Background
Mint Season 5 episode 12 welcomes gmoney, the collector of JPEGS, occasional disrupter, and all-around NFT advocate.
In this episode, we discuss:
- 00:56 – Intro
- 10:01 – Tips for Building a Personal Brand
- 15:20 – Pseudonymous Identity in Crypto
- 19:47 – The Free Mint: Bootstrapping a Web3 CRM
- 29:10 – Preserving Quality with Curated Communities
- 31:12 – Why The Bear Market Energy Reveals Your True Colors
- 35:07 – Gmoney’s Love for Fashion
- 38:22 – Where Do You See the World of Web Three and Fashion Colliding?
- 44:50 – How Will Web3 Revolutionize Fashion?
- 47:23 – Admit 1: Why Build An Independent Marketplace?
- 48:00 – Outro
and so much more…
I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Support season 5’s NFT sponsors
1. CyberConnect – https://cyberconnect.me/
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3. Mint Songs – https://www.mintsongs.com/
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Hey, G money. Welcome to mint, thank you for being on, what’s going on?
G Money: Adam, how are you? How’s everything?
Feeling good man living the dream, more importantly, how are you doing? What a crazy a last few days? What’s going on in your head?
G Money: You know, it’s been a whirlwind, right? Like, it’s been a range of emotions. And, you know, overall net positive, it’s, it’s been very humbling, right? Like, I’m super grateful for it, definitely was way better than I even imagined it would go, I really had no real expectations. I wanted to, you know, it was very un-hype. It was like a stealth drop. And that was one of the things I wanted to make sure I did. Because I wanted to optimize for distribution. And I wanted to optimize for no gas wars. And I think we did a really good job with both. So, I’m, I’m really happy with how can you use for me?
Intro
I think you just gave out so much context into future questions I’m about to ask you. But before we even go into that, okay. I’m always curious how people kind of introduce themselves, but specifically you because a lot of people already know who you are. How do you introduce yourself to someone who has no familiarity with web three?
G Money: So, someone that has no familiarity with me? I think it really depends on the person, sometimes I’ll tell him, I’m just a collector of JPEGs. Sometimes a disrupter. You know, just I think I’m an all-around NFT advocate, right? Because I just see the power of the technology. And I understand how useful it’s going to be in the future and how we’re, you know, literally, and we probably haven’t, if this was a baseball game, we probably haven’t even started the game yet or it might just be like the first pitch.
Why are you so convinced of that?
G Money: I just think that like everything in the real world is an NFT. Right? So, my thesis is that if everything in the real world is an NFT, and we’re living more and more of our lives in a digital world, then those assets will be coming on chain as NFTs right? There’s no other way to convey digital ownership, right? Like if you go out and you buy that T shirt right now, you can do whatever you want with it, right? You can throw it away, you can give it to somebody, you can sell it, whatever it is that you want, why don’t you think that will translate over into a digital world right, into the metaverse, nobody necessarily wants to live in, you know, when you take a look at all these, you know, futuristic movies and shows that dystopian world is where there’s like some central authority that controls what you can and can’t do. Right? So, it’s like, why? Just because I have that, let’s say, authority over myself. In the real world, why don’t I think I should have it in the digital world, right? So that to me, just tells me that technology is super important, which is why I’m so convicted in how important it is.
I think people like you and me and many others in web three have obviously we’ve drank the Kool Aid or in the rabbit hole. But for those who kind of don’t know, how you got your start into the space? What was like your Genesis story? How did you get your jump into web 3d? What did that look like?
G Money: Yeah, so I got into crypto in 2017. I had always been involved in the stock market since I was 14 years old, I started following the stock market when I was 12. And so, I was I was trading my own money, you know, equities, long short US equities. And in 2017 I had heard about Bitcoin in previous years, but I never really looked into it and then somebody told me that they were making a bunch of money trading Bitcoin. So, I started looking into it, I found the Ethereum, and I found ICOs, and I was like, Oh man, like this is, you know, this is going to disrupt VC investing. And, you know, I went down that rabbit hole. And then in q1 of 2018, I was like, this tech is incredible. It’s going to change the world, but I thought it was too far away, because I remember the.com bubble, and you know, the promises of the.com Bubble took like 10 years to make, you know, the internet that we know, today didn’t necessarily come about until 2010, which was like 10 years after, so I was like, alright, we’re, you know, 7 to 10 years away, maybe five to seven years away. I’ll come back, right, and then, you know, COVID happens, the Fed bails everybody out. I wire a bunch of money over to Coinbase, buy my first crypto in like two years, and I start going back down the rabbit hole. And I’m like, oh, man, like they actually built stuff real fast. Right? Like it only took two years like I you know, I started using Ave and I was like, wow, this is incredible. This is going to change the world. And you know, I was like trying to catch up on everything I missed, right?
So, I was listening to a podcast, going on Twitter, going on telegram, catching up with just trying to absorb as much information and that was, that was defi summer, right. So that was like kind of my experience and going back down. And then I found NFTs in late August, early September. And the reason why they started making sense to me right away was because I started playing fortnight on the first day of quarantine. You know, and it sounds crazy, but like, you know, I start playing. I hadn’t played a video game in like 10 years, I start playing with two of my buddies, one of them has a nephew. In Texas, we start playing and the first thing this kid asked me, What skins did you buy? And I’m like skins, like, you know, don’t give me any special powers. I’m not buying any skins. You know, fast forward two or three weeks, I’m buying a bunch of skins. And I realized I’m like, wow, like, that kid is 12 years old today. 10 years from now he’s gonna be 22. He’s gonna have his own discretionary income. And he’s gonna be totally okay with owning a purely digital asset. And I’m like, you know, at the time, there’s no publicly traded like Metaverse, plays or anything like Roblox isn’t even public at that point. And I’m like, I just need to keep an eye out for it and when I found NF T’s I was like, oh man, like this is your skin on Twitter. This is your skin on Discord Telegram, right? Like, to me, it’s like this is a no brainer, right? Like this is you know, the same way that you’ll wear, you know, a luxury watch or drive a nice car in the real world. This is kind of your way to show off a little bit in a digital world and that really became my thesis and I started going down the rabbit hole. It culminated in me buying my crypto punk, which is my avatar, and writing a Twitter thread on it, which went viral on crypto Twitter at the time. And, you know, I’ve just been an advocate for the space ever since.
A lot of people that I meet and that I typically host on mint, they have a gaming background, whether it’s like really like early or deep. For me personally, too. I remember playing Club Penguin RuneScape and all these other random ass games growing up. And a lot of my understanding in web three, when it comes to incentives, for example, come from the base of playing games from all these virtual worlds that I spent a lot of time in as a kid. And for you, specifically, your understanding of NFTs came from that as well, specifically fortnight, but what do you think about like, what do you think it is about gaming culture that has led a lot of us to kind of understand what’s happening crypto and has become so attached to this medium.
G Money: So, I mean, I think it’s interesting you say that, because like I understood it from a gaming perspective, because I was, you know, playing with digital assets. But I don’t consider myself a gamer, right. Like i played War Craft three, and StarCraft where like, my, like, MMO RPG is like, I kind of stopped like after that. And I would be playing a lot of sports games growing up, what I think helped me understand the space and I think where I had a real edge early on, was I understood the value of these assets, not from the utilitarian perspective of like, oh, you know, this will be worth this much because it’s a value in the game. I understood it from like a social aspect, right? Where I felt like, especially at the time, and still, right, there’s so many smart people in crypto, but maybe not enough of them understand, like, you know, there are guys that I’ve met, and I’m sure you have too, that are built with billions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars, that will walk around in like, you know, khaki shorts or, you know, whatever, like you would never guess, right, very unassuming. And so, I think that like that is more of an anomaly than maybe mainstream culture where people will wear name branded things, right and I think I understood that aspect of the social psychology of how humans interact with each other in the real world. And my thesis was that that wouldn’t change just because we were by behind screens, right? Like, I would still want a way for me to signal to you that I was a person that you wanted to talk to, right? You know, how do we do that in the real world, we wear nice clothes we wear, we drive nice cars, we wear nice watches. And that’s why even sometimes you hear that theme of “fake it till you make it right”. It’s like, you know, you want to, in order to win that big account, like, you know, you need to kind of act the part, you need to dress the part. And that’s, you know, you can make your decision of whether you think that’s good or bad overall for humanity. But I think that that’s just naturally how animals interact with each other. I think you see it a lot in the animal kingdom, especially in mating culture, and anything where there’s a social hierarchy where, you know, animals will put themselves on that hierarchy and every, every group has a different way of doing it. And humans, you know, one of the ways is, you know, status signaling, right. And so, I understood it from that point of view, and I think that that’s kind of what gave me my edge at the time because I don’t think anybody was thinking, I think now obviously, you know, people are spending millions of dollars on a picture and we all get that, but at the time that I made the purchase and wrote that that thread. I don’t think that people it was common thought.
Tips for Building a Personal Brand
Right? You know, your brand is so distinct online, a lot of the projects that you’ve worked on from adidas to portraying all these different NFTs during in Times Square, a lot of the things that you’ve kind of like taking lead on and that people know you for, It’s quite impressive, you know, and how you’ve built yourself online is also really interesting. It’s one thing to have a tweet thread that goes viral. It’s another thing to be consistent and to actually build a brand online. I’ve seen crypto Twitter threads go viral all the time. But you’ve somehow managed to kind of like burst through the noise and consistently build a profile for yourself, how have you managed to do that? Like, what is your secret to brand building? Because you also stay kind of like pseudo anonymous and in conferences, you’re like speaking behind a box, which I want to talk about more like, how do you actually build that brand? And sure, you could argue like, early on, not a lot of people were talking about this, I had a unique voice, but still to kind of be in the position that you’re in is quite unique in the industry. How have you managed to do that?
G Money: I think one is, especially when I started the brand, like the G money brands, right? It’s really being authentic to who I am, right? Like I always operated from the place of, I want people when they meet me in person to say, Oh, G money. He’s exactly the person who I thought he would be right. And one is being authentic to that person and two is just speaking my truth, I guess is, you know, sharing my points of view, the way that I see it, and, you know, not just necessarily waiting for somebody else to kind of lead the way but being like, okay, well, this is what I think makes sense to me. And so, I’m going to try it right, like, I’m going to try it and, you know, hopefully it makes sense to other people in the same way and maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t, right, like, I don’t think anybody is going to be perfect, no matter what they do and no matter what industry they’re in, but I think is like, I’ve been able to, I think establish myself as somebody that seeing a little bit ahead of the curve at least, and kind of helping bring people about not selling my brand short for you know, a quick buck or whatever. Right? And like trying to operate from a space of integrity and do what not only I think is best for myself, but also for the industry. Right?
Yeah. You know, in with that I kind of briefly mentioned it you sit in a like small yet spacious cubicle when you get invited to speak at conferences, which I find so cool. It’s actually one of the coolest things that I’ve seen, and really on par with how you kind of represent yourself online to offline. What is that like? Because I know a lot of people have like stage fright when they when they speak in front of the audience. But you have this cube in front of you and all people years reports. Can you talk more about that?
G Money: Yeah. So, you know, that was? We did that at the MD con. Right. That was last weekend, two weekends ago? And it was it’s interesting. It’s fun, right? It’s like, it’s a little bit of playfulness. You know, I think, again, like, especially early on, like a year ago, I remember when the BB sale happened and almost nobody knew like what an NFT was, especially in the finance world. I had the opportunity to talk to some mainstream press, but they were like, oh, well, you have to, you know, show your face and tell us your name. And I was like, well, nobody really cares what that person thinks about NFTs, people care what G money the crypto punk eight thinks about NFTs and what he has to say. And so, you know, to me, it really started making sense of like, well, like, let’s take that one step further. Right, like, what I look like, and what my name is, doesn’t matter, right? Like if we’re living in, you know, the 2020s and, you know, we’re talking about equality and, and, you know, no, no isms of any kind. Like, you know, I guess pseudo identity is probably like, you know, a pseudo identity or even total anonymity is like that to the max, right? It’s like, you people know, what I am like to interact with, without having to know who I am, what my name is, where I live, all those things. And I have this reputation that if I ruin it, then people won’t trust me within the space as G money, right?
And so, I think like, that’s really what the narrative I’ve been trying to push because you’re, the way we display ourselves and the names that we choose are very, very, very personal, right? Like, the names that were given at birth are generally family names and the way we look at generally we like, the way we look in real life we can we generally can’t control right, a lot of its genetics, but like if I want to display myself as a unicorn, and I call myself unicorn lover 54. You would assume that I really like unicorns, and that’s probably some important part of my personality and that’s way more personal than like being known by my birth name and like using my picture of what I looked like. So that to me was kind of really the genesis behind it of really leaning into the G money brand. Because I think it’s like, I think it’s cool and important, especially as we’re living in this world the way it currently is.
Pseudonymous Identity in Crypto
Yeah. Okay. So, with that NFTs and web there have become a world of escapism and expression like we’ve never seen before, and it takes a certain personality and a certain character to kind of gravitate towards this pseudo identity type of personality. I’m curious why you like, why did you personally gravitate towards that? So, you just gave an entire argument as to why it’s beneficial and why people do it, but why you, have you always wanted to be seen as like a monkey. Like, based on based off your argument, you know, what I mean? Like what is it about you and your upbringing that has kind of like gravitated you towards this type of identity?
G Money: You know, so when I first bought the punk, right, it was like, I originally bought a crypto punk zombie, right at the time, I paid $20,000 for it. And then I was looking for an eight, right? Because that’s the next year higher, and I thought I was priced out of the aliens. Like, I thought the aliens would trade it like 500,000 plus maybe a million dollars. I’m like, I don’t have that kind of money to spend on a jpg. You know, I think I can stretch for an ape. When I wanted to buy the rarest one, the rarest asset that I could, that I thought would be a signal, right? Because especially at that time, as you know, as the NFT market was really in its infancy still right, I’m talking about like, fourth quarter of 2020. The people in the space that knew the most about NFTs generally had crypto punks as their avatar, right. So, they either had zombies and apes, I don’t think anybody had really come out and interacted as an alien up until that point, but it was mostly apes and zombies. And so, I was like, okay, like, that’s like a signal, right? Like, if I am a crypto punk, a elite to crypto punk. You know, and if you take a look at crypto right now, right? It’s like, you know, Bitcoin was born in 2009. But if somebody tells you that they got into bitcoin in 2012, or 2014, you’re like, oh, you’re OG like that, you know, it’s like at this point, like, the difference between each of those cycles, 2009, 2012, 2014 is miniscule, right? We all consider them OG in the space. So, my thought was like, if you own a crypto punk, that’s kind of like your way of signaling that you’re an OG member of the space and it wasn’t necessarily because I wanted to lean into like identity, it was more to kind of be like, Yeah, this is my, you know, my metal, my trophy of showing that I’m crypto native. I understand it. And like, you know, I’m an active member of the community. And that’s really kind of where it stemmed from, and it started growing on its own right, and because I don’t really change my PFP very often, if at all, you know, this ape with a beanie is, you know, kind of what I’m known for.
Yeah. And with that, dude, you built such an incredible networking community online. And I think that kind of brings us to why, part of the reason why I’m here today with Admin One, which honestly, congratulations, it’s become the hottest thing on crypto Twitter. People are following left and right, so hard. Can you walk me through? Why create that? Like, what were some of the initial problems that you were trying to solve?
G Money: Yeah, so it really come down to, I wanted to create a community and incentivized tokenized community to build and to kind of include in all the projects that I work on going forward and the collaborations and I thought there was no better way to do this than by doing it the way I did, right. I wanted to get as much distribution as possible. Like I didn’t necessarily want to have a small number of holders that you know, were hoarding memberships. I wanted to get it out to as many people as I could. And I also wanted to make it as fair as I possibly could, knowing that whatever it is that I did, would probably have a lot of FOMOS involved with it regardless so to me, you know, we spent months trying to figure out the right way to distribute it the right way to get it into people’s hands. And ultimately, we settled on a on a free mint. For the people that were have been my most loyal followers to this day, right?
The Free Mint: Bootstrapping a Web3 CRM
And the way you’ve kind of like curated your most loyal followers is actually really unique and I think it goes kind of unnoticed and the reason I say that is because you want to you’ve been like incredibly strategic with the people that you’ve surrounded yourself with. For the people that you’ve kind of recognized who have supported you, and you’ve done it through NFTs, which I think is a really unique concept. And this idea of building an on-chain CRM to let it reward your most active participants is something that I think is not being done enough on an individual level. When you think about like networking and building a brand and web two, you typically have platforms like HubSpot, or Salesforce or these like personalized CRMs, to kind of keep track of your context, of your network. And when you think about like, how can I do that in web three, align incentives, and reward people when the time is right. I think you’ve kind of perfected that. And I want to give some recognition, because when I read through the manifesto, you kind of notice the first bullet point into talking about distribution is the first 11 people that have collected all three Bitcoin, Miami, NFTs, right? And you kind of Airdrop them. I guess, the first initial Admin One Genesis passes, which, first of all really, really, really cool way of kind of distributing and curating and kind of selecting and rewarding some of your most active contributors. But why do you think NFTs are kind of like that primitive to do that? Right? Because you took it because some people use it as a form of identity, right, and a form of expression like you do with your punk, you use it as a form of like networking, of like building some type of CRM and tracking your most loyal followers. Right, I’d love for you to talk more about that.
G Money: Yeah. So, you know, I think one of the beautiful things about NFTs I think as it goes forward, right, it’s like, here we are in, you know, the year 2022. We now have, you know, all the fang stocks that and privacy issues with regards to our data, and how it gets used and how we’re targeted and how, you know, if you’re, if you don’t know what the product is, you are the product. Right? And that’s kind of the world we live in right now and I think the beautiful thing about NFTs and having access to people’s wallets, because they’re public, right? You know, I can have some sort of idea. And again, we’re still really early. So, this data will only get better as time goes on, right? Of what is this wallet owner? What you know, what are they like? What are they dislike, right? What, you know, what pull ups have they collected, because that tells you what events they’ve been to right? What NFTs do, they have in that wall that tells you the type of artwork that they liked, the type of communities that want to be part of. And again, we’re really, really early on, and I think you know, 5, 10 years from now, this data will be super, super valuable to the people and the companies that can analyze that data, and then be like, oh, you know, we can target this wallet owner with stuff without having to know their age, their sex, their occupation, you know, all these things that are super invasive, where they live, what, you know, what they do, where they’re going to be in five hours, right? Things that, you know, are web 2.0 privacy things, we can get rid of that but still get, you know, a lot of that important data, right?
So, to me, I knew it, like from early on, I think somebody recorded a tweet where I did say, in that initial three-day event, that there will be a reward for this down the road, right? Like there will be a reason to collect all three and there were 11 people that collected all three and like, and I’m forever grateful for him, right, because like, I never once asked them to open up their wallet to, you know, to pay for something, it literally was just take five minutes out of your day, I chose strategic points, maybe like two blocks away from the actual convention in Miami that year and it was like if you were willing to take five minutes out of your day. And this is back when you know, I don’t even know how many followers I had at that point. But I was just like, alright, like this is an experiment, right? Because I very much felt that I still do feel we have the biggest brands that will come into the space in the future. But they’re going to need people that are crypto native, figuring out the roadmap, right? So how to get there, how to engage with your community, Kim Kardashian comes into the space tomorrow, she can’t fail, right? Like she you know, she’s gonna have the feeling that she can’t fail, like, obviously everybody can, but she’s gonna have to be like, well, we have to execute this. Who’s done it right? And I want it to be like providing some sort of roadmap of like, well, you can do this. And then you can sit on it for a year and then you could sit there and give it out to people, right? When they least expect it and that that really was something that I think is currently under-utilized and hoping that going forward, people see what I did, you know, going to conferences, giving people pull ups, never telling people what was going to happen with those pull ups. But knowing fully well in my head. Exactly what my ultimate game plan was with it, right?
Yeah. So, if you took that five minutes out of your day to listen to G Money, to collect those things, you’d have something valued well over 10 Eth in your wallet right now, because of that support. So, it’s really, really incredible to see you know, if you really like you pay close attention G money to the way you are kind of like constructed the drop and how you designed it and the level of curation. It’s very reminiscent of that, of pucks, which is obviously your entire identity, right? Specifically, the whole no roadmap, and also the zero mint at launch, right? punks were inherently free to collect, right? And if I remember correctly, they had no specific roadmap. It was just like a collectible. You know, the first one the OG, the crème, de la creme as you’d like to call it. Can you talk more about that, am I seeing the connections correctly or was there a different kind of reasons as to why you designed it this way?
G Money: Well, I decided to go free because one was definitely a way to pay homage to crypto punks, I think they are the most significant NFT project that exists, right, I think a lot of what, we’re seeing in the space to 10,000 PFPs. It stems from crypto talks, right like that. They are the OG PFP project, we are here today, a large part because of the work done by lava labs. And you know, also like, you know, I know, I probably could have sold the NFT, from one two Eth. And I definitely would have had a ton of demand for it. But what I really wanted to do was kind of provide support to the people that supported me, you know, to show them that they’re my day ones, that we’re going to be in this together, and to also kind of like build a great community that’s incentivized to also add value to it themselves. Right? Like, I think one of the coolest things that I’ve been experienced over the last few days was how much more active, the discord is than I thought it would be and how people are sharing ideas. You know, what, one of my favorite stories from that Bitcoin Miami event was, two people met up at one of those days, that ended up that meeting of those two people, because they went to go collect my NFT, it was the formation of a hedge fund that they started together, or a VC fund that they started together, and they ended up starting Dao together. And, you know, to me that that’s like, you know, those were, that meeting, there was maybe five people hanging out that day, right? Five people like part of you know, following G money that when became friends and did some really cool stuff together. What happens from a community of 1000 people, right, that like agree with like the G money ethos, and the things that I want to, you know, push for, which is disruption and adoption, right? And if we have 1000, like-minded people, what does that mean? Right? How does that create more of a fire for the space to help meet those goals? So, to me, it’s just, you know, that’s really like a lot of it, right? It’s like, I have my plans of what I have planned, and I know, I’m working on things in the pipeline. But, you know, for me, the upside surprise has been, you know, people in the discord like, you know, I think somebody started a thread on like an introduction thread today. And, you know, just reading some of these introductions like, wow, we have like some really smart, high-quality people in the community, outside of just the curated list, right outside of the people that I wanted to make sure it came into the community. You know, and it makes me really excited with like, what’s possible?
How many people have collected your pull ups today? Do you have a number on that?
G Money: So yeah, so the number can range anywhere from like, five, you know, there was 1300, about 1300 that were included on this list. I had to take out the pull ups from when I was doing my podcast live, for fear of some of them got barded, and which ones were the barded ones. So, in order to get fair distribution, and not have the project barded, I think there’s probably in total, I think about somewhere between five and 7000 pull ups out there. But because of barding issues, I had to relay that number to people that almost had like proof of human right, in the sense that I had to most likely met them in person, or they had to have been at an event where you almost, you had to kind of show up as a human.
Preserving Quality with Curated Communities
Yeah. So, with that, you curated this 1000-person group, this 1000-member group, yet there’s so many people who kind of like love, respect, you have been a part of your journey. At certain touch points. How do you think about like the concept of inclusion, right, in a place where let’s say a lot of contributors maybe didn’t make the mint or they tried to claim their spot, but it was sold out too quickly? Like, because the FOMO on crypto Twitter is like incredibly high. Like it’s real. Like I’ve seen it, people are freaking out. How do you think about like building out and growing the community in a sustainable way without diluting the current quality of what of what was kind of curated at the gecko?
G Money: It’s definitely something I’ve been thinking about, especially from the start, and it’s something that I think about constantly is like how do you grow the community without that dilution? I don’t think I necessarily have an answer. I think one of the fortunate things is, I think that there are other communities out there that are already bigger than mine, that are also facing the same problem that are further along process and progress and we’ve seen a lot of examples of that already of how communities have grown. And I have the opportunity to kind of sit back and watch and learn, I don’t need to build everything out and I don’t need to have that answer from day one. It’s definitely something I think about, right? Because, you know, even you take a look at like a 10,000, PFP project, right? Like, okay, that could be big enough now for, you know, May 2022 for a community, right, but like, what is May 2030, to look like, or a 10,000 PFP project is going to be small, right? That will be miniscule on the grand scale community. So, I don’t have the answers. I know I don’t, but I’ve been having these conversations, and this has been something I’ve been actively thinking about, like, how does the community grow long term? I have a couple ideas of how I plan on doing it, but nothing’s set in store.
Why The Bear Market Energy Reveals Your True Colors
Yeah. Another interesting kind of touch point that I realized with Admin One is that you could have launched the high of a bull market, right? And really capitalize on the opportunity, but you strategically decided to launch it during the bear market. Why is that? Number one and two, what is it about bear markets that you think brings out like the most of people? Because I only asked that because I was a part of the 2018 bear market, and also crypto winter? And the best projects kind of came out of that we kind of use love and adore today? Right? So, what are your thoughts around that?
G Money: Yeah, so one of the reasons I didn’t want to do it in a bull market for sure it was, I didn’t want it to get hyped up, right. Like I wanted the no hype. Like I specifically launched it, it was pretty much a stealth launch. It was one tweet the first, you know, the first retweets and replies, people were like, is this you know, did you get hacked? And, you know, it was me going out to people that were on that curated list early, and you know, saying, hey, like, can you please, you know, here’s your, here’s your link to mint. And I really wanted the non-hype, I wanted the anti-hype, you know, which is, when you think about it, like when you look at NFT projects, usually they tried to build up the hype, right, they go on, let’s call it the political press tour beforehand, right, so that people have their eyes on it, I wanted to distribute it out to the community, I wanted people to really kind of come in, and if they want to hold it or sell it, or whatever, you know, you have to kind of believe a little bit about me, right? Like, you have to understand a little bit about who I am, what I stand for, what I want to do, and where you know, what I’ve done and where I want to go. And so that was kind of the reason I wanted to wait for a bear market, because I wanted to have the anti-hype. And I guess with regards to building, right, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that in a bear market, people aren’t as focused on price, right? People aren’t, you know, it’s not like every single time you open up your portfolio, you know, you go up five 10% in net worth, right?
So, you don’t, I feel like a lot of times, this is coming from somebody that, you know, traded equity markets for 15 plus years, you know, when you’re making money, you’re very like unproductive, right? Because you’re sitting there and you’re thinking about oh man, like I just made so much money, and you can’t sit there and be your most productive. But when you’re sitting there and you’re like, oh man, like I have to figure out how I’m gonna make money, I have to figure out how, you know, those bills get paid long term, I have to get to work and I have to grind and I have to, you know, do the right thing. Right? You know, it’s funny, like I very much live in the idea of just do the next right thing and you know, the universe will take care of everything else. Right? When I try to plan for certain results, I usually never get the results that I want. But when I focus on making sure that you know, and it’s the same thing with practice, right, like if you play a sport, you know, you focus on the mechanics, right? You know, you focus on the swing, so that, you know, eventually you hit the home run. But if you sit, if you go up to the plate, trying to hit a home run every time you’re at bat and your focus is hitting that home run, you’re probably not going to do it right like you want to go through emotions.
Yeah, and with that kind of explains the no roadmap perspective, that you are kind of like kind of set as the foundation for Admin One, you know beyond Admin One, where else is your energy focused in the bear market?
G Money: You know, Admin One is the gateway for a lot of the things that I’m working on. I didn’t, I I’ve had a lot of really good conversations over the last few months with a lot of good and awesome potential partners. And you know, the things I’m just really excited about what I think is coming down the road and I don’t want to give too much away, but I just, I’m excited. Right? And yeah, I guess we can just leave it at that.
Gmoney’s Love for Fashion
Okay. I’ll be keeping my eye out. Also, if people have been following, I guess like your story and your timeline through on Instagram, Twitter, they know that you’re really big in fashion, or at least with fashion, on fashion, the concept of kind of whether it be metalware or physical fashion, how did your love for fashion kind of develop? Because you tell me, you’ve been an equities trader for 15 plus years, and now you’re trading JPEGs. And while there is a level of like social signaling that comes with fashion to an extent, I’m curious, where did that kind of like excitement that love for the fashion industry stem from?
G Money: Yeah, I mean, it’s, interesting, because I’ve been thinking about that a lot as well. And, I mean, when I was younger, I remember in high school, like, I would always, like kind of like, draw, like logos and stuff of like, just like stuff that I was, like, interesting, like, oh, that would be pretty cool to like, make a t shirt or whatever. And, you know, I think my finance brain, like really took over for a lot of my life. I have always, I think I kind of have always had a good idea of understanding the general consumer. You know, when I remember, I was going into my senior year of college, I was interning in New York City that summer. And I remember I was on the subway, and I was looking around the subway and this back in 2003. And I noticed that there’s a bunch of white people with white headphones in their ears. And this is back when the mp3 market was massively fragmented. Everybody had an mp3 player, but Apple was the only one that had the white headphones. And I remember looking and I’m like, oh, wow, like, you know, there’s something here and I bought apple, I bought Apple calls, Apple was trading $10 at the time, I bought the $20 calls for 62 cents a share each, which I then sold at $49, a share each within 18 months or so. And that was up until last year, like the best trade of my career. And I had a couple other trades like that, you know, there was, I’m not sure if you remember, there was this brand called True Religion brand jeans. A few years later, that was really, really popular, but it was a publicly traded stock. And I remember buying it at around $4 or $5. It eventually ended up getting by either VF Corp or Phillips, Phillips in Houston, for around $25, $27, but I remember, you know, just writing that way, and it just, I got long it because the most fashionable people I knew in New York City, were wearing it right. That was like the thesis, right? It was as simple as that. And so, I think I’ve always been a very observant person when it comes to trends. You know, I think fashion is a very individual type of experience, right? Like everybody has their fashion, even if they aren’t, quote unquote, fashionable, right, like people just you have your look and I think it’s a very personal thing. And I think it translates over well, to this culture of JPEGs, right, where, you know, each JPEG like is similar, but they’re all personal in their own way. So, I think I see a lot of cross sections and opportunities there.
Where Do You See the World of Web Three and Fashion Colliding?
So, with that being said, like, where do you see the world of web three and fashion colliding? And I know, you have thoughts on this, like, you’re so excited about this. So, I had to bring it up? Where do you see those two worlds colliding?
G Money: I think there’s, you know, plenty of places that it collides, you know, I think, obviously, in the digital realm, you know, I think artifact has been doing a great job, I think, you know, Nike and Adidas coming into the space, to me was like, super important in that it signals to everybody that you have to take a look at this NFT market, the metaverse, right. And I also think, you know, you take a look at games like fortnight, right? And it’s a freemium model, it’s free to play, right, you can, and a lot of their revenue generation comes from, you know, selling digital fashion, you know, people, kids will play that game and I’m astounded by, you know, the, the wardrobe changes that happen, right? You know, kids changed what they look like, they change their skin, every game. So that means that imagine, you know, you’re at a restaurant and every 15 to 20 minutes, you go into the bathroom, change your clothes and come back out. Like that’s how quickly you know, ins are being changed and you know, still within the same session, so it’s not even like you have one specific look for, you know, one specific from one entire sitting. So, you know, I think that it is a very interesting space. I think that it’s going to be a massive space and I’m really excited to see what everybody is doing with it.
So, beyond Adidas, beyond the analogy to fortnight. How do you think like the biggest fashion brands are preparing for this, like web two revolution? Like, what does that look like? Do you have any insight on that?
G Money: I think that they’re all very interested. But I think also think that a lot of them are they, you know, they have to move slowly, right? Because they have to sit down, and they have, you know, they have these brands that they have to protect, you know, they can’t just jump right in the way a crypto native can jump right in. So, I think it’s super interesting. I, I think that we’re gonna see a lot of cool stuff in the future. But I also think it’s not gonna happen overnight.
So, I also want to talk to you about like, big current events, because you’re so big on the forefront of adoption and education. This whole, I guess, news of GameStop creating a wallet for Crypto NFTs, is do people think it’s like, as big as it seems, because I only asked that, because when Coinbase NFT came out, there was a lot of, I guess, hype around that, like, all that’s going to change the market, retail is going to be buying everybody’s bags, etc. Is it as big as it seems basically, like, do you think that news is gonna dent the world of crypto?
G Money: I mean, I don’t know, I’m probably not the right person to ask, personally I agree with you, right, like, you know, Coinbase NFT launched, and we’re still, you know, they’re still in beta or alpha, you know, they’re fully ship product and I think it’ll take time, right. But when I take a look at the landscape, you know, 10 years from now, I think it’s going to be very, very different than where it is today, right? In the same way, you can use the.com Bubble as your same analogy, right? And in 2017, I think Lycos was the number one search engine in the world, right? Five, six years later, it didn’t exist. So, you know, I think just because we have certain incumbents in the space right now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s how things are going to play out. It’s going to be really interesting to watch and I’m really excited for it. But I’m in no way declaring any winners or losers just yet.
Yeah. And just to kind of iterate, I think my whole comment on Coinbase NFT is actually really net positive for the space, the more innovation, the more collaboration, the better. I’m super excited to see what they kind of come out with, I only wanted to ask you because like the Ditas drop was such a vibrant signal in the ecosystem and that made so much noise. And like you said, like bringing those types of companies into the space really woke up, or at least I feel like woke up a lot of the minds and the attention of everybody else kind of like watching externally. When they hear NFTs they laugh at it, or they hear like digital fashion, they laugh at it right. But seeing one of these prominent players come in? I don’t know, I was kind of like thinking about the comparison between the two, if you know what I mean.
G Money: Yeah, I mean, I think Adidas and Nike coming into the space at pretty much the same time. I think they both officially came into this space within like 48 hours of each other, was probably the best signal that crypto could have, I think in the last like decade, right? Because it’s like to me, I up until that point, I think Facebook rebranding to Meta was like, Oh, well, they’re a tech company. Right? They have to focus on the next thing. But I think when you hear two of the most culturally relevant brands on the planet, coming into the space, I think every other consumer facing brand needs to be like, whoa, like, what is our NFT and Metaverse strategy? Because Nike and Adidas are both there, we need to think of something at least. And I think we started to see that that scramble, right? Like I think a couple other companies have released other projects, some of them may be better or worse than others. But I also think we’re probably in that quiet period that low where I think a lot of businesses are learning about NFTs and really digging down and taking their time to make sure that they make the right decision. But I think ultimately, like we’re going to, I think this cycle, you know, we’re probably going to be reaching that point where in the investment world it starts becoming career risk to not buy bitcoin, whereas last cycle, it was career risk to buy bitcoin, I think at some point in the near future becomes career risk to not have an NFT strategy as opposed to having one.
Yeah. One thing I want to I also want to talk to you about is your whole, like, your perspective on Angel investing, you’re actually really, really active and you’re an active angel investor. How many startups have you invested into date if you don’t mind sharing?
G Money: I don’t know the exact number. I think at this point, it might be over 100 But it’s around there.
How Will Web3 Revolutionize Fashion?
Yeah, that’s wild. Like how do you kind of determine which projects you’re going to cut a check for? Like, what does that look like?
G Money: It really comes down to you know, do I believe in the vision and like, do I think I can help right? It’s like those are probably two of my biggest, like, do I think they can execute? Right? Because the vision is one thing, but do I think they can execute on it? And how much help do I think I can add, and whether I even have the time to do it, right, because obviously, I’m doing my own things. You know, I have 100 companies in the portfolio. So, like, I’m always helping and connecting and, you know, seeing what I can do, and help them get to the next point that they need to get to in their business and that really is kind of the bulk of what comes down to it. You know, I’d say over the last few months, I probably slowed down a lot, just one because of the market. But then two is, it’s very funny. About a year ago, I was talking to a founder, and he told me, he goes, you know, you’re gonna stop angel investing at some point, I bet. And I was like, are you crazy? I’m like, part of the reason I started G money was so I can get into better deal flow, right? Like, you know, I wanted to be seen as that forward thinker, so that people wanted to bring me on the cap table, because they’re like, okay, like, he might have been wrong and crypto punks, but at least I know how he, at least I know, he’s forward thinking. And that’s a person I want as a partner. And so now, I’m at that point right now, where a lot of it becomes opportunity costs of, you know, do I build out what I want to build and the vision that I see? Or do I help people on their vision? I’m not going to say no to every, you know, two deals that come across my table that I think are great that I think can help and integrate especially, but I’ve definitely slowed down on that side of the business.
I learned so much about you in this conversation, it’s really interesting to hear one of like the OGs perspective that kind of gave you and continues to give you your edge in the space. So, I want to thank you for being on and being a part of season five, before I let you go G money. Where can we learn more about Admin One? Where can we find you and everything that you’re working on?
G Money: Yeah, so you can, the easiest way is on Twitter, G money NFT. Also, the Admin One Twitter pages is admit 0001. That’s three zeros and a one. And you know, G.money is the website that you can go to. And you can also check out the marketplace there. Right. So, you can make sure you get the actual real collections on there and don’t need to worry about scam accounts for all like G money related stuff.
Admit 1: Why Build An Independent Marketplace?
Yeah. Which actually, I forgot to bring up because you built an entire marketplace, on your site itself, which was something unique that I haven’t come across many other projects. Really quick, actually, before I let you go, what was the intention behind kind of creating a centralizing the marketplace on your site, in addition to everything that’s happening on OpenSea, and looks rare, etc?
G Money: Yeah, so you know, that was done with the help of the team at reservoir, which is like an open marketplace protocol. And, you know, they were really awesome guys to work with. And they worked very quickly, and I really, highly recommend working with them. But yeah, to me, you know, when you take a look at, you know, curation and marketplaces and the buying experience right now, you know, people don’t generally buy all their things at like a superstore or supersite, people will go to highly curated experiences for the looks that they want, right? Like when you go to a department store, you generally go because it saves you time, right. And that’s in the real world, right, there’s a certain look that you will get from a certain department store or boutique, where you could definitely go to each of those designers, personal stores, and go there and do all that work yourself. But the reason why you go to a curated place is because it saves you time and it’s much more convenient, right? And when you take a look at the web two shopping experience, that happens as well, right? Like, you know, we don’t all buy all of our things on Amazon or on eBay, we go there for certain products, but not for all products. And so, I think over time, the space evolves to highly curated marketplaces where, you know, if I want to focus just on PFP projects, there will probably be a site where that happens. If I want to focus just on digital fashion, there’s a site where that happens. I think there’ll be a lot of these, you know, gaming around gaming, I think there’ll be a lot of these verticalized silos, where people will go just like there is right now in web two right, like, you don’t buy everything from one site, and I don’t think web three is going to be any different.
Outro
Yeah. Before I let you go, my friend, I also want to shout out your podcast because it’s actually produced exceptionally well. So, everybody that’s listening I’ll include in the show notes. And I also realized you just did a rebrand from the G money or the cutting-edge show to now Admin One show. So, I’m excited to see what you kind of push out on the content side. G money, thank you so much. We’ll have to do it again soon.
G Money: Awesome. Thanks so much, Adam. I appreciate it.
You got it.