00:36:46
Speaker
Right.
00:36:47
Speaker
It's the blue chips.
00:36:48
Speaker
Yeah, very competitive space and very speculative space.
00:36:51
Speaker
And it's really like investment driven.
00:36:57
Speaker
So obviously collections who do happen to have high floor airdrops and all of these coins that they give to their holders that they can make millions of, right?
00:37:06
Speaker
Like those are obviously going to be the projects that thrive.
00:37:08
Speaker
But unfortunately, those projects tend to kind of be more Ponzi-nomic driven, right?
00:37:13
Speaker
Like you understand where I'm going with this?
00:37:16
Speaker
It's like the holders are incentivized through the financial gains that they make.
00:37:21
Speaker
But when you actually strip it down to the psychological principles of how they're operating the project, it's very similar to a Ponzi, right?
00:37:29
Speaker
Like it is sadly, but it's the truth.
00:37:32
Speaker
You need to, in order to, there's a lot of truth in what you're saying and I can get behind pretty much most of it.
00:37:41
Speaker
There's different timeframes.
00:37:44
Speaker
Like it's like in crypto, when you're trading, you're looking at it on the one minute and then on 15 and then on the hour to kind of validate and validate your hypothesis.
00:37:53
Speaker
And for this, it's a little bit similar because you're,
00:37:58
Speaker
azuki i think from what i'm getting from it from my what my gut is telling me i think they're going to wrap it up nicely i think that what they're doing is actually weaving a story using nfts using their um their community in order to do it and and i think they're going to do something great with their ip um it's not one of those that i'm
00:38:20
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:38:21
Speaker
And great art.
00:38:23
Speaker
And they seem to have smart minds within the team and they seem to have smart minds in their community who they listen to.
00:38:31
Speaker
And so that's one of the parts that makes NFT such an interesting asset class.
00:38:39
Speaker
It's not just a financial asset.
00:38:41
Speaker
It's a lot more.
00:38:42
Speaker
And you're actually storytelling has never been a more important role in a marketing strategy for a brand than it is
00:38:49
Speaker
with NFTs.
00:38:51
Speaker
100%.
00:38:51
Speaker
Because at the end of the day, it's a digital asset, right?
00:38:54
Speaker
And you don't want to just be selling a digital asset without a story.
00:38:58
Speaker
So yeah.
00:39:00
Speaker
For sure.
00:39:00
Speaker
I totally agree with that.
00:39:01
Speaker
I'm not trying to fud Zuki or anything, but I just think... They'd be hard to fud anyway.
00:39:06
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:39:08
Speaker
You can't fud them.
00:39:09
Speaker
Right now, at least.
00:39:11
Speaker
Their IP is undeniably great.
00:39:12
Speaker
They have an amazing IP.
00:39:14
Speaker
Same with Bored Ape.
00:39:15
Speaker
Same with Clones.
00:39:16
Speaker
They have an amazing IP, and you can't deny that.
00:39:18
Speaker
Even Doodles, they had an amazing IP.
00:39:19
Speaker
They just lost their community.
00:39:22
Speaker
For sure.
00:39:23
Speaker
And there's definitely always going to be room for that, and there's definitely always going to be space for that.
00:39:26
Speaker
I just like to see these IP projects...
00:39:29
Speaker
deliver more because there's so much that you can do on the blockchain and they have so much capital and funds raised.
00:39:36
Speaker
The sky's the limit really for them.
00:39:37
Speaker
But unfortunately, we don't see that, right?
00:39:39
Speaker
We just see some more art.
00:39:41
Speaker
We just see some more airdrops when we could be seeing a lot more, right?
00:39:44
Speaker
Like maybe I'm being a little bit greedy, but I think the founders there are being more greedy, you know, because they have a lot of funds to play with that they could do a lot for the community with.
00:39:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's also a little bit scary right now to deliver because look at what happens.
00:39:58
Speaker
Artifact is trying to do it and they're delivering dope stuff.
00:40:01
Speaker
And the response is just not there because expectations are high.
00:40:05
Speaker
Liquidity is low.
00:40:07
Speaker
And so you're you're just kind of throwing awesome stuff into the into the wind.
00:40:12
Speaker
So I'd agree with you.
00:40:16
Speaker
I'd love to see more from these people.
00:40:18
Speaker
But like being a being like from the entrepreneur founder perspective, I get it.
00:40:24
Speaker
Take your time if you got to take it.
00:40:26
Speaker
Come out with the at the right time for honestly right now.
00:40:29
Speaker
They've been up until now.
00:40:31
Speaker
They've been timing.
00:40:32
Speaker
I'm talking about Azuki now, but they've been timing everything so perfectly.
00:40:36
Speaker
And I think that's what Bored Apes have done and Yuga have done so well as well.
00:40:40
Speaker
Like the timing of every single thing they've put out was just absolutely on point.
00:40:46
Speaker
For sure.
00:40:46
Speaker
And they really pay attention to market conditions, right?
00:40:49
Speaker
They don't drop something when the volume is completely dead.
00:40:52
Speaker
And even when it is, they're the center of attention.
00:40:54
Speaker
So they're, they're sucking all that volume anyways.
00:40:56
Speaker
Right.
00:40:56
Speaker
So, um, uh, yeah, no, there's that they're definitely smart.
Community Engagement and Ethics in Web3
00:41:01
Speaker
Like both teams are definitely very, very intelligent.
00:41:03
Speaker
They know what they're doing.
00:41:05
Speaker
Um,
00:41:06
Speaker
But yeah, again, me personally, just because I'm a founder and I know how much I've delivered with such little, I'm thinking like how much I could actually deliver with that amount of funds.
00:41:14
Speaker
And it's just insane, right?
00:41:16
Speaker
It's insane.
00:41:16
Speaker
Like they don't give even 1% back of what they made to their community, which is a shame, which is a shame because that's their bread and butter.
00:41:24
Speaker
The community is the reason they have those high floors.
00:41:26
Speaker
The community is the reason that they're getting exposure every day through PFPs, through all these people marketing them basically for free, right?
00:41:37
Speaker
Dude, you're absolutely preaching to the choir.
00:41:39
Speaker
I resonate with this so much.
00:41:42
Speaker
I am the same where I don't make it if my community doesn't make it.
00:41:47
Speaker
I launched my project
00:41:50
Speaker
we had a couple of launches in November and then in March, which were great conditions short term, but like midterm, everything just got blasted off in June.
00:42:00
Speaker
I didn't cash out anything.
00:42:02
Speaker
I didn't cash out anything because I don't feel like if my community hasn't made it with me, I'm not going to make it.
00:42:08
Speaker
And then I'm going to suck it up until we all make it together.
00:42:11
Speaker
And so I, this resonates with me so much.
00:42:13
Speaker
And I think it's, did you ever hear about Italian?
00:42:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:16
Speaker
Yeah, I think so.
00:42:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:19
Speaker
So I personally had high hopes because the founder seemed very, she was very vocal.
00:42:27
Speaker
She called herself a builder and all of that.
00:42:29
Speaker
And she got people into the project and made a lot of money for herself, was flaunting it in ways that were borderline.
00:42:39
Speaker
And then...
00:42:40
Speaker
At some point, they were like, okay, we're going to abandon this and just move to something else in a way that a lot of people felt alienated.
00:42:49
Speaker
And I think, so she got a lot of heat for it.
00:42:53
Speaker
And I think it was a good example of
00:42:57
Speaker
what you guys are doing is not three is not web three.
00:43:00
Speaker
It's, it's web 2.2.
00:43:02
Speaker
You're, you're just using web three tech in order to extract, extract value.
00:43:09
Speaker
And, and, and that's not, I think the future of what we're doing, the, the, the projects that we'll have,
00:43:19
Speaker
obliterated everyone else on the market in 10, 15 years will have got it well and will have given a lot of value back to their existing.
00:43:27
Speaker
Yeah, 100%.
00:43:28
Speaker
They're actually using the blockchain properly.
00:43:31
Speaker
They're using it to
00:43:33
Speaker
you know, make these token gated communities, token gated utilities actually offer kind of, you could say memberships, right?
00:43:39
Speaker
You could see all, even, even in these blue chips, you can see it as prestigious memberships, right?
00:43:43
Speaker
To these clubs, fancy clubs.
00:43:45
Speaker
Right.
00:43:45
Speaker
So, um, yeah, yeah.
00:43:48
Speaker
We're just super early in this space.
00:43:49
Speaker
Like we barely scratched the surface of what you can actually do with a smart contract of the types of utilities that you can offer to a community with a token.
00:43:57
Speaker
Right.
00:43:58
Speaker
like just today we released token gated music videos for our community you need to connect your wallet to a page sign the message and then you can actually download all the contents you can download the beat you can download the video right so there's just so much cool stuff that you can do for your community using the blockchain but unfortunately people just
00:44:17
Speaker
You know, it's like, okay, their images.
00:44:21
Speaker
And then actually, the most recent AMA that I was in, like someone compared it to their rocks, the rocks that you keep in your wallet.
00:44:27
Speaker
And sometimes they go up in value, you know, but as long as we keep that mentality, as long as we're just seen as rocks that sometimes go up in value based on speculation,
00:44:35
Speaker
Like we're not going to have the advancement.
00:44:36
Speaker
We're not going to have the mass adoption.
00:44:38
Speaker
We're not going to have the people coming in from Web 2 to Web 3, right?
00:44:41
Speaker
Because we're just going to keep that stigma that surrounds NFT of these founders who come into this space, suck a bunch of money.
00:44:46
Speaker
They don't deliver shit.
00:44:48
Speaker
And then they live these outlandish lives where they're literally spending the community's money on like all types of substances and Lord knows what, right?
00:44:55
Speaker
So...
00:44:56
Speaker
um yeah we these guys aren't rock stars like why are we supporting their drug addictions why are we supporting their fancy lifestyles when they haven't done anything for us it's just that us as dgens we're just like so we want that instant gratification we want to mint their projects so we can flip it for money so we give them money to use someone else's as exit liquidity while they still get to keep their money and it's just it's a whole mess it's a whole mess like
00:45:19
Speaker
we need the space to change, honestly.
00:45:22
Speaker
And I'm a very big preacher of that.
00:45:24
Speaker
Every time we get into these discussions, I actually get heated because I'm passionate about this.
00:45:29
Speaker
I can tell.
00:45:30
Speaker
And it pisses me off.
00:45:31
Speaker
It pisses me off when I see someone just running with 2.2 million and not doing shit for the space.
00:45:36
Speaker
Because that's just liquidity gone out of the space.
00:45:38
Speaker
And people ask, why are our bags dumping?
00:45:41
Speaker
Well, bro, our bags are dumping because we keep funding and minting shitty projects that rug us, right?
00:45:45
Speaker
It's like,
00:45:47
Speaker
It's just liquidity leaving the space that most often won't come back in because those people are now scarred.
00:45:52
Speaker
Those people got liquidated.
00:45:53
Speaker
Those people lost their life savings, right?
00:45:54
Speaker
They're not going to come back to NFTs.
00:45:55
Speaker
They're going to tell everybody else that NFTs are a scam, that I lost all my money.
00:45:59
Speaker
And it's just going to keep that negative energy within the space that we really don't need because it can be easily filtered through, you know, properly interviewing founders, making sure that if we're going to fund this project, they're in a vested, they're in a vesting period.
00:46:12
Speaker
Or there's so many different ways we can go about it where we can ensure like,
00:46:15
Speaker
okay, if this is the roadmap you promised to deliver on, you're going to deliver on it, right?
00:46:20
Speaker
But we don't see that type of responsibility within the space.
00:46:23
Speaker
It's like, oh, it's just, oh, the holder's fault.
00:46:25
Speaker
You're the one who minted, bro.
00:46:26
Speaker
It's your fault.
00:46:27
Speaker
Well, no, like there needs to be some kind of standardization.
00:46:31
Speaker
And I'm not asking for centralization.
00:46:33
Speaker
I'm asking for standardization within these projects where it's like,
00:46:37
Speaker
okay, this project is not going to build shit.
00:46:39
Speaker
Well, just cancel them, right?
00:46:41
Speaker
Cancel culture is so strong within, you know, like celebrities or people who do or say stupid stuff.
00:46:47
Speaker
Well, what about the people who are doing like literally crimes on the internet?
00:46:51
Speaker
They deserve to be canceled.
00:46:53
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:46:55
Speaker
Yeah, but what's really hard about this and about cancellation is one, people who are in the position where they should be canceled are very smart and very good at hiding their tracks.
00:47:06
Speaker
And even if you're on the blockchain and you're supposed to be able to track everything, it's a lot of transactions.
00:47:13
Speaker
When you look at Luna, there were in the transactions a bunch of
00:47:18
Speaker
hints that there was some stupid shit going on that it wasn't for the people to invest in.
00:47:27
Speaker
It was just super centralized stuff.
00:47:30
Speaker
But when all of this gets lost in billions of transactions, then it's really hard to see.
00:47:35
Speaker
And the other thing that really makes it hard is that
00:47:40
Speaker
If you're holding a bag, you're incentivized to protect that person, even if they're doing something nefarious.
00:47:49
Speaker
And I think I have a lot of respect for Izuki and Zagabon and how they've turned it around.
00:47:56
Speaker
But I do think that if people were not holding assets that were worth tens of thousands of dollars at the time where the fight happened, he would have been canceled for sure. 100%.
00:48:08
Speaker
100%, but people were overly invested and overly attached, right?
00:48:11
Speaker
And that's what it comes down to at the end with a lot of these bags that are going down.
00:48:15
Speaker
And it's like the communities are still shilling them like they did even back in the bull run.
00:48:18
Speaker
It's because they're overly invested and they're overly attached.
00:48:21
Speaker
So this is almost like their hopium.
00:48:23
Speaker
If they don't support, if they don't protect the FUD, then they lose control, right?
00:48:27
Speaker
It comes down to control.
00:48:28
Speaker
This is like a psychological principle now, right?
00:48:30
Speaker
Because if they don't feel in control, if they don't feel they're in power, then they feel helpless.
00:48:35
Speaker
And if they feel helpless, then they're not going to make it in their heads, right?
00:48:38
Speaker
So, yeah, yeah.
00:48:39
Speaker
Honestly, it's just a very interesting space.
00:48:42
Speaker
And I like to, like, sometimes just look at things from the outside and kind of do, like, a little case study, right?
00:48:47
Speaker
Especially with, like, all these different projects that, you know, like, make it like a maze to get the whitelist for them, right?
00:48:54
Speaker
You have to, like, get this orb, and then you have to get that orb, and then you get that orb.
00:48:58
Speaker
And it's like you're running through a whole maze that the founder made just so that you're able to pay him money.
00:49:05
Speaker
You know, you get where I'm going with this?
00:49:06
Speaker
It's true.
00:49:07
Speaker
It's ridiculous.
00:49:09
Speaker
But like that, it's fucking ridiculous.
00:49:11
Speaker
But it's fun too.
00:49:11
Speaker
It's actually what's happening.
00:49:13
Speaker
Yeah, but it's actually what's happening, bro.
00:49:14
Speaker
It's like you're trying to secure your payment.
00:49:16
Speaker
You're trying to get on the waitlist so you can pay the founder money and he's making you run through all these obstacles that you're doing.
00:49:22
Speaker
You're acting like it's an MMORPG game and you're on a quest to get the shiny object, right?
00:49:27
Speaker
But it's all based on speculation, bro.
00:49:29
Speaker
Like maybe you're running around and you're working 40 hours a week trying to get whitelist for the server.
00:49:34
Speaker
You're working a full-time shift basically for one week.
00:49:38
Speaker
And maybe the mint price goes under the floor price, right?
00:49:42
Speaker
So now it's like you wasted your time that you'll never get back and your investment is down the drain, right?
00:49:47
Speaker
So I just think there's smarter ways.
00:49:50
Speaker
that people should go about doing things.
00:49:52
Speaker
And I think that, you know, like the FOMO hype driven culture needs to steady down a bit.
00:49:57
Speaker
And we need to actually, if this is going to be an investor's game, we need to all think like investors.
00:50:02
Speaker
We can't have 80% of us just trying to flip for a $10 profit.
00:50:06
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:50:07
Speaker
Like it's not going to work.
00:50:09
Speaker
But that's the thing.
00:50:10
Speaker
We've like retail people, retail investors have never really been taught what it is to invest.
00:50:16
Speaker
And so you're not, I was actually having this conversation on the podcast a few days ago.
00:50:20
Speaker
You're not taught how to do due diligence and how to do your research and how to vet a project.
00:50:25
Speaker
And even after three, four, five years, you get people who get into the wrong projects.
00:50:31
Speaker
And so I think it's just, we're going through a natural phase of human evolution where,
00:50:39
Speaker
And we're actually, thanks to Web3, kind of regaining control over something that we didn't have a lot of control over because it was reserved to the elites.
00:50:49
Speaker
And so it's probably going to take a few more bull runs in order for normal people like us to understand, all right, I can't just make a split decision to invest in a project.
00:51:01
Speaker
I actually need to research it.
00:51:06
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
00:51:06
Speaker
Definitely.
00:51:07
Speaker
Definitely.
00:51:09
Speaker
I think in this space, information is very, very powerful.
00:51:12
Speaker
And clearly we see that every day, right?
00:51:14
Speaker
With all these collections mooning.
00:51:15
Speaker
And it's like, if you add that information, then you're riding the moon bag.
00:51:18
Speaker
If you didn't, then you missed out and you're FOMOing, right?
00:51:21
Speaker
So information is definitely very valuable in this space.
00:51:25
Speaker
And I think a lot of the big players, especially like the whales of the Laudiquility, they don't like to share this information, right?
00:51:30
Speaker
They don't make it accessible to people.
00:51:31
Speaker
So they can actually manipulate the floors the way that they want to, right?
00:51:35
Speaker
So...
00:51:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's a very predatory space at the moment.
00:51:39
Speaker
And this doesn't just apply to traders.
00:51:40
Speaker
This applies to founders.
00:51:42
Speaker
Founders actually are very predatory.
00:51:44
Speaker
And they will basically almost enslave people just to make themselves look good.
00:51:50
Speaker
They have people going crazy in their Discord chat to make their project look hype.
00:51:55
Speaker
Even if they're not actually building something, even if they have no utility, even if they don't plan on actually doing anything on the roadmap, what they care about is a popping chat
00:52:04
Speaker
So everybody mints when the contract gets deployed.
00:52:08
Speaker
So there's just all these psychological matrices that are set up by these founders to entice people to invest, entice people to spend.
00:52:18
Speaker
So there's a psychology behind every mint, technically.
00:52:21
Speaker
There's a psychology behind every mint and how to get a mint out.
00:52:25
Speaker
All of these different factors are
00:52:27
Speaker
like have an effect, have an effect on the people that are grinding this much, have an effect on the people that are FOMOing, that are maybe coming off secondary because they see like so much interaction happening in the Discord and they think, oh, my investment is definitely going to go up here.
00:52:40
Speaker
This is an active server, right?
00:52:41
Speaker
So it's almost mind tricks.
00:52:44
Speaker
It's almost mind tricks.
00:52:45
Speaker
We're primal animals.
00:52:47
Speaker
For sure.
00:52:49
Speaker
For sure.
00:52:49
Speaker
For sure.
00:52:50
Speaker
Definitely.
00:52:51
Speaker
When you come into Web3, you really see that, right?
00:52:53
Speaker
Because as you said, you know, it's like you see all types of people.
00:52:57
Speaker
And they don't necessarily have to be traders or investors, right?
00:53:00
Speaker
They're just people.
00:53:01
Speaker
We're all people at the end of the day, right?
00:53:04
Speaker
So, yeah, it's just a very, very naive and not so mature space, I would say, right?
00:53:11
Speaker
Like a lot of investors in NFTs, N1T3 in general, are just very naive.
00:53:16
Speaker
Like they're not completely aware of what they're actually doing sometimes when they're funding a project or when they're minting something out.
00:53:23
Speaker
They're not actually aware of what they're doing, right?
00:53:24
Speaker
They think they're just maybe...
00:53:26
Speaker
you know, by buying this picture that has supposedly this roadmap.
00:53:29
Speaker
But who knows where the Mint funds is going, right?
00:53:32
Speaker
Like, because a lot of us, you know, after the funds are deployed,
00:53:37
Speaker
Like, yeah, maybe there's a couple of detectives out there, but most of us, we just forget, bro.
00:53:40
Speaker
We're already in the next project.
00:53:42
Speaker
Exactly.
00:53:43
Speaker
We're already moving on to the next project.
00:53:44
Speaker
We left the server, we unfollowed on Twitter, and we're looking for the next opportunity, right?
00:53:47
Speaker
That's how a lot of people in this space operate now.
00:53:49
Speaker
I hear this all the time.
00:53:50
Speaker
It's like you mint, you sell, you unfollow on Twitter, you leave the Discord, and you don't look back.
00:53:55
Speaker
Even if it moves, you don't look back.
00:53:56
Speaker
This is the mentality that's being widespread now in the space, right?
00:54:00
Speaker
So it's like we're just chasing the new next shiny thing, and that's it.
00:54:03
Speaker
That's all we're doing.
00:54:04
Speaker
We're chasing ether.
00:54:05
Speaker
We're chasing captains.
00:54:06
Speaker
We're chasing the new next shiny thing.
00:54:08
Speaker
Right?
00:54:08
Speaker
So.
00:54:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:10
Speaker
And the current, like, world conditions don't help because...
Transparency, Accountability, and Mental Health
00:54:15
Speaker
We're all like we're coming out of COVID.
00:54:17
Speaker
The market conditions are not great.
00:54:19
Speaker
So you're looking for stuff that's going to turn you on a little bit, make you excited, make you feel like you, that you're going to fit in, make you a little bit of money.
00:54:28
Speaker
We're all dopamine deprived because we spend our whole day, our whole day on our phones, just looking through, looking through Twitter.
00:54:35
Speaker
And so the more stimulus, the better.
00:54:38
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
00:54:39
Speaker
We're definitely just like a,
00:54:42
Speaker
you know we're too focused on gratification on on our minds being stimulated in general right just like that that because it's it's no matter what server you go in where you see all these pretty pictures and all these people talking it's it's stimulation of the mind right stimulation of the mind uh so what i really wanted to actually mention though polymath i'm already forgetting my track of thought yeah we'll come back to it we'll come back to it in a bit i'll probably remember uh but
00:55:07
Speaker
Yeah, honestly, the main moral of this story is like, I really hope people just become a little bit more self-aware when they do step into certain projects, when they are deciding to support a certain project.
00:55:21
Speaker
They're being more critical thinkers, right?
00:55:23
Speaker
Because that's ultimately what the space needs.
00:55:25
Speaker
It's more critical thinking.
00:55:26
Speaker
Like, do we support this project?
00:55:28
Speaker
Do we not support this project?
00:55:29
Speaker
Are we just supporting this project so we can use people as exit liquidity?
00:55:32
Speaker
Or is it because they're actually building something and we want to fund their roadmap?
00:55:35
Speaker
So we need to
00:55:39
Speaker
really start viewing NFTs as startups because that's what they are.
00:55:42
Speaker
If you're saying you have a roadmap and you're saying you want to collect this much money, you're a startup, right?
00:55:47
Speaker
It's like, we want this much money funds to build this and this and this.
00:55:51
Speaker
Well, if you're a startup, then maybe you should be held up to the same rules as a startup.
00:55:56
Speaker
And I'm not saying every startup is expected to make it because most of them do not make it.
00:56:00
Speaker
And that's fine.
00:56:01
Speaker
That's fine, right?
00:56:02
Speaker
You don't have to make it, but at least deliver on what you promise to deliver, right?
00:56:06
Speaker
It's like, that's the least that you can do.
00:56:09
Speaker
Try your hardest and do it transparently because this is the minimum that should be expected because you're absolutely right.
00:56:18
Speaker
It's not a random number that 90 something plus percent of startups
00:56:24
Speaker
go bust.
00:56:26
Speaker
And that's why you need to diversify.
00:56:27
Speaker
You need to do it smartly.
00:56:29
Speaker
You have to treat your portfolio not for your dopamine hit for the next seven days, but for the next 10 years.
00:56:39
Speaker
And yeah, but I agree with you.
00:56:42
Speaker
There should be an obligation
00:56:44
Speaker
for people who are founders that they do things transparently that they treat the people who have bought their nfts as investors and that they actually do owe them something for sure i say this all the time it's like i don't owe anybody in this world anything i'm debt free but the only people i owe are the people in my community and my holders because they believe in me that's the only reason i owe them it's not i love this mint funds or anything because they believe in me and um
00:57:13
Speaker
I left my nine to five to work like an 18 hour a day job.
00:57:15
Speaker
So clearly I didn't leave.
00:57:17
Speaker
I didn't leave my job to work less like some of these founders do.
00:57:20
Speaker
Some of these founders, they came into Web3 to just make money and make a payday.
00:57:24
Speaker
Right.
00:57:25
Speaker
But then you see people are actually spending like literally all day, every day trying to build something, trying to interact with the community.
00:57:31
Speaker
And, you know, those people aren't there for the money.
00:57:33
Speaker
Right.
00:57:34
Speaker
If they were, they could put those 19 hours into something else and probably make more money.
00:57:38
Speaker
Right.
00:57:38
Speaker
So those people are there because they're passionate about what they're building because they're creative individuals.
00:57:45
Speaker
Like I don't, I don't view myself as a insanely intellectual or intelligent individual, but I know I'm a creative individual and I know I'm very passionate.
00:57:55
Speaker
Right.
00:57:55
Speaker
So as a founder, you have to like focus on your strengths and see what you could do.
00:58:00
Speaker
Like, what are you good at?
00:58:01
Speaker
What are you good at?
00:58:01
Speaker
How can you offer value back to these people who believed in you and invested in your project?
00:58:05
Speaker
Right.
00:58:06
Speaker
So,
00:58:06
Speaker
That's why I'm doing, for example, the metaverse counseling, because I have a license to do this, right?
00:58:13
Speaker
So this is something that I can bring value to my holders by doing.
00:58:16
Speaker
And it's very neglected in the space, because when everything is FOMO driven, when everything is go grind this whitelist for 40 hours, bro, so you can make a big
00:58:23
Speaker
People neglect their health.
00:58:25
Speaker
People neglect their families.
00:58:26
Speaker
I've heard of people almost getting divorced because of the husband or the wife branding for this white list.
00:58:30
Speaker
Right.
00:58:31
Speaker
So these, these types of, I'm serious, but like this is, yeah, I know that's, that's what's hilarious.
00:58:37
Speaker
For sure.
00:58:38
Speaker
For sure.
00:58:38
Speaker
So that we definitely need more mental health aids.
00:58:42
Speaker
We definitely need more, honestly, like you could say activists, even we need activists in web three.
00:58:47
Speaker
We need those people who make themselves heard, who are very vocal, who are able to rally communities and stand up behind a good cause.
00:58:53
Speaker
Because that's what we're missing, right?
00:58:54
Speaker
That's what we're missing.
00:58:55
Speaker
What happened in the 80s and the 90s when there was unethical things going on?
00:58:59
Speaker
Well, people rallied and they made themselves heard.
00:59:01
Speaker
And this is the same thing that we need to do in Web3.
00:59:03
Speaker
It's like we're reliving the past and we're watching all these unethical things happen.
00:59:08
Speaker
And now who are the heroes that are going to stand up?
00:59:10
Speaker
Where's Martin Luther King?
00:59:11
Speaker
Where's whoever, right?
00:59:12
Speaker
You get where I'm going, right?
00:59:13
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:59:15
Speaker
We need more.
00:59:16
Speaker
vocal people who aren't just there because, oh, they're influencers and they're famous and they have a reputation in this space, but because they're actually, they're doing something.
00:59:25
Speaker
They're bringing value to Web3, even if it's speaking out against injustice.
00:59:28
Speaker
Man, I absolutely love what you're saying.
00:59:30
Speaker
We've talked about value extractors and I talk about this all the time.
00:59:34
Speaker
In this space, we have more extractors at the moment and there are value providers that are rising and more and more and with every single wave of extractors.
00:59:48
Speaker
like the three arrows stuff, the Luna, the FTX, we now realize, hey, like what you're saying before, you're putting money into these guys' pockets and you have to, it is kind of, it kind of is your responsibility.
01:00:03
Speaker
It's hard because like you want to say it's their responsibility because, you know, nobody told them to mint.
01:00:07
Speaker
They didn't have to mint, right?
01:00:08
Speaker
They didn't have to give the person the money.
01:00:10
Speaker
But if you think about all the psychological factors around them,
01:00:14
Speaker
First, they're incentivized to make a profit.
01:00:16
Speaker
Second of all, they see the height.
01:00:17
Speaker
They see the, although we were going to make it in the chat, we're going to make it.
01:00:20
Speaker
Don't sell.
01:00:21
Speaker
If you want to get out of the hood, don't sell, bro.
01:00:23
Speaker
If you want to get out of the hood, you better not sell.
01:00:25
Speaker
It's almost like a culture.
01:00:26
Speaker
It's like paper hands, diamond hands.
01:00:28
Speaker
It's almost like a cult.
01:00:29
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
01:00:30
Speaker
And it doesn't even have to be a cult.
01:00:32
Speaker
Forget about the cult.
01:00:34
Speaker
It could literally just be
01:00:36
Speaker
Like greed, everybody has, as humans, we are naturally greedy.
01:00:40
Speaker
There is greed in us and it's up to you to kind of, you know, like waver yourself off that greed and just come back to earth, become a little bit grounded.
01:00:48
Speaker
So you don't end up making those stupid decisions, right?
01:00:50
Speaker
Because when people see something that's minting out really fast, right?
01:00:53
Speaker
First thing they'll do is click and mint, right?
01:00:55
Speaker
Oh, bro, this is going to sell out.
01:00:56
Speaker
I need to get in.
01:00:57
Speaker
I need to get in, it's about to sell out, but maybe it's a drain or maybe it's a, maybe it's literally like people controlling it and making it mint out that fast.
01:01:04
Speaker
So you FOMO in, right?
01:01:06
Speaker
Like there's a lot of manipulation tactics that happen in the space that people are just oblivious to, right?
01:01:11
Speaker
And when you are a founder, when you do see these things happen, like even if it's just floor manipulation, right?
01:01:17
Speaker
It's very easy to spot.
01:01:18
Speaker
It's very easy to spot the more experienced you become in the space.
01:01:21
Speaker
But to new people, they fall for it every time, right?
01:01:25
Speaker
Those big fake sales,
01:01:28
Speaker
the setting up the floor before the mint, having the high wealth offers on the collection before the mint, right?
01:01:33
Speaker
It's just simple little tactics that make the naive investor FOMO win, right?
01:01:38
Speaker
So it's like, it's like if you're new to the space, yeah, like sure people are putting the responsibility on you, but how are you going to know better if you don't have anybody to tell you otherwise when this is like a brand new world to you?
01:01:51
Speaker
Because a lot of people come and they come with a little bit of money and this is a brand new world to them.
01:01:55
Speaker
They've never done anything like this before.
01:01:57
Speaker
You come in here cute and naive like your friend told you, oh, just buy this NFT.
01:02:02
Speaker
You're going to make 5x your money.
01:02:04
Speaker
And then you come out and then you have the Twitter bots.
01:02:07
Speaker
You have the airdrops on your wallet.
01:02:12
Speaker
I remembered what I was going to tell you now.
01:02:13
Speaker
So I was going to say earlier is the reason we have this happening is because what do you see, bro?
01:02:19
Speaker
Every single YouTube video is a fucking...
01:02:22
Speaker
a clickbait thumbnail how to make 100x in nfts how to make 50x in nfts bro i've made i've made 500 nfts and i'm still not advertising that and i'm still not trying to bring people in saying like bro look i made a bag of nfts
Community Building over Profit in NFTs
01:02:35
Speaker
even if i did even if i did i'm not advertising that i'm not pushing that culture i'm not bringing in people who are just looking to make that 5x and 10x and then they go broke and then they end up leaving this space and say oh it's a scam
01:02:45
Speaker
right?
01:02:46
Speaker
Because they came in for the wrong reasons, first of all.
01:02:48
Speaker
They didn't come in for the community.
01:02:49
Speaker
They came in strictly for financial gain and they're being sold a dream that does not exist because they know nothing about this space.
01:02:55
Speaker
How are they going to make 10x?
01:02:56
Speaker
How are they going to make 20x when they don't even know how to list something on OpenSea?
01:02:59
Speaker
When they don't know how to accept a wealth offer, right?
01:03:01
Speaker
Like they have no education, no skills, no training, and they're being shilled all these random NFTs on YouTube saying, make a 10x.
01:03:08
Speaker
This is the next 10x.
01:03:09
Speaker
This is the next 20x, right?
01:03:11
Speaker
And then they go in and they grind and they get the weightless and they mint and they lose their money.
01:03:14
Speaker
that's the people who should be canceled for sure.
01:03:17
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
01:03:17
Speaker
There's just, there's, there's too many people in this space who like, they're trying to be Andrew Tate, right?
01:03:22
Speaker
They're trying to be Andrew Tate or they're trying to be like, uh, uh, just someone who preaches, like they know something that they don't and they're token gating it.
01:03:30
Speaker
Like they know the cure, they know the answer.
01:03:32
Speaker
It's a, the cure to cancer, right?
01:03:34
Speaker
Like, uh, but it's so easy to come to, to make yourself appear like you're an expert.
01:03:39
Speaker
Because you prepare very well, you do minimal research, you prepare your video, you do 15 takes, and of course you're going to come out and you're going to seem like you know your shit when in reality you've actually never made any money off YouTube.
01:03:53
Speaker
Otherwise you wouldn't be doing YouTube, you'd just be flipping NFTs.
01:03:57
Speaker
I tell my community this all the time.
01:03:58
Speaker
It's like, if someone knows how to make money, they're probably not taking your money, bro.
01:04:01
Speaker
They're just going to make money, right?
01:04:02
Speaker
They don't need your money.
01:04:04
Speaker
But if someone's asking you to pay $5,000 for a course, or if someone's asking you to buy their floor for 10 ETHs so you get to know how to make money, then there's something shady going on, bro, because they don't have the cure to cancer.
01:04:15
Speaker
Like, I'm telling you right now, there's no reason that that floor price should be 10 ETH, and it should be token-gated that hard when there's no actual substance inside, but it's just a FOMO high-floor tactic, right?
01:04:26
Speaker
So, yeah, we need more transparency in this space and we need more critical thinkers and we need people who maybe they are in it for the short term investment, but are also in it for the long term growth of Web3.
01:04:40
Speaker
Right.
01:04:41
Speaker
I don't care if you want to flip projects and you're here to make money.
01:04:43
Speaker
A lot of people are.
01:04:44
Speaker
Go for it.
01:04:45
Speaker
But also be one of those people who wants to see the advancement and the growth of Web3.
01:04:49
Speaker
Because otherwise we're just going to be stagnant and we're never actually going to grow.
01:04:53
Speaker
And even more than that, it's not just about the growth of Web3.
01:04:57
Speaker
It's about your personal growth because after a while, you realize that your own advancement means nothing if you're not sharing it with others.
01:05:05
Speaker
And so if you're, it's come in here and come and try to hustle and try to make money, try to make a hundred bucks, 500 bucks, 1K.
01:05:12
Speaker
But-
01:05:16
Speaker
Pay attention to the people around you.
01:05:18
Speaker
Pay attention to the people who are here for you and understand that they matter a lot more than those 10, 1500 bucks that you're making.
01:05:29
Speaker
Cause it's that connection is, it's so important.
01:05:34
Speaker
Not just, not just for like your professional advancement or your career, but even just for your fulfillment.
01:05:40
Speaker
We're, we're social animals.
01:05:42
Speaker
A hundred percent.
01:05:42
Speaker
A hundred percent of social beings for sure.
01:05:46
Speaker
I completely agree with everything you said, but honestly, like sadly, you don't see enough of this in this space, right?
01:05:54
Speaker
You don't see it.
01:05:54
Speaker
It's like those very like hidden communities that actually share these sentiments or these vibes, or they've been around for a long time.
01:06:02
Speaker
They've just been in too many projects and they know, right?
01:06:04
Speaker
They know because most people that come into a project, bro, they just want the wait list.
01:06:09
Speaker
They just want the ETH.
01:06:10
Speaker
They want to hopefully make more ETH than they put into the project.
01:06:13
Speaker
And sadly, that's just become the culture now.
01:06:16
Speaker
That's become the norm.
01:06:17
Speaker
Like we've seen so many mints.
01:06:18
Speaker
It's like they sell out with a gas ore and then within five minutes, they're under mint price.
01:06:22
Speaker
Right.
01:06:23
Speaker
And it's like, well, it's because everybody was just trying to mint to dump on people who couldn't mint.
01:06:28
Speaker
You know what I mean?
01:06:29
Speaker
It's like that's just a very wrong way to go about a launch, to go about a project.
01:06:33
Speaker
But it's unfortunately what's incentivized.
01:06:35
Speaker
Right.
01:06:36
Speaker
It's what's incentivized and it's what's built for.
01:06:39
Speaker
But yeah, you realize that when you actually choose transparency and when you actually choose to be there for the people that you're building for and that you invite them, then they're not going to be here just to make a few bucks.
01:06:54
Speaker
But there are still humans who want to belong somewhere.
01:06:58
Speaker
Behind everything, behind the green, behind everything.
01:07:02
Speaker
We want to be...
01:07:04
Speaker
want to participate in something that's bigger than us.
01:07:07
Speaker
And, and that's like, if, if one, if there's one thing that founders should hear before they get in is okay, the money's great, but the people are more important for sure.
01:07:18
Speaker
100%.
01:07:18
Speaker
And until we actually start treating these beautiful JPEGs as people and not just investors or another number or a minter,
01:07:26
Speaker
right like that's that's not gonna happen and sadly you don't see that bro because most founders that come either they're ready like big shots and what too and you know like they're just trying to make another quick buck or they see it as a great business opportunity or they're just trying to gain more exposure but whatever it is um they're not there to actually connect with people they're not they they encourage they might encourage the community to connect but they won't connect they're going to be behind doors the whole time right so
01:07:50
Speaker
I've noticed so many projects.
01:07:52
Speaker
They want their communities to do everything.
01:07:53
Speaker
They want their communities to rep their PFP.
01:07:55
Speaker
They want their communities to go out and raid, to host spaces, to do all of this.
01:07:59
Speaker
And then the founders are quiet.
01:08:00
Speaker
They don't do anything, bro.
01:08:01
Speaker
They just expect the community to carry them on their back, right?
01:08:04
Speaker
And we've seen this happen a lot, especially when it's like a project that people are over-invested in.
01:08:09
Speaker
The community will do it.
01:08:10
Speaker
They'll rally behind it, even if the founders are absent, right?
01:08:13
Speaker
Like, look at MFers, right?
01:08:14
Speaker
Sertoshi left and MFers were still trending, right?
01:08:18
Speaker
You know what I mean?
01:08:18
Speaker
And
01:08:19
Speaker
They're still getting sales.
01:08:20
Speaker
They still had the high floor.
01:08:21
Speaker
That's 100% community driven at that point.
01:08:23
Speaker
Right.
01:08:24
Speaker
And yeah, yeah, it's nice to see.
01:08:27
Speaker
It's nice to see the community driven aspect, but it also be nice to see more community driven projects coming out where the founder isn't necessarily, you know, making millions and millions every single mint or whatever the case might be.
01:08:42
Speaker
And he's actually participating in the, like, this is what I liked.
01:08:46
Speaker
about alpha gang is like, I was almost elected as a founder.
01:08:49
Speaker
It was almost like a democracy and they're like, yeah, Hacks, we want you to organize the project and we want to be part of your roadmap, right?
01:08:55
Speaker
Because I started from the community, right?
01:08:57
Speaker
I started as a very active community member, right?
01:09:00
Speaker
I wouldn't be grinding for a whitelist.
01:09:01
Speaker
I never did that, but I would be always like making these relationships, making these friends, talking to people for hours, trading with them for hours.
01:09:08
Speaker
Like this was just something I enjoyed doing, right?
01:09:10
Speaker
I didn't need incentive or
01:09:12
Speaker
for cyber snails to pay me more than 0.158 to do it.
01:09:14
Speaker
I was doing it because I wanted to do it, right?
01:09:16
Speaker
I was making way more like per flip than they could have ever paid me.
01:09:19
Speaker
So it didn't matter.
01:09:20
Speaker
But what mattered was almost like the principle, right?
01:09:23
Speaker
So it's like, if someone is bringing your project so much value and it's like, they're actually managing your community, they deserve to be a co-founder.
01:09:31
Speaker
They deserve to be a community manager.
01:09:33
Speaker
They deserve to have some kind of role that helps further advance them in Web3.com.
01:09:40
Speaker
Because they're helping you, bro.
01:09:41
Speaker
They're literally holding your project on their back.
01:09:45
Speaker
Right?
01:09:45
Speaker
So, yeah, that's why in Alpha Gang, we have such a huge staff team.
01:09:50
Speaker
Because it's like, you don't have to do much.
01:09:52
Speaker
As long as I see that you're actually participating...
01:09:55
Speaker
You know, you're helping people out.
01:09:56
Speaker
You're being friendly.
01:09:57
Speaker
I want to make you staff.
01:09:58
Speaker
Why wouldn't you want to have those people as staff?
01:10:00
Speaker
Because those people are good for the entire community.
01:10:03
Speaker
Those people are actually ensuring that they're doing it because they want to do it.
01:10:08
Speaker
Right.
01:10:08
Speaker
And that's the best that's the best people to have.
01:10:10
Speaker
You don't want people who are just there for the payroll.
01:10:13
Speaker
You don't want people who are just there for the rewards.
01:10:15
Speaker
You want people who actually are enjoying themselves while they're working even.
01:10:18
Speaker
Right.
01:10:19
Speaker
Like with me, for example, the reason I can work 18 hour days is because I enjoy what I do.
01:10:23
Speaker
If I didn't, I wouldn't be here still.
01:10:25
Speaker
I wouldn't be working these crazy hours if I didn't actually love what I did.
01:10:29
Speaker
And I've always hung out with my community.
01:10:30
Speaker
I enjoy hanging out with my community.
01:10:32
Speaker
As you said, right?
01:10:32
Speaker
Like we're social beings.
01:10:34
Speaker
And since COVID and since isolation, right?
01:10:36
Speaker
Like that's actually like when my streaming got even crazier during COVID, right?
01:10:40
Speaker
When COVID first started, right?
01:10:42
Speaker
Because...
01:10:43
Speaker
You're just so isolated and you have all this time alone and there was curfew and you couldn't go out.
01:10:49
Speaker
So that isolated us even more.
01:10:52
Speaker
And without these communities that are present in Web3 and Discord and whatever type of community, just a community in general, because it doesn't have to be an NFT community, right?
01:11:02
Speaker
Most people,
Vision for Community-Owned Web3 Projects
01:11:03
Speaker
they forget that.
01:11:04
Speaker
They think like, okay, if you're going to be a community, you need to have an NFT.
01:11:08
Speaker
But that's not true.
01:11:09
Speaker
You can just be literally in a no-token-gated platform
01:11:12
Speaker
open community where there's just actually a strong sense of community and it can be a great place to be.
01:11:17
Speaker
You won't feel alone.
01:11:18
Speaker
You won't feel isolated.
01:11:19
Speaker
You always have people to hang out with.
01:11:21
Speaker
And it's probably the best way to start too.
01:11:22
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
01:11:24
Speaker
Exactly.
01:11:24
Speaker
And that's, that's actually how we started, right?
01:11:26
Speaker
We started as a public server.
01:11:27
Speaker
All the channels were public.
01:11:29
Speaker
Nothing was token gated.
01:11:30
Speaker
People just came to hang out.
01:11:31
Speaker
They liked the vibes.
01:11:32
Speaker
Then they decided to mint and it was a free mint, right?
01:11:34
Speaker
So yeah, I think people need to really take a step back.
01:11:39
Speaker
And before they launch a project too, it can't be just like,
01:11:42
Speaker
on a, on a whim.
01:11:44
Speaker
Like I see a lot of people, they hear about how much a founder made and that's it.
01:11:47
Speaker
They're like instantly, Oh bro, I'm making an NFT.
01:11:50
Speaker
Okay, bro.
01:11:50
Speaker
What's your NFT going to do?
01:11:51
Speaker
I don't know, bro.
01:11:51
Speaker
I just want to make the ETH.
01:11:53
Speaker
Bro, like, okay, how are you going to get the community?
01:11:54
Speaker
Bro, I'll hire people.
01:11:55
Speaker
I'm going to hire marketers.
01:11:56
Speaker
I'm going to hire this person.
01:11:57
Speaker
I'm going to hire that person.
01:11:59
Speaker
They see it as a business opportunity.
01:12:00
Speaker
Right.
01:12:01
Speaker
And until that stops happening, it's like, it's going to be very hard to advance.
01:12:05
Speaker
It's going to be very hard for the space to advance because we're incentivizing these greedy founders who come to extract ETH from us.
01:12:12
Speaker
And we're just naive or we don't know better or whatever it is.
01:12:17
Speaker
And we allow it to keep happening.
01:12:19
Speaker
Like, bro, it happens every single day.
01:12:21
Speaker
And OpenSea is like notorious for this.
01:12:23
Speaker
Like they have all these projects on their homepage and it mints out and it pumps.
01:12:27
Speaker
And then the next day it's half the value.
01:12:30
Speaker
And you know what?
01:12:31
Speaker
I'm going to cut out the entirety of this conversation and just keep this part and just repeat it in a loop for two hours because it's so fucking important.
01:12:41
Speaker
It is.
01:12:41
Speaker
And we really need to evolve beyond that.
01:12:47
Speaker
Man, I'm an optimist at heart.
01:12:50
Speaker
I'm an idealist.
01:12:51
Speaker
And I see Web3.
01:12:53
Speaker
I see why I personally came here for unity.
01:12:59
Speaker
And our mission with our project is to bridge the opportunity gap with Web3.
01:13:05
Speaker
And that's what I care about.
01:13:06
Speaker
That's what drives me.
01:13:07
Speaker
And I want this...
01:13:10
Speaker
Like what you were describing before of the founder needs to be down in the trenches.
01:13:15
Speaker
I like 100% agree with you.
01:13:19
Speaker
But what I personally hope for is that I'm going to be down in the trenches for the next five years.
01:13:24
Speaker
And then I'm going to build it up so that in five years,
01:13:29
Speaker
all the people who are around me will have taken ownership and will get 100% of the value that they get.
01:13:36
Speaker
That's, that's what I, what I hope for in my heart, because I think that's what Web3 was all about initially.
01:13:42
Speaker
Yeah, I get what you mean, a hundred percent.
01:13:45
Speaker
And it's kind of like a, it's a long-term vision, right?
01:13:47
Speaker
It's a long-term vision.
01:13:48
Speaker
And just by doing this, you're actually a pioneer in the space too, right?
01:13:53
Speaker
You're building something somewhere early where not many people have built land.
01:13:57
Speaker
Or have not built land successfully, at least.
01:13:59
Speaker
So you're a pioneer.
01:14:01
Speaker
And that's great.
01:14:02
Speaker
I highly recommend more people to do this.
01:14:04
Speaker
I always tell people this.
01:14:05
Speaker
Like, bro, if I became a founder, if this person became a founder, you can become a founder too, as long as you're passionate.
01:14:11
Speaker
That's all you need to be.
01:14:13
Speaker
It's just passionate, right?
01:14:15
Speaker
Like a lot of people, we have a launchpad, Alpha Gang.
01:14:17
Speaker
So people come up to me with like V-Gen projects.
01:14:19
Speaker
They come up to me with like all types of shit.
01:14:21
Speaker
And if they're not passionate, I don't do it.
01:14:24
Speaker
I don't do it.
01:14:24
Speaker
I'll say no to them, right?
01:14:25
Speaker
They just want to launch a degen to make 0.005 ETH per NFT or whatever.
01:14:29
Speaker
I'm going to say no because that's not how NFT should be, right?
01:14:32
Speaker
It's not about you getting a bag, bro.
01:14:33
Speaker
It's about you actually building something in this space.
01:14:36
Speaker
And until people really start treating it like that, we're just going to see all these projects that go to zero, these projects that don't get volume a year later because there's just nothing there.
01:14:44
Speaker
There's no community.
01:14:45
Speaker
There's no server.
01:14:46
Speaker
It's literally just pictures on the blockchain.
01:14:49
Speaker
And even though sometimes a picture is worth more than a thousand words, there's literally zero words, bro.
01:14:54
Speaker
Like there's nothing happening.
01:14:55
Speaker
There's no engagement.
01:14:56
Speaker
There's no activity.
01:14:57
Speaker
Right.
01:14:58
Speaker
So it's like, what are we doing?
01:15:00
Speaker
And I hate to be a pessimist, but I'm just being a realist because I've seen it.
01:15:04
Speaker
I've seen it for more than two years now being in this space.
01:15:07
Speaker
I've seen it and it keeps happening.
01:15:09
Speaker
And like when I actually got a platform, I got followers.
01:15:12
Speaker
I got, you know, like a community who supports me.
01:15:15
Speaker
the first thing I wanted to do is make myself heard, right?
01:15:17
Speaker
Make myself heard because hopefully it'll bring about even a little spark of change.
01:15:21
Speaker
Even if I, if I managed to change Web3 by 1%, I'm happy, right?
01:15:24
Speaker
Because that's one.
01:15:25
Speaker
That's already a lot.
01:15:26
Speaker
I hope, I hope it for you.
01:15:29
Speaker
For sure, bro.
01:15:29
Speaker
And I really hope so too, because,
01:15:32
Speaker
It is a very, very beautiful technology.
01:15:34
Speaker
It's something I'm truly, truly passionate about and something that I really see the value in.
01:15:39
Speaker
But it's 100% neglected and people are just sleeping on it and they're just focused on the Ponzonomics side where they neglect the true builders.
01:15:49
Speaker
They neglect the people...
01:15:51
Speaker
that are actually
Trading NFTs: Strategy over Luck
01:15:52
Speaker
bringing something new to the space, bringing something cool of value to the space, because it is that attention economy that we talked about.
01:15:59
Speaker
You could literally make a project with the best utilities out there in the market for the best price possible, and people will still sleep on you if you don't have enough followers or you don't do those giveaways or you don't have those big collabs.
01:16:09
Speaker
It's just conditioning.
01:16:10
Speaker
It's conditioning.
01:16:12
Speaker
But that's the thing about business.
01:16:14
Speaker
I wholeheartedly agree with you that if passion is not there, then you should never even consider it as an investment.
01:16:21
Speaker
But passion is only one of them.
01:16:24
Speaker
I've always been extremely passionate about everything I do.
01:16:27
Speaker
And yet, in the past five years of being an entrepreneur, I slowly, all right, passion.
01:16:34
Speaker
Then I learned about sales.
01:16:36
Speaker
And then I learned about marketing.
01:16:38
Speaker
And then I learned about marketing.
01:16:40
Speaker
managing other people.
01:16:41
Speaker
And then beyond those like hard skills, there were also like inner soft skills of my own relationship to success and to making money and then to be okay with that and to finally be in a place where, and so it's hard to do business because you need all of these things to be aligned in order to succeed.
01:17:01
Speaker
And it's even harder to do business in web three because the volatility is just a fucking killer.
01:17:08
Speaker
Yeah.
01:17:08
Speaker
Yeah, because you're basically doing a double play, right?
01:17:13
Speaker
It's a derivative, right?
01:17:14
Speaker
When you're trading ETH NFTs, you're trading a derivative of ETH.
01:17:17
Speaker
So it's a leverage play.
01:17:19
Speaker
It's a leverage play and it can either hit really big or it can hit really bad, right?
01:17:23
Speaker
Because you'll get F'd on the floor price and on the price of ETH.
01:17:26
Speaker
So yeah, definitely a very volatile space.
01:17:28
Speaker
definitely not for the weak hearted.
01:17:31
Speaker
Um, I've seen people, this goes to crypto trading too.
01:17:34
Speaker
I've seen people go from $40,000 losses to $18,000 in profits.
01:17:39
Speaker
Right.
01:17:39
Speaker
And all they had to do is just hold and play the psychology.
01:17:41
Speaker
Right.
01:17:42
Speaker
So that tells you how volatile the space can be.
01:17:45
Speaker
Like, and the thing is you make a mistake like that, that only took two minutes to make.
01:17:50
Speaker
And you live with that for your entire life.
01:17:52
Speaker
Right.
01:17:52
Speaker
So yeah.
01:17:54
Speaker
If you don't get back up on the horse.
01:17:55
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
01:17:56
Speaker
Exactly.
01:17:57
Speaker
But even if you do, even if you do, all it takes is just one bad trade to make a $60,000, $40,000 loss.
01:18:02
Speaker
And you're going to remember that for the rest of your life.
01:18:05
Speaker
That won't leave you.
01:18:06
Speaker
You might get over it.
01:18:07
Speaker
And I really hope you get over it.
01:18:09
Speaker
If you don't get over it, you should see someone, right?
01:18:12
Speaker
But it's going to be there.
01:18:13
Speaker
It's always going to be there.
01:18:14
Speaker
It's always going to be on your black book in the back of your head, right?
01:18:17
Speaker
So it only takes a second.
01:18:18
Speaker
It only takes one wrong decision, one wrong move.
01:18:22
Speaker
It's a very calculated game.
01:18:24
Speaker
When you're investing into NFTs, when you're investing into crypto, if you don't look at it like a game of chess, then you've already lost half the battle.
01:18:31
Speaker
You have to plan ahead.
01:18:32
Speaker
You have to think two moves ahead of your opponents and who are your opponents.
01:18:36
Speaker
Maybe it's the flippers.
01:18:37
Speaker
Maybe it's the founder himself.
01:18:38
Speaker
You don't know.
01:18:38
Speaker
You don't know.
01:18:39
Speaker
You have to strategize.
01:18:40
Speaker
Right.
01:18:40
Speaker
So.
01:18:40
Speaker
That's exactly what I was thinking when you were talking of, you have to remember that you're still, okay, we're in this, this is a beautiful space.
01:18:48
Speaker
You're holding beautiful JPEG.
01:18:50
Speaker
You've made nice friends on the Discord server.
01:18:52
Speaker
You're still competing with a bunch of people.
01:18:55
Speaker
And if you want to survive, I mean, there's different ways to, you could buy one NFT that you just absolutely resonate with.
01:19:04
Speaker
And this is going to be your online identity for the next 15 years.
01:19:08
Speaker
And then that's,
01:19:10
Speaker
That's something else completely.
01:19:12
Speaker
And you can be happy to write it down to zero because you've had one hell of a time.
01:19:16
Speaker
That's one thing.
01:19:17
Speaker
But if your game is to actually make some money out of it, if you want to play NFTs as a
01:19:23
Speaker
digital uh as a financial asset class then dude like you're playing against millions of people and you have to do the work in order to it's not luck no one success by luck is is an absolute myth myth sorry it was it was true back in the bull run you could get very lucky yeah but now in this type of market no it's not luck
01:19:42
Speaker
It's not luck in this type of market.
01:19:44
Speaker
Back then it could have been, right?
01:19:45
Speaker
Luck is not a strategy.
01:19:46
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
01:19:47
Speaker
But back when it was initially starting, if you minted Bored Aves, if you minted Mutant Aves, and you just had that diamond hand mentality, you got lucky.
01:19:56
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:19:58
Speaker
It's not lucky because it was just random luck, but it's because it's a very small percentage of that much success.
01:20:06
Speaker
coming your way of you minting that certain project and yeah before in the past these opportunities did exist you could get lucky back in the past you could have got lucky you could have minted a CryptoPunk and forgot about it for a year why the fuck did I have to mint CryptoKitties not even mint I bought like four why did I not get a Punk man
01:20:27
Speaker
Yeah, for sure, bro.
01:20:28
Speaker
And that's just, that's just like, yeah, not just no luck, but that's also, that's also like something you needed to experience, right?
01:20:36
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:20:37
Speaker
You need to know what's meant back then and stuff.
01:20:42
Speaker
And it was, it was a very niche crowd, right?
01:20:44
Speaker
Like even in the Solana community, I don't know if you've done much Solana NFTs, but back in the past, it was crazy, bro.
01:20:51
Speaker
Like every Solana community was the strongest of the Bored Ape community.
01:20:54
Speaker
Like they were that diamond handed.
01:20:56
Speaker
especially because the mints were so cheap, your initial investment was only like $5, $10.
01:20:59
Speaker
You know what I mean?
01:21:01
Speaker
So you're not as willing to sell, right?
01:21:04
Speaker
And yeah, the culture just kind of slowly drifted away from us.
01:21:09
Speaker
Before it was really like incentivized to be paper-handed because you didn't want to be the guy who paper-handed punks.
01:21:15
Speaker
You didn't want to be the guy who paper-handed apes.
01:21:16
Speaker
You didn't want to be the guy who paper-handed all these things that were blowing up.
01:21:19
Speaker
Right.
01:21:20
Speaker
But in this market, nothing blows up.
01:21:23
Speaker
And if it does, it's slowly going to go back on the decline over a period of time.
01:21:26
Speaker
Right.
01:21:26
Speaker
We've seen it happen with every collection, no matter how great they are, they climb up and then it's a slow, gradual decline, especially if it's a hype mint.
01:21:35
Speaker
It's going to start off really high.
01:21:36
Speaker
Right.
01:21:37
Speaker
Invisible friends, captains, they start off 7th, 8th, and then just slowly work their way to 4th.
01:21:42
Speaker
Right.
01:21:42
Speaker
Because the hype and the expectation is,
01:21:45
Speaker
aren't going to stay matched from day one till day 30 when the eyes aren't on that project.
01:21:51
Speaker
And what maintains a floor price isn't actually just the value, but it's that volume, right?
01:21:56
Speaker
It's that consistent volume that's coming in and coming out.
01:21:58
Speaker
Because without that volume, even the highest collection floor is going to slowly go down over time.
01:22:03
Speaker
We've seen many examples of this.
01:22:05
Speaker
Just because there's a lack of volume, the floor price starts to go down.
01:22:08
Speaker
Yeah, and we know right now that the hype cycle is just so much shorter.
01:22:12
Speaker
A few months ago, you had an influx of money, you had liquidity that was out there on the market, and so you knew that the chances...
01:22:23
Speaker
For sure.
01:22:24
Speaker
But now we're paying for that.
01:22:26
Speaker
Right now we're paying the consequences of that.
01:22:27
Speaker
Right.
01:22:28
Speaker
We haven't even started to pay the consequences of that.
01:22:31
Speaker
Like this is just, this is just a small test.
01:22:34
Speaker
For sure.
01:22:35
Speaker
For sure.
01:22:36
Speaker
Definitely.
01:22:36
Speaker
Cause yeah, a lot of people like even alpha gang last year, right.
01:22:40
Speaker
They're like talking about how ether is going to go to 5,000.
01:22:42
Speaker
And it's just like the market's booming and it's, you know, that euphoria, right.
01:22:46
Speaker
When the market's doing really good.
01:22:47
Speaker
Right.
01:22:49
Speaker
I told him back then and there, I was like, guys, what the government did is not healthy.
01:22:52
Speaker
You can't just randomly print a trillion dollars and expect for that not to have any effect on the economy.
01:22:58
Speaker
That's unrealistic, right?
01:22:59
Speaker
So that's actually how I was able to predict.
01:23:02
Speaker
I sold all my Bitcoin of 30,000, bro.
01:23:04
Speaker
Right before the crash.
01:23:05
Speaker
And that's how I was able to make that decision, like very full heartedly knowing that I was probably making the right decision.
01:23:12
Speaker
It's because if you just think about it from like a finance point of view, right?
01:23:16
Speaker
Like the micro and macro economy cycles, the boom and the bust, like it's bound to happen.
01:23:22
Speaker
You bring in such an influx of money.
01:23:25
Speaker
Bitcoin reaches all new time highs.
01:23:27
Speaker
What comes after highs?
01:23:28
Speaker
After every high, there's a low.
01:23:29
Speaker
After every low, there's a high kind of thing, right?
01:23:32
Speaker
And even just recently when Bitcoin reached 15,000, a lot of people were really scared.
01:23:37
Speaker
And I was in Alpha Gang telling everybody to buy.
01:23:39
Speaker
I told everyone, I said, I put 20% of my portfolio in Bitcoin at 15.5,000, right?
01:23:44
Speaker
15.5K.
01:23:45
Speaker
So these are just things that you pick up on after years and years of trading.
01:23:50
Speaker
Yeah.
01:23:51
Speaker
And just having that experience without that experience, you wouldn't know.
01:23:53
Speaker
You'd be so quick to think, oh, guys, we're fucked.
01:23:56
Speaker
We're going to 10K.
01:23:56
Speaker
Capital saying we're going to 12K.
01:23:58
Speaker
This trader saying we're going to 13K.
01:24:00
Speaker
Buy Bitcoin at 10K.
01:24:01
Speaker
Buy Bitcoin lower.
01:24:02
Speaker
Buy Bitcoin lower.
01:24:03
Speaker
Right.
01:24:04
Speaker
You're going to hear everything from everyone and everybody's pretending that they're an expert and that they know what they're doing.
01:24:09
Speaker
But in reality, it's the people with experience are going to come out on top most of the time because they've been there before.
01:24:14
Speaker
They've been through a bear
Continuous Learning and Ethical Responsibility in Web3
01:24:15
Speaker
market before.
01:24:15
Speaker
They've been through a bull cycle before.
01:24:17
Speaker
They've seen the ebb and flows of the market.
01:24:19
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:24:20
Speaker
I think we're in a space where experience is rewarded more than other things.
01:24:24
Speaker
And luck will always play a huge factor because realistically, nobody knows where Bitcoin is going to go.
01:24:29
Speaker
Even though I'm a trader, if you were to ask me, like, would you bet like your whatever or would you like, would you swear on your mom's life that it's going to go up?
01:24:37
Speaker
Of course I can't.
01:24:37
Speaker
I can't say that.
01:24:39
Speaker
No one can, right?
01:24:39
Speaker
Because realistically, as much as you analyze, however many fibula lines you draw on the chart or whatever you're doing, you don't know.
01:24:48
Speaker
You don't know.
01:24:48
Speaker
You're taking a risk, but hopefully you do proper risk management so that your wins outweigh your losses, right?
01:24:54
Speaker
And that's what we all hope to do as traders to be profitable.
01:24:58
Speaker
Because if your losses are outweighing your wins, then you're not a profitable trader.
01:25:03
Speaker
And if you're not a profitable trader, then can you really make a living out of trading?
01:25:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:25:07
Speaker
Just when you open this door, especially like in these podcasts, when you open this door, it's just a never ending door because there's just so much to talk about.
01:25:15
Speaker
But it's a necessary one.
01:25:16
Speaker
It's a necessary one because it's it should be the hope to make 100x should be like the bottom line of
01:25:26
Speaker
what you're told.
01:25:27
Speaker
It's like, hey, you should get in there.
01:25:30
Speaker
You should do all the research on what Web3 is, on what decentralization is, on how these business models might evolve in.
01:25:37
Speaker
You should make sure that you understand how wellets work and how to have proper security on your assets and do your research due to due diligence, read the white papers.
01:25:49
Speaker
And if you do this well, then potentially, and if you use proper bankroll management, then potentially,
01:25:56
Speaker
you could make some money in the next five years.
01:26:00
Speaker
For sure.
01:26:01
Speaker
And it doesn't even have to be five years because you said a lot of good things, right?
01:26:04
Speaker
You said a lot of good things.
01:26:05
Speaker
You do that for a few months and you could realistically make money.
01:26:08
Speaker
You'll win.
01:26:09
Speaker
Yeah, exactly, right?
01:26:10
Speaker
It's just all about your strategy, the mindset that you go into things.
01:26:14
Speaker
And it's about you taking care of yourself because if you don't take care of yourself and you go on a loss, you're going to end up revenge trading.
01:26:19
Speaker
You're going to end up getting more losses.
01:26:20
Speaker
You're going to try to chase back that win.
01:26:22
Speaker
You're going to maybe get a moonshot and now you get lucky, but you need to make up an ETH.
01:26:27
Speaker
So you're not selling for 0.3 ETH profit, right?
01:26:29
Speaker
When profit is profit and you should lock that 0.3 ETH in maybe because over time that 0.3 ETH is going to add up, right?
01:26:35
Speaker
Stacks up, yeah.
01:26:37
Speaker
So I really preach consistency, right?
01:26:39
Speaker
Like I tell the gang, like our goal is consistency.
01:26:42
Speaker
I'm not going to make any of you rich, but I'm going to show you opportunities.
01:26:45
Speaker
And if you're consistent, if you're present, you're going to have opportunities to make money.
01:26:48
Speaker
You can't deny that, right?
01:26:49
Speaker
Like it happens every day.
01:26:53
Speaker
We free minted checks.
01:26:54
Speaker
It's almost at one each.
01:26:56
Speaker
And that was 10 per wallet, right?
01:26:58
Speaker
That was 10 per wallet.
01:26:59
Speaker
It went off in our tracker.
01:27:01
Speaker
I pinged it when there was only a thousand minted.
01:27:03
Speaker
There's only a thousand mint and you can mint it on as many burners as you wanted.
01:27:07
Speaker
Right.
01:27:07
Speaker
So the opportunity is huge and it's there, but it's like, are you tapping into it?
01:27:11
Speaker
Are you actually paying attention to it?
01:27:12
Speaker
Are you doing your research to know who the artist of checks was and why hacks is minting 30 on his burners?
01:27:17
Speaker
You know what I mean?
01:27:18
Speaker
So it's like these little details, they really matter in this space.
01:27:22
Speaker
And to most people they're oblivious to it or they don't bother or they just simply don't know.
01:27:27
Speaker
Yeah.
01:27:27
Speaker
Yeah.
01:27:28
Speaker
We're just in a very, very young space where,
01:27:31
Speaker
All the wrong things are rewarded, unfortunately.
01:27:35
Speaker
And all the wrong founders are rewarded, unfortunately.
01:27:39
Speaker
Not to say that there's founders who haven't got their rise to shine, but even when they do, usually it's very overdue, right?
01:27:46
Speaker
Like when they finally get the rise to shine, it's very overdue for some of these founders.
01:27:50
Speaker
And yeah, honestly, man, just like every time I have a platform to speak, like I can't help but voice these issues and these concerns because...
01:28:01
Speaker
if we're not voicing these issues and no one is, then I don't think anything's going to change, bro.
01:28:05
Speaker
Everybody's just going to be lured by that hanging carrot, that dangling carrot in front of their face, that expensive PFP, that blue chip or that hyped mint or whatever it is, right?
01:28:16
Speaker
So we really need to kind of just understand that psychology plays such a big role in everything that's being built here in Web3.
01:28:26
Speaker
And until we actually kind of just tap into...
01:28:31
Speaker
our own morality.
01:28:33
Speaker
Cause that's what it comes down to at the end of the day.
01:28:35
Speaker
It's morality, right?
01:28:36
Speaker
Like, am I really supporting this project when I know so-and-so is going to happen or like this founder has done so-and-so in the past, or maybe they're unethical or maybe they have very bad spending habits.
01:28:49
Speaker
Right.
01:28:50
Speaker
I've seen other like trading groups, right.
01:28:52
Speaker
Other big projects.
01:28:54
Speaker
Their founder, they make a ton of money from the community.
01:28:57
Speaker
They get 100 ETH and they start leverage trading with their community's money and they blow it all.
01:29:01
Speaker
They get liquidated.
01:29:02
Speaker
And now they have to step down as a founder and the mods are coming to clean up after them.
01:29:07
Speaker
This is a true story that just happened recently.
01:29:09
Speaker
A very big project, right?
01:29:10
Speaker
I think I saw it.
01:29:11
Speaker
Yeah.
01:29:12
Speaker
So yeah, I think most founders, when they run into a large sum of money from mint funds, they've never managed that much money before in their life and they just do stupid things with it.
01:29:21
Speaker
Right.
01:29:22
Speaker
So, um, it's so easy.
01:29:24
Speaker
It's so easy to, you have the access, uh, no project, very, very little project who they do claim to be decentralized, but they don't use a multi-sig and, and it just sits there and you're right.
01:29:37
Speaker
You don't know who the founder is.
01:29:38
Speaker
You don't know what their habits are.
01:29:39
Speaker
You don't know if they're addicted to gambling or addicted to other things.
01:29:43
Speaker
Yeah.
01:29:44
Speaker
Yeah.
01:29:45
Speaker
and we're a bunch of dgens so the the probabilities are pretty high that the person that you're giving your money to is gamble it away yeah yeah definitely definitely um yeah just we got a long long way to go but when i see other builders uh building stuff that actually brings value it just it gives it gives me motivation i'm not so cynical and i'm actually happy right because i'm like
01:30:11
Speaker
you know, like other people are doing what I'm doing.
01:30:14
Speaker
They're actually building and they're not caring about certain metrics, but they're more focused on the value that they provide to their community.
01:30:21
Speaker
And as long as their holders are happy, their community is happy, people are actually finding value in it, then...
01:30:27
Speaker
It doesn't matter.
01:30:28
Speaker
You don't need to be the biggest.
01:30:29
Speaker
You don't need to be the shiniest.
01:30:30
Speaker
You don't need to be the strongest.
01:30:32
Speaker
But as long as you do have that base, right?
01:30:33
Speaker
Like what's the reason for your project, bro?
01:30:37
Speaker
Because if there's no reason for your project, if it's just a cool PFP that does nothing, well, you could have sold that as digital art.
01:30:43
Speaker
You didn't need to actually be on the blockchain or to be a token, right?
01:30:46
Speaker
You could have just sold it as digital art.
01:30:48
Speaker
A lot of these open additions that are coming, it's like, bro, this could have been digital art.
01:30:51
Speaker
This had no reason at all to be an NFT.
01:30:54
Speaker
It's just an artist coming with a big name and DGENs, FOMOing in and buying his art.
01:31:01
Speaker
Wanting to extract.
01:31:02
Speaker
But their art never ends up as the same value as their Web2 art, even when they're famous, right?
01:31:07
Speaker
Because this art is controlled by DGENs.
01:31:10
Speaker
It's not controlled by the art collectors and the connoisseurs, right?
01:31:13
Speaker
So yeah, it's interesting.
01:31:16
Speaker
Yeah, it really is.
01:31:17
Speaker
Man, I think those are really interesting thoughts to actually close off on because it is one of the most important things that we've said today.
01:31:25
Speaker
And before we do close off, who are you looking for right now?
01:31:29
Speaker
Who do you want to reach out to you?
01:31:31
Speaker
Where should they find you?
01:31:32
Speaker
What should they expect from you?
01:31:33
Speaker
Yeah, you can always find me in the AG Discord Alpha Gang.
01:31:42
Speaker
I don't give anybody any promises.
01:31:44
Speaker
You might not make any money, bro, but you're going to have a good time.
01:31:47
Speaker
You're going to enjoy your time.
01:31:47
Speaker
There's good vibe people, there's friendly people.
01:31:50
Speaker
And yeah, you'll get to know more about me, about my community, what we're all building together.
01:31:56
Speaker
Because I strongly believe that the holders of any project are the project, right?
01:32:01
Speaker
The project is the holders, like the people who identify behind those NFTs, behind those PFPs.
01:32:06
Speaker
So
01:32:08
Speaker
Yeah, just closing message is, yeah, find founders that make themselves available, get to know them, find out what they're building.
01:32:15
Speaker
And if they're passionate, and if you actually see that they're advancing in Web3, support them.
01:32:19
Speaker
I'm not asking you to support me.
01:32:20
Speaker
I'm saying other founders who are actually passionate and building something that's going to advance us as a space.
01:32:26
Speaker
Because no matter who you are in Web3, if you just leave off with that message, if that message resonates with you, and you end up supporting someone who actually built something good, then you're advancing the space and you're actually investing into the right projects.
01:32:38
Speaker
Man, couldn't have said it any better.
01:32:40
Speaker
And I absolutely support it.
01:32:42
Speaker
And he is very humble and he's not saying that you're going to get anything with him, but I do highly recommend that you check out Alpha Gang because even just for the vibes, honestly, and I don't just, I don't usually just throw that word around because it's just been so overused.
01:32:59
Speaker
But in this case, they're there at the bottom of the bear market.
01:33:03
Speaker
They're there.
01:33:03
Speaker
So man, Hacks, thanks so much.
01:33:06
Speaker
I love this conversation.
01:33:08
Speaker
Yeah, me too, bro.
01:33:09
Speaker
Anytime.
01:33:10
Speaker
We'd love to have it again anytime.
01:33:11
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
01:33:12
Speaker
It's great meeting you out.
01:33:13
Speaker
You too.
01:33:14
Speaker
Take care, man.
01:33:15
Speaker
Thank you.