EP 149 | NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) for Regular People

Yo, what up, yo, welcome. I y'all feel like it's IGB Quick Take. Spy guys, people. I'ma just be all that stuff real quick.

Like, you know, I hit four minute, man. It's got like a freestyle, but I'm fine. Podcast. Come on.

Yeah, turn me up. It's gonna be good. I ain't really got time. What's up, people?

I am your host, J Will. And I would like to welcome you to inspire guys, people to podcast, but we balance faith and business, the guy due to your purpose. This is a quick take, people. Come on.

Guys, people. It's gonna be a great day. Today we are gonna discuss NFTs, non-fungible toakles, for regular people. Because you are not a dummy.

No, I would never call you that. Look at me. I got the music back. Shout out to the people that told me that like, yo, where's the music on the intro, Jake?

Y'all know what time it is? Actually, I don't even know what time it is. I have no idea how the music got muted out. It was muted.

So I must have hit a button on the laptop, the button that mutes it or something as I was ending it. I have no idea there was a song at the end called Don't Give Up Now. It's really just like a 30 second clip, I think, of a song. Like, sometimes I share clips of y'all with y'all.

I can talk. I can talk about music that I've done in the past or that I never finished or that I really like and just isn't unreleased. That song is a song I really like and I never really finished it or released it. It's called Don't Give Up Now.

So I just shared a clip with a hook. It was like at the end because last week's episode was about peace, patience, and perseverance. As long as Don't Give Up Now, so I ended it. The song was supposed to come in.

It didn't happen. So maybe we'll share that today at the end of today's show. I'll end it with a clip of Don't Give Up Now, which is just again, a clip of a song that I never released or never finished and I really like it. I should probably finish it one day.

The other thing I want to say about last week's show is a lot of times on this show, I try my best to just be real with y'all. And I do that. The only reason I'm using the word try is it relates to be real is because I also like to keep my... I'm just a private person.

You know, y'all know that. If you listen to the show, it's like everything ain't your business. You know what I'm saying? It's just how I get down.

Privacy makes it valuable to the people in your life, at least for me, that are close to me. It's like, oh, you know something or you know what part of me that everybody doesn't just get to see or whatever. I don't know. Anyway, that's just me.

That's how I work through the public nature of things, like having a podcast or other things that I do and balancing that with being a businessman in corporate America and just like this world of like just complete show everybody everything. I know I just don't get into all of that and I'm not saying nothing is wrong with it. It's just how I try to deal with it with my natural personality of like sometimes being super outgoing, but at the same time balancing that would be kind of a super laid back, more observant, more kind of keep my business to myself type person. So anyway, I said all that to say.

I think I mentioned on the last episode of the show 148 it was, this is episode 149. I think I mentioned that show about peace, patience, and perseverance. It's like, you know, I need that right now because I got a lot going on in business and just a lot of unknowns and things like that. And I just wanted to share briefly what's so amazing about God and I'm so thankful, you know, like maybe two, three days after recording that show, I had got some information that I wasn't expecting that was good news, you know, in the business world about, you know, a way that I was appreciated and I'm not going to get into the details or whatever.

But it was just, it was good news and it was potentially a sign of more good news to come. And so I was just really thankful for that and thankful for the Lord that like, you know, because when you going through stuff and you just trying to do it guys way the best you can, you trying to keep God at the forefront, trying to keep a level head, doesn't mean it's easy. But I guess I'm just saying the things that I talk about on this show are so real to me. And I'm talking about them the best way that I possibly can and sharing like, hey, I'm human just like you.

Don't put me on a pedestal. I have issues. I have things I'm praying about, things I'm trying to grow from, things I've learned, like, you know, just balancing life with all these things, man. So I just wanted to share that.

Like, so, you know, thank you to anybody who ever prays for me in any kind of way I'm definitely praying for y'all and pray for more than news, you know, but, you know, in life, it's just there's sometimes you go through a season where there's just a lot of things coming your way and you're trying to sort them out like you don't know. And that's where really faith comes in it. So I'm just thankful that, you know, the Lord is with me and protects me and guides me through times of unknown and I don't know he does know. So that's that just wanted to share that.

And today is all about NFTs, right? Non-fungible tokens, you might have heard the term NFT. If you haven't, the goal today is to really give you a an overview of just like for a regular person overview. So just like we did with cryptocurrency, you know, it's the idea is that if you were a person as an expert, this might be, you know, beneath you or something like that.

I'm really trying to keep it super practical, high level with all of these like digital economy, business topics, you could go so deep into the details and get really technical. We're going to try to stay away from most of that and just talk about this topic in a way where regular everyday people can understand and then it'll be up to you. How do you feel about this? How do you value it, right?

And I want to say like, if anybody was like, why are we talking about these topics, Jay, like, why are you going here? Here's the thing with me. I always say education is more powerful for them. And people tend to fear the unknown.

So whenever it's something that you don't understand, people tend to fear it and always look at history to try to understand the future. That's how I try to think through critically what's happening. I look at like, well, what already happened? You know what I'm saying?

Like what are some breakthrough technologies or innovations that have already happened in the past? And I think for me, I've been able to live through some amazing technology. Like, this is just a very interesting time to be alive and to be born during the time that I was. And the reason I say that is because the way I view life is I try to understand the times that I'm living in historically.

So if I was alive and I think the early 1900s, maybe the car was created, I think that's maybe when Henry Ford was doing that. I'm not sure. Don't quote me on the time. But if I was alive during that time, I would genuinely be trying to understand like, okay, based on when I'm alive during the time when a car, a vehicle, this is the new technology, we go on away from horses and wagons and walking to driving, let me fully understand what this means for the time that I live in, right?

And I would have tried to maximize my gifts, my talents, my abilities, and also my knowledge and understanding during that time. Same thing, if I was alive during the civil rights era, I would have really tried to do a good job of understanding the value of like, all right, this is the time that I live in. What does that mean? And I think most of us live, again, you know, I talk a lot about consumers and contributors.

Consumers tend to live in their emotions. All right. So consumers get so consumed with how they feel about stuff. I always say there's a scripture in the word that says there's a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof is dead.

Be careful when you're living based on what it seems like to you. You don't know it. You haven't studied it. You ain't really sure.

But it seems this way. I never trust myself fully just because something seems a certain way. Now, that's different than trusting your gut or having discernment. Those things are good.

But when you live your entire life and base your whole ideology and principles and standards, based on how you feel, it's really a lazy way of approaching life because what you're saying is I don't really want to learn. So I'm going to just feel my way through life. All right. To me, that's trusting yourself a little too much.

Like, you're not God. You can't just feel your way through everything. You can trust your gut and, you know, you can discern and have a feeling sometimes, but everything can be a feeling, something you got to know. You know, it's like me, like, I never been to dental school a day in my life, but imagine you walk into the dental office and I'm sitting there and you're like, Hey, bro, you ever?

You're a root canal? I'm like, no, but I got a feeling that everything's going to be all right. Oh, all right. Anyway, you don't want to have a feeling.

I'm going to knock out about three, four, your teeth. If I just go off where it feels like. So why are we talking about NFTs, the digital world and economy? It's because, you know, I've shared with y'all number one.

I'm only sharing with y'all. I've been, I've put in seven months, I think of studying this stuff. I think I started really diving deeply in May. I want to say it was May.

If I'm not mistaken, I was looking at some notes yesterday. My notes on my cell phone tend to have started deeply around May. And I wasn't like keeping track because I wasn't studying stuff to like share with people, to be honest, just I studied the more I learned. I'm like, Oh, this is interesting.

Now again, I was involved in some of this stuff in 2017. I first started looking at this stuff, but around May this year, I really dove in and I've put in hours, like probably hundreds of hours of studying. So with that said, my point is I'm talking about it because I'm understanding and anticipating and speculating the time historically that I'm living in. And I think it's my responsibility to understand what this means and also to share with y'all.

So that's why we're talking about this stuff. Here's the other part before I dive into it. It's like this, you know, I look at people who are afraid of the unknown. That's okay.

I think that's normal. There are some things that bother me too about a lot of things that I study, but it's kind of like when you're debating somebody, like people come on my Facebook posts and stuff sometimes when they disagree. And I have some people, some of y'all like, you might DM me and we have a conversation because you want to understand or you disagree or you know something, you know, you're like, I don't see it that way. That's cool.

I've had plenty of those conversations with people who listen to the show and I appreciate it. That's different than people who just jump on my post and insult me because they disagree. But that always tells me is like, Oh, you don't have an intelligent answer. You just don't like how this makes you feel.

How would I say it makes you feel, but you're not actually sure how to articulate why. So you just go off the feeling and call me an idiot stupid. I don't know economics. I don't know this.

I mean, I've been called a lot of things on a Facebook post. So my point is it's okay if you don't like something, but I think you should understand it. It's okay if something bothers you where the world's going or if you anticipate or speculate that this is going to lead to this and this is going to lead to that. Like there's a lot of things that concern me about just the world in general.

But as I always say, I always think that it's proper to educate ourselves. And that way when you don't like something, you can have an educated reason for why you don't like it, but you can also have an educated strategic approach to not being involved in something. So you can know exactly why I'm not involved or how I'm not going to be involved. And so anyway, that's why we talk about some of these forward thinking things and the show is about faith and business.

So there you have it for anybody who wants to hear more topics or you know, want to share topics that you're interested in, please do email me germane wilson music at gmail.com. As always, you can look in the description of the show and you can see links to things like my email or listen into my music or the website. Those are things that you can link into very easily looking at the description of the show. Also whenever we do have guests, you can also look in there and most times see their information as well.

Now, let's get into NFTs for regular people. Okay, now as stated in order to understand the future, we're going to look into the past. This is why I love the fact that you have things like newspaper articles archived and things that we could go back and look on. And even as we like live through this pandemic, I think one of the biggest concerns that I have is that people just live so much in a moment that we say any crazy thing, like fearful thing, anything just to get people excited in a moment.

And we never go back and truly fact check. I'm not talking about this fake internet fact checking where oh, they just if you talk about COVID Instagram will put on their here, click this for COVID resources. No, we talk about true facts going back and looking at what people said, what people predicted, how people talked and then looking at what really happened. That's how you fact check.

There's a lot of false prophecies out here that are being like nobody's holding them accountable. It's like, oh, you a scientist, a doctor, it is we use these titles and expert. We use these titles to kind of like give us credibility to say any and every crazy thing to people. And then nobody goes back and you wrong and be like, hey, like you said this was going to happen.

It didn't happen. And you had me scared and you said it as a fact. You didn't say it as speculation or a thought, whatever. So what we going to do, we're going to go back and look at an article from the New York Times.

And this is from January 5th, 1998. Whoo, we going, what's that? 20 something years ago? Almost 24 years.

Like, so let's look at this. Like, man, some of y'all listening to this show might not have even been alive. I was alive during this time and I was a teenager, but old enough to know kind of like at least like, ooh, the world is going in. It was a big thing when you were coming to the year 2000.

So here is this article. And we just going to skim a little bit of it to make my point. This was by Saul Hansel and it was January 5th, 1998. The headline reads, waiting for a millennium panic level to rise.

Now, I want you to pause and just think about how people talk in the news, how, how articles and headlines get your attention waiting for the panic level to rise, right? And the same way people talk about the millennium is the same way I see us talking about COVID. Living in the fear of it. Again, don't give, I'm not trying, I don't want to get into trying to compare that directly.

That's not the point here. I know that COVID really is dangerous. I know that there are aspects people have lost their lives. My heart goes out to anybody who's been truly sick.

So I'm not trying to make a direct comparison there. I'm only now talking about the way people talk about things to provoke fear within you, right? Like that's what I'm talking about. So here's how this article reads just looking at the beginning.

For several years, technological doomsdayers have bleated a dark prophecy of computerized chaos to be brought on the inability of many computers to interpret dates after 1999. Repair your programs nowadays in tone or be prepared for your systems to freeze and millennial ice. Though it has been hard to know how seriously to take these predictions, we're less than two years to go clues are emerging. Much of the evidence supports the view that the year 2000 problem is indeed a big deal.

Computer users are slowly coming to this realization. By all accounts, the activity devoted to the problem will substantially pick up this year. Okay. Enough about the article itself.

Here's what I want you to take from that. When you're trying to understand something that hasn't happened yet, you don't always know. And so my biggest thing with COVID or how people talk about the year 2000 or the internet or any new technology is, we try to talk in terms of absolute understanding with something that hasn't happened yet. And my whole thing about a lot of this is I need to be educated on the pros and cons and cons and cons.

But I also don't know exactly what's going to happen. And I'm saying that to you to say that there are aspects of what we'll talk about today. Maybe I'll speculate a little bit or share my opinion about where I think things might go or how they can go. But it's important for you to know that, listen, I'm not a financial advisor.

I'm not speaking of prophecy today. Like, I'm just sharing with you what I do know. We're looking at things to understand something that is yet unknown. And also this thing that we don't know will continue to evolve as time goes.

Again, just like the internet back in 1999, we were scared that the internet couldn't read the date 2000 and couldn't figure it out between 2000 and 1900. Why? Because computers have advanced and we have a much greater understanding of the internet and what it is. So nobody's walking around.

Actually, what's crazy is back then we were talking about internet in the computer in 1998. Back then nobody was walking around with the internet on their phone. Or most people probably weren't even walking around with the phone to the level that we have now. In addition to that, you definitely have an internet in your watch.

Like, I mean, I have a smart watch. You know, shout out to my father, bought it for my birthday last year. And it's like, cool. Like, I could talk to you from my watch.

You could talk to me from your glasses. I went and looked at some Ray band smart glasses. They're a little creepy, supporting me to kind of want them just because I like technology sometimes, like it creeps you out, but it's kind of sweet. But these Ray band glasses are frustrating to me because they literally are like cameras.

People can just be walking and recording you and taking pictures like, this is where from a privacy perspective, I have a huge problem with things. But nevertheless, what's my point? Nobody's afraid anymore about can the internet read the date. So sometimes when we talk about things just to provoke fear and get people to be afraid.

And I tell you all the time, be careful what you let make you afraid because that's what can control you. Whatever people can use to make you afraid, they can use to control you. Again, in 1998, 1999, it was the internet. So what do people do?

They were scared about Y2K. So they went to the grocery stores about all the water, just like people scared about COVID and bought all the tissue. Now, I don't know how you choose what is more important, water tissue. I don't know why it was tissue last year, but it was.

What's my point? Whenever you see fear, then you've got to step back and say, yo, education is more powerful than fear. It's time for me to educate myself. So now that we understand that there can be uncertainty about the future and that we don't have to necessarily just talk in absolutes when it hasn't happened yet, we can look at what we do now.

We can't educate ourselves. We can be intrigued by the idea of what is possible to happen. We could also know that it might not be mad as bad as the internet, not the internet. But it might be worse.

I don't know, but it's a lot of people that like to prophesy during times of uncertainty. And I'm just a little hesitant to do that. I would rather educate myself and let God send the word or the prophet. Like I'm not like, you know, against what God might say or lead us to or whatever.

I'm just saying it seems like everybody wants to be that voice that, you know, just says the craziest thing and is like, well, if nobody's going to fact check you later, nobody's going to go back and pull up your article and see what you said about it then. You sound like a genius today or maybe you just get attention today because people love attention and that attention might sell some of their products or merchandise or whatever it is or it just might stroke their ego and like make them famous and like, oh, I'm the best doctor in the world. Oh, I'm the best scientist. So whatever it is or I'm the computer expert at the end of the day, I think you got my point.

NFTs for regular people. So the first thing we want to discuss as a relation to NFTs is like, what is an NFT? All right, non fungible token. So let's start with first, an NFT is a digital asset with a unique signature.

All right, so let's just pause right there. We regular people. We just want to understand this from a regular perspective, right? It's a digital asset with a unique signature and a signature can be proven on the block change.

So look at it as like, you know, when you get your, you sell a car and you get your title signed or whatever, you got to like take it to the secretary of state to like prove, you know, to like officially stand or prove that this is authentic, right? So that is a tangible physical asset that deed or that title is a physical asset, one form of one to prove or maybe the, maybe the deed itself isn't the asset, but it is the proof of the asset. So the asset may be the car that the deed is for the signature isn't on a car. So you don't go and write it, right?

So if you have a car, so let's let's take a step back. You have a car that's your physical asset. Well, in order to prove that you own that car, you don't sign it on the car, right? You sign it on the, on the title on the registration, the deed or houses of deed, you get my point and you take that somewhere to be authenticated, secretary of state.

All right, for a digital asset, right, it's the same way, but the signature is proven on the block chain. Now, if you don't understand what block chain is, you want to go and listen to episode like three or four episodes ago. So it's one 40 something. It's about the metaverse.

And then I also did another episode about cryptocurrency for regular people. You want to listen to those to understand what is the block chain, right? Like I'm not going to do a deep dive into that because we already talked about it, but the black chain itself, this is where this signature, this transaction is confirmed and approved. It's public, a public ledger.

All right, you got that part? And NFT is a digital asset, but it can be proven that there is a unique owner to this asset, just like physical assets. You can prove, Hey, officer, here's my license, my registration, right? Proof that you own.

Here's my insurance. Something that proves that you have this thing called insurance, something that proves an asset. So NFT is the asset itself. It is digital in nature, but the block chain is where the proof of the asset happens.

All right, we regular people, we get in this now. Now when you think about something like, I think fungible, like if you think about the idea of a fungible, it's like something that can be replaced with something else that's identical because we're trying to figure out too, like what is, I get, okay, a digital asset, but what is the whole fungible, non fungible thing? Where does that come in at? All right.

So if you're fungible would be like a quarter, if you give me a quarter, I can replace it for a quarter anywhere in the world and it's worth the exact same thing simply because it's a quarter. Like they all the same color, they all made out of the same material, like you give it on me like it's a quarter, it's interchangeable, it's fungible. Your quarter is not worth more than my quarter. So it's two identical things that can be swapped for each other.

And like literally all of the properties are identical in nature as far as the value goes, right? Maybe one quarter was made in 1975, another one was made in 1995, but it's still fungible even though it has unique attributes. Attributes don't change the value. The unique attributes of a fungible item does not change the value of that item.

Therefore those two items can be interchanged equally. Now we think about non fungible, right? So these digital tokens, these digital NFTs that are non fungible in nature, what it means is that they are not all the same and that they do have unique, um, a unique nature to them, which also allows them to be valued at various prices. Now I'm gonna give you a couple of examples.

We can walk through this things, right? So a couple of different ways. First, NFTs can be a collection. Now what I want to do to make sure that you understand some of this stuff is I'm going to use examples of everyday stuff that you already deal with today.

And then I'm going to compare that to the NFT so that you can understand it in a way that your mind is already used to thinking. So let's talk collections. A collection now let's use something you use to, let's use a car, right? Let's say there's a special edition of a new Corvette coming up, which there is a new special edition of a Corvette coming out in 2022.

I watched a whole Amazon mini documentary on it and I kind of want it. I'm like it's cold. Um, but anyway, I don't know how I got into that. But there, let's say there's a special edition of a new Corvette coming up.

Now this special edition may mean, hey, this is a race car package. So let's say I forget what the new one is called the Z06 Z something, right? This means that, hey, you got your regular Corvette, but in this special edition, this is basically bringing race car, like technology and performance to the street level. So it's faster.

The seats are a little different. Everything is a little different. It's a special edition. So let's say with this special collection, like a lot of the value in the collection is based on the overall supply.

This is where supply and demand comes in it. All right. So here's what I mean. Let's say they say we're only making 500 of these corvettes.

Now with the regular base level Corvette, you can drive down the street, right? And a hundred people got your car. This happens all the time when you buy a car that you never noticed, never saw on the street before. Let's say you never see Mustangs, then you buy a blue Mustang and now you see Mustangs every day, right?

But there must be a look just like yours again. It's like, okay, you got the one I got. All right. Not a special collection.

No, it's, it's fungible. Like, you know, to a certain extent yours is just like mine. But here's where this unique nature of a collection comes in. Hey, we don't, they only made 500 of these.

And I got the only blue one. Now that increases the value because that's an authentic Corvette. It could be proven you can open the door, see Corvette in there. This isn't like a, um, a generic copycat pay less version of the Jordan's like, no, this is a real, a real Corvette.

It could be the signature can be proven that it's real. So it has a lot of value because it also has a rarity to it. So the supply is so low. There's only one blue in North America.

It's valued at a lot more from that perspective. Okay. So now when you think about collections, collections can be copies or variations. So if you think about a copy and the example I just gave about the Corvette, maybe there are, you know, I only won blue, but maybe there's 10 red, but out of the 10 red, only five of them have a black interior.

You get how you can change all these elements. You can have a collection of something and they're all different. No two are the same because maybe you got a red. I got a red, but you got black rooms.

I got gray. There brings a unique nature in the collection. Now, as you think about NFTs, right? This is a digital asset.

So let's say I release a collection of NFTs. They're going to be, you know, 10 pictures of dogs, but it's pre-programmed for all of the dogs to be 100% unique. No two dogs are all the way to same. So this is a collection because they are all dogs.

There's something similar in nature. However, there's always something unique. Maybe one dog has on glasses, one glass, a dog has on a hat, but no two dogs. If yours have on a hat, mine on a hat, mine is black.

Yours is white. Whatever it is, they're not too the same. So what does this do? Right?

I'm trying to get your mind. We're crypto currency NFTs for regular people. Okay. So now you have this art collection, a digital asset that has only 10 available.

So we know that the low supply creates some rarity to it in this collection. And now they're all unique. So if I put those on the open market to sell them, then some people may be willing to pay more for the one with glasses because maybe you wear glasses and you value artwork where an animal wears glasses. Another one may like the white dog because they had a dog that was white and their dog died and this reminds them of their dog.

So this digital asset or digital piece of art has more value to them. So they're willing to pay more for that non-fungible unique token than they are for the black one because it has more value to them. A huge part of NFTs in order to understand them, you have to understand value. Here's the thing.

We can't tell people what to value. You can't tell me that, hey, it's, you might think it's stupid for somebody to pay $1,500 for some Gucci shoes, but you can't make it not valuable to them in that way. Right? So like for me personally, I'm not into that.

I don't, a $400 Gucci t-shirt means nothing to me. Like I don't want that. You get what I mean? But I can't stop the thousands of millions of people who do go and spend $400 on a Gucci shirt for whatever reason, right?

Value is a very personal thing at times. So, NFTs, art collection, digital assets doesn't have to be art, but a digital asset that has the unique nature to it. Now, we're going to talk about how, well, what happens when there's an NFT collection and there's a hundred of them that are the same? Well, here's the difference.

Just like in the real world, if something only has one or 10 of them, like the lower the supply, right, doesn't mean automatically is going to cost more of being worth more, but it means depending on how people value it, if it's rare, it has a greater opportunity to be worth more. So some people are willing to pay more for things that are rare. All right. So now let's go to the next part of this.

We talked about collections and copies and hopefully you're starting to at least understand a little bit of like, okay, NFTs, a digital asset with the, it's signed on a blockchain. So it could be proven that I own this if I own it or whoever does own it, it could be proven. All right. So here's what I want to kind of tackle next.

I want to answer this question. Are NFTs stupid? There are a lot of people that think NFTs are stupid. Maybe you know about them.

Maybe you don't. Maybe you're one of those people. Maybe you're not. Maybe this challenges you.

I don't know. This is what we do. We see something we don't fully understand and we just say what we feel. We express what we feel.

And that's okay. Maybe even after you learn about them, you may still think it's stupid, but I think it's much more valuable, I guess, pun intended with the word value for me to think something is stupid because I'm educated on and I understand versus I think something is stupid simply because I don't have an intelligent understanding or reasoning behind how I feel. It's just a feeling because I don't really know what it is. So part of again, while we talk about this kind of stuff, I'm not here to tell you how to feel.

That's not my goal. I'm not here to sway you one way or another. Like you are very capable. That's what I love about this show.

The listeners are very intelligent, smart, independent people. They're very capable of thinking for yourself. You don't listen to this show for me to tell you how to think or what to think. However, hopefully it could be educated and informative.

So our NFT stupid. You ask the question, why would someone value a digital asset? And I'll answer it this way. The same reason someone would value a red Corvette.

No, you might be like that's not the same. But I want you, again, remember, we like to go back to the past to understand the future. I'm not going to pull up an actual article or something from the past on this one, but I want you to just use your imagination. Think about when cars were first created.

So I guess we was that the early 1900s? I think I mentioned that. I mentioned that earlier already, whatever. But if you go back and when cars were first created, I bet the horse owners didn't understand why someone would value a machine over a living creature, right?

Horses still have value today. But a horse owner backed in. I would imagine when everybody was taking a horse to get everywhere, a horse really meant something. I'm going to say something to you.

I mean, I drive out houses where people own horses, but I don't know nobody personally where somebody owns a horse. None of my friends own a horse. All of them own a car. So people 100 and something years later seem to have very little value for a horse and a lot of value for a car, whereas the people who were living with horses were the dominant asset to have for transportation.

They probably looking like, yo, I'm used to like touching it. My horse got a name and like all this stuff. Like, no, we don't got a horse. We got a Mustang.

That's our horse. Like it's a picture of the horse on the logo. That's about it. Maybe I call my Mustang Betsy, but other than that, no, like we don't have no value for a horse.

So I want you to stop and ask yourself, you know, are you the horse owner that thinks a car is stupid because you don't understand a car? Or do you like vision or do cars scare you because you like, whoa, a lot of accidents can happen or a lot of bad things can happen from a car or like the devil is in the car. Like whatever you might think about it, right? Now, think it's important for me to say this, like there are things that could be bad and good.

There are things. So if you go back and you were that horse owner in 1900 who was afraid of cars because your reason was that people would get hurt. Well, guess what? In the last hundred years, I don't know how many car accidents have happened, but it's been a lot of them.

You were right. Like cars are dangerous. A lot of people have died in cars. A lot of people have done bad things, ran people over it in cars.

Those have been misused and abused like probably thousands of times, hundreds of thousands of times in the last hundred years. So what is my point? A lot of times when we want to have a dark prophecy or like, you know, prediction, yeah, okay, you probably right because it's human nature to mess stuff up. So you're not going to get no argument for me that whether it's NFTs or cryptocurrency or something else, that there might not be a whole bunch of bad that comes from this stuff.

I'm just simply thinking through it in a way of like, but I don't see none of us today. It's like, I don't want a car. Now we might try to improve the car, improve the safety measures. That's what we have crash dummies.

Now you have electric cars to kind of save, you know, some of the toxic city on the environment. What is my point? Human nature is like, we do a lot of good. We do a lot of bad.

So a lot of bad things happen in cars. They created cars. It was bad for the environment. Like a bunch of bad things happen because of cars, but a bunch of good things happen from cars too.

And I'm sure you've either bought or sold a car before, which means there's a business aspect to cars as well. And I love to understand the business. Remember, this show is about balancing faith in business to guide you to your purpose. I love business.

And I love thinking about business in a way of like, am I the horse owner that is completely shutting down a car because I don't understand like the pros and cons of it. Now, is there anybody today that thinks it's a sin on a car dealership? I'm away from the answer. Is it a sin to make money selling a car?

Have you ever made money selling a car? Would it be a sin if I told y'all, hey, inspire guys, people, we own the Chevy dealership up the street now come and support? No, nobody thinks like that. Maybe somebody in 1900 did maybe like it was like just the end of the world for them because they didn't understand it.

Now again, I'm not on either side. This is I'm trying to be objective about the idea that yes, there are things there are pros and cons to things and you got to critically think through this and you got to pray. And you got to ask God for direction because I don't have all the answers for you about what to do or how to do it. I just know that these are the realities of the world that I live in in the time that God decided for me to be alive.

Remember, none of us decided to be born. God created us. He actually intended us to live in this time purposely. There's a reason for that.

And I don't think the reason is just about consuming things. And also don't think that it's wrong to be a contributor. Why is it that? Oh, it would be a sin if I own a car dealership, but it's perfectly okay for me to be upside down in a car loan every three to four years and never be able to form my car loan in my insurance and to be poor because I have a depreciating asset that is just worth less and less every single year, every moment, even though that might be a little different in this last year as even used cars have appreciated in value.

All right, let's move on from that. So let's think about value. Okay. And I want you to think we still answering this question or NFT stupid.

Here are some things I want you to think about trading cards. Now trading cards are if I use basketball cards, which I used to collect basketball cards, I actually still have a few have Michael Jordan, couple, Michael Jordan, couple, grand heel, clean, a large one, I'm Reggie Miller. I still got some basketball cards. I will say none of the basketball cards I own are rare enough to be worth any significant amount of money.

That's something I didn't understand that part when I was collecting cars as a kid. I was just collecting my favorite players, but I didn't understand that in trading cards, there might be a Michael Jordan rookie card where there were only 20 made or something and that might go for $500,000 today, a million dollars today. Why because, hey, what condition is it in? How many of them did they make?

Now again, trading cards is pretty normal. All right. Those have value, those sell for millions of dollars, just Google football or basketball cards. Literally there's some that have sold for millions of dollars this year that somebody bought for $300,000 four years ago, right?

An asset, a physical asset that can be proven that it's authentic, it's authenticated and that it's rare. That's a physical asset, a trading card. So now I want you to think about an NFT. All right.

There are NFTs. I actually, so now we're going to do like some real interactive type real life today. I want you to think about if you go to NBA Top Shot dot com and I'll put the link in the description of the show NBA Top Shot. So NBA, T-O-P, S-H-O-T, Top Shot.

So, NBATopshot.com, this is how trading cards are evolving in the new digital world of NFTs. Now again, for transparency, I actually own about five or six of these NFTs. Why? Well, I told you, I grew up trading basketball cards.

They had value to me because I'm a basketball fan and I just like collecting things sometimes that may increase in value in the future or in my case with the current cards that I have really are worth nothing because so many of them exist. They're not rare enough and they're probably in mint condition because I mean they're in cases, but they're not perfect condition. However, NBATopshot.com. So, I went on there and what they do now is they have something called Moments.

And this is how NFTs, again, we're talking about what NFTs are and also trying to understand how they're going to exist in the world that we live in. So, this is just information. I'm not telling you to go buy NBA Top Shot NFTs. Again, full transparency, I do own some.

Thought it was pretty cool. They have Moments. They're video Moments that you can own. Just like NBA trading cards, they have differing rarity.

Some of them, there's thousands of them that exist. Some of them, there's only five. If there's only five of them, it might cost more. There's some NFTs on this marketplace and you can go to the website that are literally selling for thousands of dollars, meaning there might be a LeBron James.

It's a video moment because it's a digital asset. So, you own this video moment just like you would own a trading card and you can resell it if you want. I've actually reselled my first NBA Top Shot NFT and I actually made a substantial amount of money in comparison to what I pay for it, although it's not a substantial amount of money based on value. So, what's my point?

You can resell these items and they could be worth thousands of dollars or they could be worth dollars of dollars like mine was. So, here's an example. You go on NBA Top Shot, Top Shot. I go on there, I buy a pack of cards, digital cards.

You open it digitally. First of all, I was in line, there was 30,000 people in line, but they email you when it's your turn so I didn't have to wait. And you open a pack, I pay $5 for a pack, open up a pack, you don't know what's in it, just like how when I was a kid, if you had opened it, don't know what's in it. I got three cards.

I got three regular random cards, right? So, I'm like, all right, I only paid $4 for it. I got these little video moments. It's cool.

And here's what happened. I was like, you know what? I'm going to put one of them for sale because I want to understand NFTs. I want to, this is what you got to understand about me.

I want to understand something before I write it off. I want to understand how it works and maybe I like it and maybe I don't, but at least my opinion is educated. That's how that's my thinking, right? I'm not saying you got to think like me.

I don't know everything. I don't know if I'm right. But I put, I pay $4 for three moments and I put one of them on a marketplace for $12. And it's so, so I bought three cards for $4, sold one of them for $12 and still own the two, then use the $12 to buy another pack that opened and I got a better car.

I got a D-way car or a moment and it was D-wayed against the pistons. Y'all know I'm from Detroit. So I'm like, yo, and it's D-way, although it's not rare is D-way. So it has more value than the ones I had.

So just in a small example, I'll average $4 to buy NFTs, make $12, steal on two of them that have very little value. I could probably get $4 for those both. But then I bought another moment that's worth more than $12. Maybe I can get $20 for that.

Anyway, that's a real life example of one of the ways that NFTs already exists. Listen people, it's a difference between being a consumer and a contributor. This already exists. Right now, it takes all takes place on the blockchain.

It's a, it's a blockchain called Flow, actually, the Flow blockchain. And I'm gonna just say this in a little more full transparency with you, because I went on there and experienced this and I'm not telling you to do this. This is not me telling you what to do. I almost don't even like telling you none of my business at all because I just don't like to make this stuff personal.

But here's the thing, I like it and Flow went and made a partnership with the NFL and I believe they're going to be releasing NFL moments this month. And NFL is more valuable than the NBA. It's just the more valuable league. It's the number one league in the US.

So you know what I did? I went and invested in Flow. I'm like, yo, I like this. I could see this going somewhere.

Looked at the details behind the company. Looked at other partnerships that they have. Looked at the blockchain, what it does, what it is. And I'm like, you know what?

This doesn't bother me. Like NBA moments, that's not the devil to me. That's not, it's just video clips. If that's the case, YouTube video should be the devil to me if I got a problem with this.

So again, one of the things that I'm trying to kind of like inform people about is that like everything is different dynamics to something. So you can't just say like, oh, the internet is a scene. Internet is the devil. It might lead to the devil in a hundred different ways, but you still check your email.

You still bought that t-shirt from whatever your favorite fashion website is. So what am I saying is that there are broader dynamics to how we leverage these things. Now, we talked about cryptocurrency for regular people. We're talking NFTs today, but what I just described to you was both.

Flow is a cryptocurrency. The NBA moment is an NFT built on the Flow blockchain. Again, if you go back and listen, Flow blockchain is kind of the system. The token is Flow and you leverage that token.

You can also actually use USD on their platform, which is by Dapper Labs, I think is the name of their company, you know, companies go by different names. So anyway, long story short, enough about that example. I'm not the diggin' too much. I'm not telling you, I'm not a financial advisor.

I'm not telling you to go and invest in Flow. Don't go take all your money, do research on your own. Don't just listen to people and go put your money in the things because I could be completely wrong just like the New York Times headline and you can lose all your money. So be careful whenever you're investing and when you're learning about things and how to leverage finances and resources.

But I'm sharing these things with you because as a contributor, like I'm not waiting on the world to educate me on things. I'm trying to encourage any and everyone to go and you go and you educate yourself before this stuff is even mainstream, before people, but most people I talk to, I've never actually talked to somebody that knows what I'm talking about right now, even exists. I'm not already on several NBA moments. Now again, maybe these are worth nothing.

Maybe they're never worth more than $5, but I ain't really put that much money in it to start off with as it relates to buying the cards. Now Flow itself, that's a different story. It don't matter how much I put it in it or didn't. I'm just explaining to you as an example how all these things start coming together.

Let's keep it moving with a couple more examples. What about expensive art? Okay, expensive artwork is something that people tend to understand. Now keep in mind, as we use these different examples with NFTs, just like things in real life, the value is based on supply, who the creator is, which a relationship is, etc.

So I'm going to give a throw out a couple of fast examples, expensive art. A van go painting, one painting is worth upwards of $70, $80 million, right? You have to ask yourself, why is that? Well, number one, it's an original.

It can be proved that it's a work of art from van go because it has his signature, right? So an original means it has low supply, one of one, and then the provability of it is his signature. Now let's think of that in terms of NFT. What if you have a digital asset that is one of one, right?

And then it can be proven on the blockchain that is open to anyone as a signature to go and say, oh, this is in fact the original. So why would someone pay $90 million, $80 million for a painting that some guy just splashed on like, and you can't, what can you do with a painting? You can't drive it like a Corvette. You can't talk to it.

Like it's just on your wall and it's going to probably make you a man or a woman because of somebody walking your house and you got a van go. That is a signature piece and it's like, yo, like you got to just be real about why do we buy certain things? Why do human beings do certain things? Why do you want a red Corvette?

You have a red Corvette. Yeah, you want to drive it as fast. All that. But let's be real.

Stop being like, don't be fake with me. Let's just be real. Part of it is you want to pull up and people see your red Corvette. And that has some type of value to you for people to view you more valuable because of something you own.

Now, I think that's something you need to be careful with. Notice how the devil can be in the stuff that we already got like because seeing it within us, so it ain't about like being afraid of the nft. Like, oh, this is a new type of seeing. No, it's like no.

Like the same way you could be sitting with a rear Corvette or a van go. You could be arrogant trying to show off prideful, lack of humility, vanity, all those things can exist already. So it's my point, it's just understanding, is it stupid or why would someone do it? Well, why would somebody pay $80 million for a van go.

Well, part of it is probably because they got, you know, $600 million or a billion dollars. So they can afford a van go. That's part of this as well. The value is based on different things.

So expensive art, NFT, same way. Some artist comes out with a digital NFT. I can tell you that Beeples is one of them. It's sold for $69 million.

This was a regular dude. I actually watched him in an interview online. Just look up the Beeples NFT. Just Google it.

$69 million. This guy went around I think for five years and took a picture, one picture every single day for five years, put that in a collage, minted it as an NFT, auctioned it off in a sofa and it's $69 million. Now again, you can say why would anybody want to own that for $69 million and it's probably going to be the same way somebody would want to own a van go. But the thing that most of us are having a hard time wrapping our minds around is why would someone value something digital as more or equal to something physical.

Now this is the question that we should be trying to answer. And some of the answer is in the metaverse and we talked about that on the episode, but some of it is our own fault right now. I want to ask you, how do you use social media? Again, just a quick example.

There are hundreds of things that I do that y'all never know about. Now I'm not saying, I don't like using myself. You know what, it's uncomfortable using yourself because it sounds like you know, you're saying you the example. I don't know if I want to use that.

I don't want to use myself. All right, let's just say hypothetical. Let's say hypothetical. All right, fellas, you take your wife to Hawaii.

You take your wife to Hawaii and you let's say, let's be real. You go there within 10 minutes of being there. We all know if we follow you on Instagram and Facebook, we know everything about what you're doing in Hawaii that you don't. You showing us the food, the clothes, the water, the car you drove, the sunset.

And I'm, keep in mind, I'm not saying this is right or wrong. This is my point. I'm not saying this is wrong. I'm just dealing with what we already do.

What does that mean? Where does those things take place at? That's all digital. That's literally digital.

Now we think of it as physical, I guess, because it's a picture or video of something that is happening physically for real. That ain't a cartoon version of you in Hawaii, but you might have some filters on it. It's digital. Can't put no filters on real life.

What is my point? My point is that the metaverse and NFTs don't blame them for being the reason that people value digital more than physical, blame yourself for what you do today. I tell y'all a lot of time, I got friends and family who will video and digital you to the end of time. But it's very hard to get people to spend real life time with you.

You know what I'm saying? Shout out to my friends that we link up in real life. We just went to the show with some friends this week and had a great time. You know what I'm saying?

We did a couple's night with friends and family this weekend, had a great time. Like, shout out to y'all because what I'm saying is that those are the real life moments that matter. Those are the people that are actually saying what their actions that the physical still matter. People are saying no.

Even though I'm here with you physically, it doesn't have value to me until I release it into the virtual world of Instagram, social media, Facebook. It isn't valuable to me to be in Hawaii until I show everybody I'm in Hawaii. Who are you showing? You're showing your digital friends, your online friends for digital reactions.

Not real life. Nobody in real life walks up to you and say like, like, heart, hug. No, you're doing it, sharing these things for digital reactions. This isn't real people.

This is the reason I'm saying this is not because I hate this stuff is not because I'm not on social media and I don't share pictures sometimes or pictures are the devil. It's just like, again, I want to think intelligently and logically about what I'm saying, even if I'm criticizing something because I watch people all the time pick up their phone and literally scroll on TikTok or Instagram, they can do this for hours. Just scroll. What do you think that is?

It's not real. It's digital. You are valuing the digital more than a physical when you do that because whatever you could be doing in the physical world isn't as valuable as the hour you're about to spend taking your index finger and swiping up. That's just what people do.

So say all that I have to say, before you question it well, why would somebody pay $69 million for a digital piece of art or why do people want digital NFTs? It's because what has happened in our world for better or worse and I don't fully like this. I'm just being transparent on this. This is one of the things that concern me just in general is that we as human beings have put so much value on the digital.

I don't mind the digital existing, but it's like we have no discipline around and I'm exaggerating when I say we have no discipline because I know a lot of y'all know how to tap in and out. I got a lot of people that they don't see on Instagram for a minute. You don't share every moment. Again, I'm not here to judge those who do.

I'm only here to point out that you do it. So what's my point? At the end of the day, can you go to Hawaii and not tell anybody? Can you go and when I say not tell anybody digitally?

Can you have any experience that you only value the physical value of the experience and not the digital? Now, see, because I'm conscious of this, this is something that I try to do. I do stuff all the time and I don't like actually most of the stuff I do, I never say unless you know me. I never post.

I don't like again, but again, that's not to say that's not to be legalistic or say I'm better because I don't. I'm just saying that I'm conscious of the fact that there seems to be a struggle between the digital and physical and I have to fight that in my life and that's your decision what to do. But don't tell me that it's a sin to be a contributor, but it ain't a sin to consume it for five hours. So it's like, I'm just pointing out before you criticize somebody for selling an NFT or buying an NFT, make sure you criticize yourself for scrolling on Instagram for an hour.

Like, because that might be something like, that's the waste of time. Like, you know, I don't value that. I don't do that personally. Like, that doesn't make sense to me.

But it also ain't for me to call that wrong. What I'm saying is it's easy to call everybody else does stupid while you're doing the same thing in a different way. That's the overall point. All right.

So we talked about people's went for $69 million. There are other NFTs. This was a regular person that did this, by the way, which also means that there are things you could do as a contributor again. Now, what do I want to say?