Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Let's Talk About Cryptocurrency
Aired: 2021-12-09
Duration: 01:16:44


=== Introduction to Financial Literacy (02:30) ===

[00:00:00]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[00:00:02]  Guaranteed human.
[00:00:04]  On the Ceno Show podcast, each episode invites you into a raw, unfiltered conversation about recovery, resilience, and redemption.
[00:00:11]  On a recent episode, I sit down with actor, cultural icon Danny Trail to talk about addiction, transformation, and the power of second chances.
[00:00:18]  The entire season two is now available at the bench, featuring powerful conversations with guests like Tiffany Addish, Johnny Knoxville, and more.
[00:00:24]  I'm an alcoholic.
[00:00:26]  Without this probe, I'm a dye.
[00:00:28]  Listen to Ceno's show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:00:34]  On paper, the three hosts of the Nick Dick and Pole Show are geniuses.
[00:00:39]  We can explain how AI works, data centers, but there are certain things that we don't necessarily understand.
[00:00:47]  Better version of play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
[00:00:50]  Yes.
[00:00:50]  Which, by the way, wasn't Taylor Swift who said that for the first time.
[00:00:53]  I actually, I thought it was.
[00:00:54]  I got that wrong.
[00:00:55]  But hey, no one's perfect.
[00:00:56]  We're pretty close, though.
[00:00:57]  Listen to the Nick Dick and Poll Show on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:01:04]  Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia, and I'm kicking off a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic: Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing.
[00:01:13]  Math and Magic takes you behind the scenes of the biggest businesses and industries while sharing insights from the smartest minds in marketing.
[00:01:20]  Coming up this season on Math and Magic, CEO of Liquid Death, Mike Cesario.
[00:01:25]  People think that creative ideas are like these light bulb moments that happen when you're in the shower, where it's really like a stone sculpture.
[00:01:32]  You're constantly just chipping away and refining.
[00:01:35]  Take to interactive CEO Strauss Selnick and our own chief business officer, Lisa Coffey.
[00:01:40]  Listen to Math and Magic on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:01:46]  It's Financial Literacy Month, and the podcast Eating While Broke is bringing real conversations about money, growth, and building your future.
[00:01:54]  This month, hear from top streamer Zoe Spencer and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum Pierre as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up.
[00:02:03]  There's an economic component to communities thriving.
[00:02:06]  If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they've failed.
[00:02:11]  Listen to Eating While Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

=== The NFT Grift Explained (15:28) ===

[00:02:31]  That was the introduction.
[00:02:32]  Oh, Jesus.
[00:02:32]  It's like, did we break him?
[00:02:35]  That was the introduction.
[00:02:39]  Yeah, it cut out in the middle of your intro.
[00:02:43]  Oh, let me both of us.
[00:02:44]  I think that's what keening sounds like.
[00:02:47]  Like keening, right?
[00:02:48]  That's what that sounds like.
[00:02:49]  So I just.
[00:02:50]  Oh, man.
[00:02:51]  You know what?
[00:02:51]  Speaking of caning, very funny story.
[00:02:54]  We have a vet shortage in Oregon.
[00:02:56]  So I had to book my kittens getting, you know, their genitals sliced off like six weeks in advance.
[00:03:03]  And unfortunately, because it took so long, my lady cat went into heat and was desperately trying to get her brother to fuck her for days.
[00:03:13]  And it was a real problem.
[00:03:14]  We had to keep him apart.
[00:03:15]  And she was just like presenting to every living creature, including dogs that came near her.
[00:03:20]  Just, I have never seen an animal want to fuck so bad.
[00:03:24]  And it was just incredible.
[00:03:26]  That was before you met me.
[00:03:28]  I mean, you just literally gave Sophie a layup.
[00:03:32]  Like, I knew that was coming immediately.
[00:03:36]  Tossing us softballs, Sophie.
[00:03:38]  What's up with that?
[00:03:40]  I'm the Nolan Ryan of this.
[00:03:42]  That was way too easy.
[00:03:43]  Come on.
[00:03:44]  I know.
[00:03:44]  I'm sorry.
[00:03:46]  Oh, good times.
[00:03:47]  Really good times.
[00:03:48]  Now back to not good times, aka this fucking NFT talk.
[00:03:52]  Just likely acknowledge that Robert blushed, I believe, during that joke.
[00:04:00]  Love to see this boy blush.
[00:04:02]  All right, keep going.
[00:04:03]  Keep going.
[00:04:04]  Speaking of-but your imaginary money, go on.
[00:04:08]  Well, but also there's a very fun story today that Charlie Kirk just warned that Democrats want people to live in sexual anarchy.
[00:04:17]  Oh, yeah.
[00:04:18]  Oh my God.
[00:04:19]  It's true.
[00:04:20]  It is.
[00:04:21]  I mean, it depends because that's really just like one subset of polyamory.
[00:04:25]  It's not even a particularly common one.
[00:04:27]  Very, very few people I know practice relationship anarchy, but I don't think that's what Charlie Kirk is talking about.
[00:04:33]  And you know what else is terrible to be around, Sophia?
[00:04:36]  NFTs.
[00:04:37]  I was just going to say crypto enthusiasts generally, but yes, NFTs.
[00:04:42]  They're deeply unpleasant.
[00:04:45]  So as we kind of ended the episode on, the fucking world of Bitcoin and Ether, like all of crypto, it's just like a, it's just a galaxy of scams.
[00:04:55]  And the latest and silliest of these scams are NFTs.
[00:05:00]  So the term NFT stands for non-fungible token.
[00:05:04]  Think about it.
[00:05:05]  If you grab a piece of a fungus and you toss it somewhere, it'll grow into a full version of that fungus.
[00:05:11]  That's how funguses work.
[00:05:12]  Most currency kind of.
[00:05:14]  You're making me hungry for a mushroom pizza.
[00:05:16]  I could go for some mushrooms.
[00:05:18]  Most money kind of works that way too.
[00:05:20]  Like obviously you can't like throw it and it grows into more money, but you can split up money.
[00:05:25]  Like you can split a dollar up into coin or into fractions of a dollar.
[00:05:29]  And that's all still currency, right?
[00:05:31]  NFTs don't work that way.
[00:05:33]  It cannot be funged.
[00:05:34]  It can't be split up.
[00:05:35]  You're buying like a token that cannot be divided, right?
[00:05:40]  Like you can spend fractions of a Bitcoin.
[00:05:42]  Like an NFT is not fungible, right?
[00:05:46]  That's all that means.
[00:05:47]  So if you're a casual observer of NFT culture, you probably think that owning an NFT is dumb because you're just buying ownership of a JPEG online, which anyone can right-click and save as, unless it's pretty fucking silly.
[00:06:00]  But Sophia, what if I were to tell you it's dumber than that?
[00:06:04]  What?
[00:06:04]  Oh, it's much dumber than that.
[00:06:08]  Because here's the thing.
[00:06:09]  There would be some value in having legal ownership of an online drawing, right?
[00:06:14]  Because potentially you could merchandise that drawing, right?
[00:06:16]  You could sell t-shirts that include that drawing.
[00:06:18]  Like there would actually be significant value if like somebody makes a meme and is like, well, I'm selling the rights to this meme.
[00:06:25]  You could monetize that.
[00:06:26]  There would be real value in being able to actually own a meme potentially.
[00:06:31]  Okay.
[00:06:32]  So you were talking to somebody that used to be an art consultant.
[00:06:37]  And my job was working as kind of the middle person between the hospitality industry, meaning hotels, and artists.
[00:06:48]  So I would be the person that they would hire to decide on what hotel art would go in a hotel.
[00:06:55]  And Newsflash, I do not want it to be fucking shells, but they are cheap as fuck.
[00:07:01]  So, but yeah, the thing that's really interesting about how much money you can make as an artist that kind of shows you how capitalism works and is kind of just fascinating and does, I think, kind of relate to NFTs is so the most amount of money that people would make is through doing something simple like black and white architecture.
[00:07:24]  And it would be because every hotel ever wants that as their thing.
[00:07:28]  So it'd be like a Chicago hotel being like, oh, we'd love some really cool shots of black and white architecture.
[00:07:34]  And so we would have folders and folders of this stuff.
[00:07:37]  And so when somebody like that hotel would be like, okay, we want this photo printed and in every single guest room, right?
[00:07:46]  So that's an order for 220, say, just an example.
[00:07:50]  And that's like kind of a low number.
[00:07:52]  220 rooms, right?
[00:07:55]  And the artists would negotiate how much money they would want per print.
[00:08:00]  So say you would negotiate $6.
[00:08:03]  So multiply that by 220.
[00:08:07]  That's money you just made from taking one photo.
[00:08:10]  Whereas selling the equivalent amount of money of just one original piece would be a lot harder in a certain way.
[00:08:19]  But this is also kind of like winning the lottery.
[00:08:22]  So in that way, that's even more hard.
[00:08:25]  So it just, the value we ascribe to art is so arbitrary.
[00:08:31]  And to see a whole system built on this, that's just like.
[00:08:35]  Yeah.
[00:08:36]  And it's not even.
[00:08:38]  Here's the funny thing.
[00:08:39]  And I'm really glad that you brought that up because we're going to talk about the actual art industry in a little bit as well.
[00:08:45]  You're not even buying like a licensed drawing.
[00:08:49]  You are in no way.
[00:08:50]  That's an issue.
[00:08:51]  Well, it's, but it's dumber than that because you're not even buying, you're not buying the image.
[00:08:56]  Like when you buy an NFT, you are in no way purchasing even access to just that image.
[00:09:03]  You are buying basically space on the blockchain.
[00:09:07]  You are buying a token.
[00:09:09]  And that token is just blank space.
[00:09:13]  And there's something on the space when you buy it, but it doesn't necessarily stay there because those images are hosted somewhere, right?
[00:09:18]  And the token just has a link to them.
[00:09:19]  If that image hosting thing goes on, all you have is a blank spot on the blockchain.
[00:09:24]  Exactly.
[00:09:25]  Yeah.
[00:09:26]  And that's why when people have been trying to pitch to me, like, this is really good for artists and whatever.
[00:09:31]  And I'm like, maybe in the short term, but overall for artists and collectors, if your goal is to make things that last and to have people that are genuine fans and for that to be something that's part of the art process, like buy people's art.
[00:09:44]  Buy people's actual fucking art.
[00:09:47]  We'll talk too about the extent to which artists are actually benefiting here, but I just really want to make people sure that people know, like, it's not actually like you're owning a JPEG.
[00:09:56]  You don't own the JPEG.
[00:09:58]  You own like a space on the blockchain where the JPEG currently is, but anything could be there pretty much.
[00:10:05]  This is made very clear in the terms of sale for Christie's, which is a massive auction website, right?
[00:10:11]  It was a big deal when Christie started auctioning NFTs because like Christie's is like a real auction thing.
[00:10:16]  Like they auction off serious shit.
[00:10:19]  They have a 33-page conditions document for their NFT auctions, which states, you acknowledge that ownership of an NFT carries no rights, express or implied, other than property rights for the lot, specifically digital artwork tokenized by the NFT.
[00:10:33]  You acknowledge and represent that there is substantial uncertainty as to the characterization of NFTs and other digital assets under applicable law.
[00:10:41]  So like we don't even entirely know what you own when you win this auction.
[00:10:45]  It's like when you're trying to sign that fucking travel insurance or some shit.
[00:10:49]  And then once you read the fine print, you're like, I'm buying nothing.
[00:10:53]  Nope.
[00:10:54]  Obviously, I think there are some NFTs that like specifically the contract of the sale means you do own that image and you could license it or whatnot.
[00:11:00]  Like you, the artist, obviously you have the ability as the artist to sell not just the NFT, but to actually sell someone rights to an image you draw.
[00:11:09]  Like that, that is a thing that can happen.
[00:11:11]  I'm sure it does happen.
[00:11:12]  But that's not generally what is happening when people buy an NFT.
[00:11:17]  The real genius behind NFTs as a grift is that they take a legitimate problem, which is that artists have a real hard time making a good living off of work, especially like work that is shared by millions of people.
[00:11:28]  Wait a minute.
[00:11:29]  Wait a minute.
[00:11:30]  You're telling me being an artist isn't profitable?
[00:11:34]  Wait a minute.
[00:11:34]  Robert.
[00:11:36]  The bad news about that.
[00:11:37]  These jokes about being Russian and dig jokes and pussy jokes, they don't sell, Robert.
[00:11:44]  Well, actually, they sell very well.
[00:11:45]  What do you mean?
[00:11:46]  I've been doing this for over 10 years, Robert.
[00:11:48]  What are you saying right now?
[00:11:51]  It's kind of like, this isn't where I should have spent my time.
[00:11:58]  I mean, it's worked out since podcasts became a thing.
[00:12:01]  The NFTs of comedy.
[00:12:05]  For some of us.
[00:12:06]  Yeah.
[00:12:07]  I have the NFTs of comedy.
[00:12:08]  Nice fucking titties.
[00:12:10]  That's how we started this episode.
[00:12:15]  So fucking, like, so again, there's a real problem here, which is that, like, so artists regularly will create drawings that are shared like sometimes even hundreds of millions of times, and they won't make any money off of that and will be like starving to death while also having created one of the most like widely shared pieces of art in human history.
[00:12:34]  I agree.
[00:12:34]  That's an issue, right?
[00:12:35]  I'm a big fan of artists getting paid.
[00:12:37]  I'm not someone who believes there's any artistic value in starving.
[00:12:41]  But so the promise of NFTs is like this is a way those artists who create viral art can sell a digital original and that will allow them to finally get paid for their work.
[00:12:54]  And to make it better, the way Ether, which is the basis of NFTs, works, means that smart contracts guarantee that the artist can get a cut of any future sales the owner of their NFT makes after buying it.
[00:13:05]  And this is one of like the kind of neat things about it.
[00:13:07]  If the whole thing wasn't a griff, this would be a neat idea that like, okay, you sell the rights to this drawing and anyone else who sells, if the person who buys it sells it again, you get a cut of that sale too, which is neat.
[00:13:20]  The problems are everything that comes next.
[00:13:22]  So the first big success among NFTs, which is before the term itself was really known by anybody, were CryptoCats in 2017.
[00:13:32]  As a TechCrunch report from the Time noted, CryptoKitties is essentially like an online version of Pokemon cards, but based on the Ethereum blockchain.
[00:13:39]  And like myself.
[00:13:40]  I was going to guess it's like Aristocats.
[00:13:42]  Yeah, kind of.
[00:13:44]  It is.
[00:13:45]  And like most viral sensations that catch on in the tech world, it's blowing up fast.
[00:13:49]  Built by Vancouver and San Francisco-based design studio Axiom Zen, the game is the latest fad in the world of cryptocurrency.
[00:13:56]  People are spending a crazy amount of real money on the game.
[00:13:58]  So far, about $1.3 million has been transacted, with multiple kittens selling for 50 Ether, around $23,000, and the Genesis kitten being sold for a record 246 Ether, around $113,000.
[00:14:12]  This third-party site tracks the largest purchases made to date on the game.
[00:14:15]  And like any good viral sensation, prices are rising and fluctuating fast.
[00:14:19]  Right now, it will cost you about 0.03 Ether or $12 to buy the least expensive kitten in the game.
[00:14:25]  And calling these game is kind of stretching it.
[00:14:27]  But CryptoKitties would prove to be an intensely depressing proof of concept.
[00:14:32]  People refined and reworked the idea until in 2021, the concept of NFTs hit big.
[00:14:38]  This was after, depending on who you ask, two or three bubble and burst cycles from Bitcoin.
[00:14:44]  2017 was when most people really became aware of cryptocurrency and the fact that you could make a lot of money off of it.
[00:14:50]  And if you remember, during that big Bitcoin boom, basically for a while, every Silicon Valley company had to tell the world they had a blockchain-related project in the pipeline.
[00:14:59]  And this was all bullshit.
[00:15:01]  The blockchain actually has and has had so far remarkably very little promise for the tech industry.
[00:15:06]  It is virtually useless for most large companies and for a variety of the problems that it claims to be able to solve.
[00:15:13]  And in fact, like one of the things about it that's funny is that like for all the people using blockchain as like a buzzword term to excite people, there's actually a widely used technology that's basically a blockchain that nobody called that, that has been huge for forever.
[00:15:30]  It's called Git.
[00:15:32]  Like GitHub is the place online where you find it.
[00:15:35]  Like it's basically a repository of code.
[00:15:37]  It's for people making code to like keep a record of changes to code that they're making and whatnot.
[00:15:42]  So everyone who's doing coding can see what other people are doing.
[00:15:46]  The way it works is very much like a blockchain.
[00:15:49]  So again, it's one of those things like there's all these like crypto evangelists talking about how revolutionary the blockchain is.
[00:15:55]  It's like, no, the things that are actually potentially valuable about blockchain technology, we've already been doing for a long time.
[00:16:03]  Like GitHub or Git goes back like almost 20 years, I think.
[00:16:08]  There's really nothing cool or new here.
[00:16:11]  But for a while, every big Silicon Valley company had to announce that they were looking into doing a blockchain.
[00:16:17]  We're looking into the blockchain for whatever.
[00:16:19]  I remember when people were talking about like, this is going to change voting.
[00:16:22]  It's going to make it impossible to do a fraudulent vote, which is, I don't know, it's all, it's all, it just people like, you know, it's what happens whenever something goes viral.
[00:16:32]  Like suddenly, it's the same thing as like a meme where like suddenly you've got like the McDonald's Twitter account sharing a meme that's popular.
[00:16:38]  That's what happened with the blockchain in 2017.
[00:16:41]  Minus the chicken nuggies.
[00:16:44]  Yeah, I mean, chicken nuggets are certainly more valuable than, I don't know, any given NFT.
[00:16:51]  So after something like $1.5 billion in investments into blockchain technology started by this big Bitcoin coin boom in 2017, almost no profit has actually been realized.
[00:17:02]  It's just pretty much been pissed away.
[00:17:04]  Because for the most part, they were just like announcing, anyway, it's all very frustrating.
[00:17:09]  So in 2021, after this crypto optimism kind of fades, there's still a lot of money in cryptocurrency.
[00:17:16]  People are still like, Bitcoin had a boom pretty recently after the one in 2017.
[00:17:20]  So it's still a way you can make money.
[00:17:23]  But like all of these, these people talking about like, oh, you know, the blockchain's going to revolutionize this industry or that, like none of it really happens.
[00:17:31]  And so in 2021, people who want to make a shitload of money off of cryptocurrency need something new.
[00:17:37]  And that's when NFTs finally blow up on like a national scale.
[00:17:44]  So just as Ethereum advocates had claimed that smart contracts would magically fix the inequities of the recording industry, NFT advocates began to claim that their magical crypto nonsense was the solution to the problems artists faced in getting paid.

=== Stolen Art and Crypto Scams (05:38) ===

[00:17:59]  The irony was that as soon as NFTs went viral as a concept and money started pouring in, scammers began stealing the work of artists to sell unauthorized NFTs.
[00:18:08]  There's a good article about this in The Verge from March of this year.
[00:18:11]  It tells the story of Derek Laufman, who woke up earlier that month to emails from fans of his art being like, hey, when did you start selling NFTs?
[00:18:20]  He was confused because he had not, in fact, started selling NFTs.
[00:18:24]  And he said as much.
[00:18:25]  Eventually, he realized that someone impersonating him had created a profile and gotten it verified on Rarable, a site where people buy NFTs.
[00:18:34]  Today, Rarable requires people in order to verify your identity to list an NFT, you have to provide links to two active social media profiles and a behind-the-scenes picture of your art.
[00:18:45]  I don't think that second requirement existed in March, but even now, you don't actually have to give up any documents to verify your identity.
[00:18:53]  So it's very easy to fake being an artist in order to sell an NFT of their art.
[00:18:58]  As Laufman told The Verge, I dealt with having my art stolen for years, and I'm sort of numb to that.
[00:19:04]  But when somebody is claiming to be you, that kind of, you know, that pisses me off.
[00:19:08]  And it's really frustrating because you have, again, this real problem of like, for years, artists are stealing people like Elon Musk stealing a meme they make and like not crediting them or even like cutting the credit out.
[00:19:18]  And like, that's frustrating.
[00:19:20]  But NFTs have just in a lot of ways made it worse.
[00:19:23]  Like not that there aren't artists who make money.
[00:19:25]  There are a decent number of artists who have made some money off of this.
[00:19:28]  But there's an equal number of people who are having their shit stolen by other people who are making money, which is really frustrating.
[00:19:35]  I mean, this reminds me of all of the art that got stolen for LulaRow leggings and just crudely being like, this is different.
[00:19:49]  And then not being different, PB, like, that's my shit.
[00:19:52]  Yeah.
[00:19:53]  And there being no, no recourse whatsoever, either in yours in this situation or in the Luluro one.
[00:20:00]  Yeah.
[00:20:01]  And that's what's fucking happening here.
[00:20:02]  And again, it is there, like, they can get the art, the NFTs delisted, but if they've already sold, one of the things about crypto is you can't reverse a transaction.
[00:20:11]  It's indelible.
[00:20:12]  It's done.
[00:20:13]  There's no getting the money back.
[00:20:15]  Like, which is great.
[00:20:17]  From The Verge, quote, artists like Laufman have had their work minted as NFTs and listed for sale without their permission.
[00:20:23]  And as in that case, platforms that host stolen art only seem to moderate if the artist finds out and posts about it on social media.
[00:20:30]  Tales from the loop author Simon Stalinhag found his art on Marble Cards, another NFT site.
[00:20:36]  And Giphy has warned that people are turning user-created gifts from its site into NFTs because the NFT system doesn't require people to actually own the copyright to something to mint it.
[00:20:46]  It's a market ripe for fraud.
[00:20:49]  You might say, that's the whole point.
[00:20:51]  The Verges investigation found that fraud was common in NFT markets, verging on constant due to the fact that none of the major NFT exchanges required people prove that they owned the works they were profiting from.
[00:21:03]  Once again, the promise of cryptocurrency to right a long-standing injustice has proved to be just another way of screwing over the same group of people in pretty much the same way.
[00:21:12]  It's almost like trying to make being a pirate your identity will make it so that everybody else is also pirates.
[00:21:19]  Yeah.
[00:21:22]  And there's no honor among thieves.
[00:21:25]  That's all.
[00:21:26]  Yeah.
[00:21:27]  And it's even worse than like hanging out with actual criminals because there is a degree of honor is the wrong word, but like honesty among people who are actually involved in high-level crimes because like you can get murdered for fucking with somebody.
[00:21:42]  So a lot of people are actually very honest about their dealings in illegal trades because like, I don't want that fucking trouble, you know?
[00:21:48]  Like I'm dealing with somebody who's scary.
[00:21:50]  I'm not going to fuck them over.
[00:21:52]  It's always refreshing when anyone is honest, whether it's because they're afraid that they'll die or just because they're like, look, it pains me to lie.
[00:22:03]  Yeah.
[00:22:04]  But with NFTs, it's all online.
[00:22:06]  You're anonymous.
[00:22:07]  There's no reason to like not scam people out of their bullshit money and then turn it into real money and then laugh all the way to the bank.
[00:22:15]  So when you talk about NFT success stories, the number one thing that people are going to bring up is what happened with Beeple this year.
[00:22:22]  Beeple is a semi-famous artist who does like a lot of like electronic kind of art.
[00:22:27]  Like a lot of artists I know think his stuff is great.
[00:22:31]  He famously had a collection of his art, which was several thousand pieces.
[00:22:35]  It was called Every Day and it was like 5,000 pieces that had been daily art releases of his for years.
[00:22:40]  Sell as an NFT for $69 million via a Christie's auction.
[00:22:45]  Most people probably heard something about this.
[00:22:47]  It was a pretty big news story.
[00:22:49]  You probably didn't hear the revelations about who actually bought the damn thing.
[00:22:54]  And first off, I should note that while Beeple has some really, yeah, I'm about to tell you, one of the things that frustrated about this is that like Beeple's made a lot of cool art.
[00:23:03]  The thing that sells for $69 million is not cool.
[00:23:05]  It's like a bunch of daily, like he was just trying to make sure he always made a piece of art every day.
[00:23:09]  And most of them are like not good.
[00:23:12]  Like that's nothing against him as an artist.
[00:23:14]  It's just like, yeah, it was the, he was just like, it was like a daily project.
[00:23:17]  Like he wasn't like throwing his heart and soul into them.
[00:23:19]  It was like scribbles, basically.
[00:23:21]  It was the electronic equivalent of scribbles.
[00:23:23]  Yeah.
[00:23:23]  And also it's like morning pagers or some shit.
[00:23:26]  It's not supposed to be good.
[00:23:27]  You're just doing it every day to like keep warm, you know?
[00:23:30]  Yeah.
[00:23:30]  So it's ridiculous that it would sell for $69 million.
[00:23:33]  Also, some of them were pretty racist.
[00:23:35]  69 though.

=== Ridiculous Prices and Racist Art (04:11) ===

[00:23:37]  Oh, wait, what?
[00:23:38]  Yeah, there's some racist stuff in there.
[00:23:40]  I mean, it was years and years ago.
[00:23:41]  I'm not going to like condemn him as a human being because like 10 or 15 years ago, he like drew with something that's kind of racist.
[00:23:49]  But maybe you shouldn't have lumped all of this art together and sold it.
[00:23:52]  I don't know.
[00:23:53]  I don't know the person.
[00:23:55]  It's just, it's ridiculous that like a bunch of crappy daily sketches, some of which look like they were drawn by an edgy 17-year-old kid, sold for $69 million at a Christie's auction.
[00:24:10]  That's just ridiculous.
[00:24:12]  But you know what's not ridiculous, Sophia?
[00:24:15]  Is it these goods and services, Robert?
[00:24:17]  These goods and services, number one, all of them cheaper than $69 million.
[00:24:22]  Although, I recommend spending $69 million on them.
[00:24:25]  You know?
[00:24:26]  And you may even sit on your face if you do.
[00:24:30]  Wow.
[00:24:30]  See, go to brain.
[00:24:32]  Listeners.
[00:24:33]  Go!
[00:24:34]  Go.
[00:24:41]  Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia, and I'm kicking off a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic: Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing.
[00:24:49]  Math and Magic takes you behind the scenes of the biggest businesses and industries while sharing insights from the smartest minds in marketing.
[00:24:56]  I'm talking to leaders from the entertainment industry to finance and everywhere in between.
[00:25:00]  This season on Math and Magic, I'm talking to CEO of Liquid Death, Mike Cesario, financier and public health advocate, Mike Milken, Take To Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick.
[00:25:11]  If you're unable to take meaningful creative risk and therefore run the risk of making horrible creative mistakes, then you can't play in this business.
[00:25:19]  Sesame Street CEO Sherry Weston and our own chief business officer, Lisa Coffey.
[00:25:25]  Making consumers see the value of the human voice and to have that guaranteed human promise behind it really makes it rise to the top.
[00:25:34]  Listen to Math and Magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:25:42]  When you listen to podcasts about AI and tech and the future of humanity, the hosts always act like they know what they're talking about and they are experts at everything.
[00:25:50]  Here at the Nick Dick and Pole Show, we're not afraid to make mistakes.
[00:25:55]  What Koogler did that I think was so unique, he's the writer director.
[00:26:00]  Who do you think he is?
[00:26:01]  I don't know.
[00:26:03]  You meet the like the president?
[00:26:04]  You think it goes the president?
[00:26:05]  You think Canada has a president?
[00:26:07]  You think China has a president?
[00:26:08]  Lazois approves that.
[00:26:11]  God, I love that thing.
[00:26:12]  I use it all the time.
[00:26:14]  I wrap it in a blanket and sing to it.
[00:26:18]  It's like the old Polish saying, not my monkeys, not my circus.
[00:26:22]  Yep.
[00:26:22]  It's a good one.
[00:26:23]  I like that saying.
[00:26:24]  It is an actual Polish saying.
[00:26:26]  It is an actual Polish saying.
[00:26:27]  A better version of Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes.
[00:26:30]  Yes.
[00:26:30]  Which, by the way, wasn't Taylor Swift who said that for the first time.
[00:26:33]  I actually, I thought it was.
[00:26:34]  I got that wrong.
[00:26:35]  Listen to the Nick Dick and Paul Show on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:26:43]  If you're watching the latest season of the Rail House Wise of Atlanta, you already know there's a lot to break down.
[00:26:49]  Marsha accusing Kelly of sleeping with a married man.
[00:26:52]  They holding Kay Michelle back from fighting Drew.
[00:26:55]  Pinky has financial issues.
[00:26:57]  I like the bougie style of House Wise Show.
[00:26:59]  Now I think it looks like it's going to be interesting.
[00:27:02]  On the podcast, Reality with the King, I, Carlos King, recap the biggest moments from your favorite reality shows, including the Railhouse Wise franchise, the drama, the alliances, and the T. Everybody's talking about.
[00:27:15]  As an executive producer in reality television, I'm not just watching it.
[00:27:19]  I understand the game.
[00:27:21]  As somebody who creates shows, I'll even say this.
[00:27:24]  At the end of the day, when people are at home, they want entertainment.
[00:27:29]  To hear this and more, listen to Reality with the King on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:27:38]  On a recent episode of the podcast Money and Wealth with John O'Brien, I sit down with Tiffany the Budginista Aliche to talk about what it really takes to take control of your money.

=== Pump and Dump Schemes (15:56) ===

[00:27:48]  What would that look like in our families if everyone was able to pass on wealth to the people when they're no longer here?
[00:27:55]  We break down budgeting, financial discipline, and how to build real wealth, starting with the mindset shifts too many of us were never ever taught.
[00:28:04]  Financial education is not always about like, I'm going to get rich.
[00:28:08]  That's great.
[00:28:09]  It's about creating an atmosphere for you to be able to take care of yourself and leave a strong financial legacy for your family.
[00:28:19]  If you've ever felt you didn't get the memo on money, this conversation is for you to hear more.
[00:28:25]  Listen to Money and Wealth with John O'Brien from the Black Effect Network on the iTeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:28:37]  We're back.
[00:28:40]  Good times.
[00:28:42]  Bad times, actually.
[00:28:43]  Horrible times.
[00:28:44]  Terrible times.
[00:28:45]  So let's talk about who won that auction for Beeples everyday art.
[00:28:52]  The winner was somebody, obviously, with a shitload of cryptocurrency, and this person purchased under a pseudonym, Metacovan.
[00:29:00]  But of course, none of this stuff is as anonymous as the advocates of cryptocurrency want to pretend.
[00:29:05]  And a crypto industry journalist and a no-coiner named Amy Castor tracked down Medicovan's identity.
[00:29:11]  The person behind that pseudonym was Vignesh Sundarasan, a crypto entrepreneur with an established and fairly shady background.
[00:29:20]  Among the many ventures he founded was something called Coins-E.
[00:29:25]  If you've been paying attention so far, this story will sound familiar.
[00:29:28]  From Amy Castor, quote, several Coins-E users have taken to social media to complain about losing money on Coins-E, calling it a scam and warning others to watch out.
[00:29:39]  The posts on our Dogecoin are the most alarming.
[00:29:42]  Coins-E clients report having their Dogecoin disappear.
[00:29:45]  Wire guys in Y described watching 1.3 million Doge evaporate and the frustration of being unable to reach tech support to get to the bottom of the matter.
[00:29:54]  Exclusive 2 wrote, I've had just about enough of Coins E millions of coins missing.
[00:29:58]  No reply from support ever.
[00:30:00]  The reason is because it's a one-man operation.
[00:30:02]  The problem is this Joker is stealing and trading everyone's coins when and how he feels to make himself rich.
[00:30:08]  He knows that Doge is worth a lot of Bitcoin in large volumes.
[00:30:12]  Now, I just like it when someone calls someone else a joker in 2010 as you're talking about the coin made up over a fake dog meme.
[00:30:23]  He's giving Dogecoin a bad name.
[00:30:27]  Never going to get to the moon that way.
[00:30:31]  It's like all the people who were angry that Elon Musk didn't shout out Dogecoin when he was on SNL because they thought it was going to make them all rich.
[00:30:37]  It's like Elon Musk doesn't give a shit about you or you're fucking Dogecoin.
[00:30:41]  He was joking about it.
[00:30:42]  Every time he posted about it, he was making fun of you.
[00:30:46]  Fuck off.
[00:30:48]  So, yeah.
[00:30:51]  Now, Sundarasan told Castor that he hadn't, when she brings it, she like, so Castor, being a good journalist, like goes to Sundara Sen and is like, hey, did you make up this thing called Coins-E in order to rip a bunch of people off?
[00:31:04]  And he was like, no, of course not.
[00:31:05]  That wasn't me at all.
[00:31:06]  I did make Coins Dash-E, but I sold it to a company called Casa Crypto way before the problem started.
[00:31:12]  I had nothing to do with the company when all that bad shit happened.
[00:31:15]  So Barlow looked into this and she was- I'd like to know who's the owner of Cas.
[00:31:20]  Well, as far as Barlow's been able to find, there's no evidence the company ever existed.
[00:31:24]  There's no press release that Coins-E was ever sold.
[00:31:27]  There's no information to back this up whatsoever.
[00:31:30]  He promised to show her the proof on a video call and then never got back to her.
[00:31:35]  So totally not sketchy guy.
[00:31:38]  Her further digging made it clear that, and one of the things that is cool about this, both in reading about, learning about David Gerhard and Amy Castor, is realizing that like, oh, there are actually like good journalists who know about, who understand crypto.
[00:31:52]  Like, right, I clearly, I don't.
[00:31:54]  I'm repeating other things people have said about it that seem credible that I read because I'm not an expert on crypto.
[00:32:00]  It's nice to know there are people who...
[00:32:02]  care about it enough to understand it deeply and are also actual journalists about it because, as silly as this is, i'm really glad an Amy Castor is there like actually try, like trying to document the griftiness of this whole thing.
[00:32:17]  I think that's valuable um, and I do really recommend Attack Of The 50 Foot Blockchain as a book if you actually want to like understand all this stuff more and what a giant scam it is, because it's oh, i'm definitely getting it.
[00:32:28]  Yeah it's, it's very readable.
[00:32:29]  It's very like as as dry as a lot of crypto stuff is.
[00:32:32]  David does a very good job of like making you understand what's happening and how ridiculous it is, without it being boring.
[00:32:39]  I mean, it's slightly better than my husband explaining it to me, and that's good.
[00:32:43]  Yeah, it's definitely that's what's actually on the cover of the book.
[00:32:46]  Slightly better than having your husband explain crypto to you because he spent your life savings on a jpeg.
[00:32:53]  Honestly, I think that's a really ringing endorsement.
[00:32:57]  Yeah, it's the best thing.
[00:32:59]  There's millions of women women all over, and not just women.
[00:33:03]  There's millions of people all over the world right now being uh, man splanned crypto while they're trying to do some other shit.
[00:33:14]  You know sleep eat, etc.
[00:33:17]  It's very funny um, and this book will protect you from that.
[00:33:22]  So because then you'll be like actually yeah actually, let me tell you a little something.
[00:33:28]  Yeah, um.
[00:33:30]  So Amy Barlow's further digging made it clear that, rather than the sale of Beeple's Every Days being a fairly normal case of an art lover buying a valuable work of art, the whole thing was way more of a convoluted business relationship between people and Sundarasan.
[00:33:46]  Castor did the digging here, but the clearest and most succinct summary I found of what actually happened comes from a write-up by Input magazine, because Castor goes into a lot of detail here and I just want to give you the summary of what happened from Input, so i'm going to quote from there now.
[00:34:01]  Where things get interesting with the people purchase is that Sundarison is selling fractional ownership of the work through a new entity called META Purse, a crypto-based investment firm that has rolled up several people pieces into a bundle.
[00:34:14]  Anyone can purchase a small ownership.
[00:34:18]  Hey, what's up?
[00:34:20]  Selfie.
[00:34:23]  Her invisalign hurts too much, she can't.
[00:34:25]  Yeah, she's laughing on the inside.
[00:34:29]  Anyone can purchase a small ownership stake in the art collection by purchasing the company's B20 token.
[00:34:35]  The hope would be that the works become more valuable over time.
[00:34:38]  Individuals are essentially buying into an index fund of sorts.
[00:34:41]  But when Sundarasan created B20, he gave himself 59 of the outstanding tokens and Beeple himself received two percent.
[00:34:49]  That would suggest that Beeple and Sundarasan were in cahoots to add the 5000 days piece to the Meta Purse collection, as doing so would drive up the price of the fledging B20 token and make them both money.
[00:35:01]  So people is like involved in a real business relationship with the guy who, quote unquote bought this artwork and the fact that it sold for such a ridiculous price was valuable because it raised the price of this what is essentially a coin that they're offering.
[00:35:15]  That represents a fractional stake in the ownership of this collection of people art.
[00:35:19]  It's um, a scam kind of.
[00:35:22]  It seems like I want to make it clear i'm not uh, alleging that people or Metacoven have done anything illegal.
[00:35:28]  I just think it's.
[00:35:29]  I think it's kind of a scam.
[00:35:30]  It seems like it's kind of a scam to me Look, I am a comedian, and that means a certified idiot, but also seems like a huge scam to me.
[00:35:43]  Yeah.
[00:35:43]  Hey, and Beeple made a bunch of money.
[00:35:46]  I don't, again, I don't have any reason to believe they're a bad person or whatever.
[00:35:50]  Are there an environmental cost of NFTs?
[00:35:53]  But yeah.
[00:35:54]  It's hard to take anything or anyone named Beeple seriously.
[00:35:57]  Yeah, but at the same time, if I, as an artist, someone was like, hey, you want to make $60 million by giving me a bunch of sketches you did?
[00:36:06]  Yeah, of course.
[00:36:07]  Like, yes.
[00:36:08]  I'm not going to pretend I'm that good a person.
[00:36:11]  I would feverishly be drawing new sketches than I had before that are just bullshit, just so somebody would feel like they were getting their money's worth.
[00:36:21]  Like, I think most people, even knowing the environmental cost, would be like, well, yeah, I mean, that's enough money that no one in my family would ever have a problem again that related to finances, of course.
[00:36:32]  Then maybe I could write some wrongs with my $69 million or whatever.
[00:36:37]  I think the vast majority of people would find a way to justify it to themselves.
[00:36:42]  I'm sure I include myself in that, right?
[00:36:44]  Nobody's, I'm not, again, I don't, while I'm saying I think this is kind of a scam Beeples involved in, I don't think it makes him like worse than most other people because I think most people would find a way to justify it.
[00:36:56]  You mean most worse than most other people's?
[00:36:59]  Beeples, yeah.
[00:37:01]  He's no worse than most people's.
[00:37:04]  And to be fair, whatever Beeple's doing here, because I don't think we know fully like what's going on here, it is way less of a direct scam than like, you know, all the people just robbing folks.
[00:37:15]  Like kind of a pump and dump, I guess.
[00:37:17]  See, it seems like it's kind of a pump and dump, but whatever.
[00:37:20]  And to talk about the really scamming.
[00:37:23]  The pump and dump is what they call Robert's girl.
[00:37:25]  Oh.
[00:37:26]  Oh, Jesus Christ.
[00:37:28]  I'm so sorry.
[00:37:28]  Sophia.
[00:37:29]  It's a little far.
[00:37:33]  You send me five knives and they go right to my head.
[00:37:38]  Yeah, you just want more knives.
[00:37:39]  And you know, the way to do that is by making weird sex jokes that are going to get me have people send me very uncomfortable messages.
[00:37:49]  Look, everybody who listens to you and Sophie is trying to fuck.
[00:37:52]  I hope you know that.
[00:37:54]  Oh, that's not, that's not good.
[00:37:55]  You have to think about it every night now before you go to sleep.
[00:38:03]  She looks even more pain than she is by her Invisalign.
[00:38:06]  For the record, I don't fuck.
[00:38:08]  No sex.
[00:38:09]  No sex for me.
[00:38:10]  Thank you.
[00:38:11]  Yeah, you just do math stuff.
[00:38:13]  I heard that.
[00:38:13]  I just do math stuff.
[00:38:14]  That's right.
[00:38:15]  Mouth stuff, you dummy.
[00:38:18]  Oh, yeah, I mean, that too.
[00:38:20]  It's kind of the same thing, right?
[00:38:23]  Yeah, you whisper formulas into your girl's mouth.
[00:38:27]  I just read out the address to different bitcoins that I own.
[00:38:32]  You just stop whisper Ethereum on her clitty.
[00:38:38]  That's your number one move in the bedroom.
[00:38:40]  Yeah, that's what the ladies like is having whispering Ethereum into their genitals.
[00:38:47]  That's how you win them.
[00:38:49]  If you're looking for advice on slaying whatever genitals you want to slay, just start whispering ether.
[00:39:03]  You got to do a little bit of a lip wobble on the clitty.
[00:39:07]  So you know what nobody is getting fucked as a result of?
[00:39:12]  No.
[00:39:13]  My very favorite NFT scam, Evolved Apes.
[00:39:17]  This is what made me decide to write this episode because it's just the funniest thing in the entire goddamn world.
[00:39:24]  So one thing that a lot of critics will note is that an awful lot, again, not all.
[00:39:29]  There's some actually really good artists who have made NFTs and some people who were struggling for years and made, like, whatever.
[00:39:35]  If you've struggled for 30 years and are finally making a good living making real art because NFTs have enabled that, that's great.
[00:39:41]  That's not most of what the, most of the NFTs being sold look like fucking shit.
[00:39:47]  And most of the ones being sold for a lot of money look like fucking shit.
[00:39:51]  And that's kind of what makes it a victimless crime, I guess.
[00:39:55]  Well, is if you think something is good.
[00:39:59]  Am I wrong?
[00:39:59]  Put a pin in that.
[00:40:00]  I'll take it back.
[00:40:01]  Put a pin in that.
[00:40:02]  I'll take it back.
[00:40:04]  The evolved apes were part of a series of different, like, I think they're scams, but we'll call them NFT schemes.
[00:40:11]  Evolved apes, political punks, lazy lions.
[00:40:14]  They're basically garbage pail kids, but digital.
[00:40:17]  And they range in cost from a few bucks to more than $100,000.
[00:40:21]  And again, they all look like shit.
[00:40:24]  So I'm going to show you these in a second, but Evolved Apes were described by their founder on NFT Marketplace Open Sea as a collection of 10,000 unique NFTs trapped inside a lawless land, fighting for survival.
[00:40:37]  This was a way of plugging a claimed fighting game where players would be able to use the unique NFTs they'd purchased to battle each other.
[00:40:45]  Here's what they look like.
[00:40:47]  Oh, I like them.
[00:40:50]  What?
[00:40:51]  Is there something wrong with me?
[00:40:53]  I really like the book.
[00:40:55]  You like these little, these terrible ape drawings?
[00:40:58]  I really like them.
[00:40:59]  Well, that's fascinating.
[00:41:01]  I guess somebody fucking had to.
[00:41:03]  They're all the same drawing.
[00:41:05]  It's the same basic ape drawing that like they stick different hair on and put like glasses on.
[00:41:10]  One of them is eating a burger and blowing a bubble, gum bubble.
[00:41:15]  So you're wrong.
[00:41:16]  And one of them's wearing a necklace.
[00:41:20]  And one of them has a glove on.
[00:41:21]  Truly, can I say something?
[00:41:24]  What?
[00:41:24]  I think it appeals to me because I can't tell people apart when they have changed one thing about themselves, like a hat or like a hat.
[00:41:34]  Or you've got proso-pagnoshia or whatever it is, face blindness.
[00:41:38]  So to me, all those apes are radically different.
[00:41:42]  I guess maybe you're the market for evolved apes.
[00:41:46]  So the entry fee to get like a chance to buy these is $279 or like 0.08 Ether.
[00:41:54]  The average price.
[00:41:56]  No.
[00:41:57]  The average price for the NFTs themselves was around $108.
[00:42:01]  The highest individual ape that I found in terms of sales sold for $14.3 thousand dollars.
[00:42:08]  And it's this fucking guy.
[00:42:10]  I was going to ask, what's the best ape?
[00:42:13]  Well, apparently this one.
[00:42:14]  I don't know if this was the most, but this is the most that I found in a short amount of fucking Googling.
[00:42:20]  That sold for $14,300.
[00:42:24]  No.
[00:42:25]  No.
[00:42:26]  That's not.
[00:42:28]  I think, no.
[00:42:30]  There should have been more shit going on for that.
[00:42:34]  I would agree with you there, Sophia, but that's not the way the cookie crumbled.
[00:42:40]  So again, and part of the promise here was that the Evolved Apes were this was going to be like a video game, like a Mortal Kombat style fighting game, and you'd get to use your NFTs in the fighting game.
[00:42:55]  That's kind of cool.
[00:42:57]  It would be if it had happened.
[00:43:00]  That might have been kind of neat.
[00:43:02]  Although the actual game itself didn't...
[00:43:06]  Here, I'll play you a video, Sophia.
[00:43:10]  I'll play you a video.
[00:43:11]  I would love that.
[00:43:12]  Yeah, that was like one of the, I think, ad videos for the Evolved Apes.
[00:43:16]  Hey, I'm going to show you a video, but first here's an ad break.
[00:43:20]  Come on.
[00:43:20]  Come on, rookie.
[00:43:21]  Okay, well, let's just keep all this.
[00:43:22]  And that was us throwing the ads was Sophie saying that.
[00:43:28]  Good ads.
[00:43:29]  Just do it, motherfuckers.
[00:43:30]  I sound so mean.
[00:43:32]  Those goods and services are gonna be your dick and pussy and in between.
[00:43:40]  I'm sorry.

=== Budginista Alicia's Money Talk (02:32) ===

[00:43:45]  When you listen to podcasts about AI and tech and the future of humanity, the hosts always act like they know what they're talking about and they are experts at everything.
[00:43:54]  Here at the Nick Dick and Pole Show, we're not afraid to make mistakes.
[00:43:58]  What Koogler did that I think was so unique?
[00:44:01]  He's the writer director.
[00:44:03]  Who do you think he is?
[00:44:04]  I don't know.
[00:44:06]  You meet the like the president?
[00:44:07]  You think it was the president?
[00:44:08]  You think Canada has a president?
[00:44:10]  You think China has a president?
[00:44:11]  Leslov proves that.
[00:44:14]  God, I love that thing.
[00:44:16]  I use it all the time.
[00:44:17]  I wrap it in a blanket and sing to it.
[00:44:21]  It's like the old Polish saying, not my monkeys, not my circus.
[00:44:25]  Yep.
[00:44:25]  It was a good one.
[00:44:26]  I like that saying.
[00:44:27]  It's an actual Polish saying.
[00:44:29]  It is an actual Polish saying.
[00:44:30]  It's a better version of play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
[00:44:33]  Yes.
[00:44:34]  Which, by the way, wasn't Taylor Swift who said that for the first time.
[00:44:36]  I actually, I thought it was.
[00:44:37]  I got that wrong.
[00:44:38]  Listen to the Nick Dick and Paul Show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:44:45]  Hi, I'm Bob Pippman, chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia, and I'm kicking off a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic: Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing.
[00:44:54]  Math and Magic takes you behind the scenes of the biggest businesses and industries while sharing insights from the smartest minds in marketing.
[00:45:01]  I'm talking to leaders from the entertainment industry to finance and everywhere in between.
[00:45:05]  This season on Math and Magic, I'm talking to CEO of Liquid Death, Mike Cesario, financier and public health advocate Mike Milken, take-to interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick.
[00:45:16]  If you're unable to take meaningful creative risk and therefore run the risk of making horrible creative mistakes, then you can't play in this business.
[00:45:24]  Sesame Street CEO Sherry Weston and our own chief business officer, Lisa Coffey.
[00:45:30]  Making consumers see the value of the human voice and to have that guaranteed human promise behind it really makes it rise to the top.
[00:45:39]  Listen to Math and Magic: Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:45:47]  On a recent episode of the podcast, Money and Wealth with John O'Brien, I sit down with Tiffany the Budginista Alicia to talk about what it really takes to take control of your money.
[00:45:57]  What would that look like in our families if everyone was able to pass on wealth to the people when they're no longer here?
[00:46:04]  We break down budgeting, financial discipline, and how to build real wealth, starting with the mindset shifts too many of us were never ever taught.
[00:46:13]  Financial education is not always about like, I'm going to get rich.

=== Disrespecting Yourself for Cash (15:27) ===

[00:46:17]  That's great.
[00:46:18]  It's about creating an atmosphere for you to be able to take care of yourself and leave a strong financial legacy for your family.
[00:46:28]  If you've ever felt you didn't get the memo on money, this conversation is for you to hear more.
[00:46:34]  Listen to Money and Wealth with John O'Brien from the Black Effect Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:46:45]  If you're watching the latest season of the Rail House Wise of Atlanta, you already know there's a lot to break down.
[00:46:51]  Marsha accusing Kelly of sleeping with a merry man.
[00:46:54]  They holding Kay Michelle back from fighting Drew.
[00:46:57]  Pinky has financial issues.
[00:46:59]  I like the bougie style of Housewives Show.
[00:47:02]  Now I think it looks like it's going to be interesting.
[00:47:04]  On the podcast, Reality with the King, I, Carlos King, recap the biggest moments from your favorite reality shows, including the Rail House Wise franchise, the drama, the alliances, and the tea.
[00:47:16]  Everybody's talking about.
[00:47:17]  As an executive producer in reality television, I'm not just watching it.
[00:47:22]  I understand the game.
[00:47:24]  As somebody who creates shows, I'll even say this.
[00:47:27]  At the end of the day, when people are at home, they want entertainment.
[00:47:31]  To hear this and more, listen to Reality with the King on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:47:42]  So we're back.
[00:47:43]  We're back, everybody.
[00:47:44]  And I'm trying to play the Evolved Apes trailer for the fighting game that they were supposed to make because it looks like trash.
[00:47:51]  And again, I can see the, I could see if there was like, oh, it's 50 bucks and you buy a character and only you get that character.
[00:47:58]  It's unique and it levels up through time.
[00:47:59]  And like, you can play in a fighting game with other people for prizes that are worth real money.
[00:48:04]  That's cool.
[00:48:04]  And there are some people like who have pushed ideas with that.
[00:48:07]  And it's not like groundbreaking in a world sense, but it is like, oh, I could see that being a fun thing for gaming.
[00:48:14]  This game looked like fucking trash.
[00:48:16]  and I'm going to play the trailer for you now, Sophia.
[00:48:38]  Yeah, it just looks like shitty Mortal Kombat with monkeys.
[00:48:43]  It does.
[00:48:44]  And I have to say, they didn't choose the best monkeys for their representation because it should have been among monkeys that are so different looking that you would be like, whoa, I could design a monkey that looks like a really own cool different things.
[00:48:59]  But also, monkeys aren't apes.
[00:49:00]  So someone's going to be real mad about that when they're listening to this.
[00:49:03]  Again, the point is they did not do a good job with character design and we are very upset about it.
[00:49:10]  And like, again, if this weren't all a giant grift, which we're getting to, the cool version of this would be like, yeah, we're bringing in a bunch of artists and they can just like make whatever characters they want.
[00:49:19]  And if you think it's cool, you can buy it.
[00:49:21]  And like, you know, you could have neat, that could be a really cool way to do a fighting game.
[00:49:26]  And I'm sure it could make a lot of money.
[00:49:28]  And I suspect someone will figure out how to do that.
[00:49:30]  And it will finally be something cool that comes out of NFTs.
[00:49:33]  But that is not what happened with the Evolved Apes because this was a giant scam from the beginning.
[00:49:39]  A week after the project officially launched with some 4,000 apes sold, project developer Evil Ape, the guy who started it, disappeared, taking down the company Twitter account, deleting the website, and absconding with $2.7 million in Ether.
[00:49:57]  Yeah, it was literally just a scam.
[00:50:00]  That's why it was also a magician.
[00:50:03]  And again, you should have known, investors should have known by how fucking shitty it looked.
[00:50:08]  But it's just like this irrational exuberance of like, oh, this could be, I'm sure they're recognizing like what I was just saying, like, oh, there are ways in which you could do a neat game this way.
[00:50:18]  And they just didn't want to lose out in case this was the neat game.
[00:50:21]  And none of them like thought about like, well, does this look any good?
[00:50:25]  Or does it look like total shit?
[00:50:30]  A lot of people could be asking themselves that question.
[00:50:33]  Yeah.
[00:50:33]  Does this look good or does this look look like total shit.
[00:50:36]  Am I going to be because of FOMO here?
[00:50:40]  Or am I actually buying into something I would want to play?
[00:50:43]  Do I want to have almost identical monkeys with like shitty bling punch each other in a fighting game?
[00:50:48]  How long will that be interesting?
[00:50:50]  Is this really worth $14,000?
[00:50:52]  This is how everyone got tricked into mom jeans, you know?
[00:50:56]  Yeah.
[00:50:56]  We can all agree they look like shit and yet.
[00:50:59]  And yet, but at least you have the jeans when you when you get tricked by mom jeans as opposed to Do you if you're not getting fucked or talked to because of them?
[00:51:08]  Do you still have those jeans when you're alone crying at your house in your actual sweatpants?
[00:51:14]  Yeah, I mean, I haven't owned a pair of jeans in years because I wear nothing but sweatpants.
[00:51:18]  So I agree.
[00:51:19]  I think normal pants are a grift, but at least you have the pants physically.
[00:51:24]  They do exist.
[00:51:25]  True.
[00:51:26]  Yeah.
[00:51:27]  So when the crit, like when this guy disappeared and the Evolved Apes community eventually realized they'd been had, they basically like appointed the guy who had spent the most money on them, whose online name is Mike underscore CryptoBull and made him in charge of investigating what had happened based on the fact that he had spent like $10,000 on fucking monkey JPEGs.
[00:51:54]  So yeah, very sad to be that guy, to be the guy who's like, hey, you have to be our leader because you lost the most money off of this stupid monkey grift.
[00:52:04]  Mike wrote up a report and informed the community regretfully that they'd all been conned, that the artist had not even been paid.
[00:52:13]  So again, the actual guy who made this terrible monkey arc didn't see a dime.
[00:52:19]  He got conned into making the art and then somebody else profited off of it and disappeared, which is very funny.
[00:52:25]  Mike told Vice that he...
[00:52:27]  Monkey Monkey Grift.
[00:52:29]  Yeah.
[00:52:30]  And the saddest thing is that when he was interviewed by Vice, Mike told the reporter that he and a bunch of Evolved Apes fans had promised to, quote, build a new project called Fight Back Apes out of the ashes of Evolved Apes.
[00:52:43]  Evolved Apes holders would automatically be approved for a Fight Back Apes token linked with art from the old project.
[00:52:50]  And this is what, this was his exact quote.
[00:52:52]  We will become the Fight Back Apes, fighting as a community against our nemesis, Evil Ape.
[00:52:59]  All right.
[00:53:00]  That's the saddest thing I've ever read.
[00:53:02]  Back it up with your saddest thing I've ever read in my life.
[00:53:05]  Metaphors and analogies.
[00:53:07]  Pack it up.
[00:53:08]  There are war crimes less depressing than that film.
[00:53:11]  I'm sorry to Virgin City where no one will ever touch you.
[00:53:16]  Yeah.
[00:53:16]  You fucking loser.
[00:53:18]  It's so sad.
[00:53:20]  He's not your nemesis.
[00:53:22]  You're not fighting back.
[00:53:24]  He stole your money.
[00:53:25]  And continuing to own pictures of monkeys that are held on the blockchain does not fight back in any meaningful way.
[00:53:34]  It's very funny.
[00:53:35]  It is so sad.
[00:53:37]  And the funniest thing about it is that the fact that Evolved Apes turned out to be nothing but a scam hasn't stopped them from selling on OpenSea, which is one of the NFT marketplaces.
[00:53:47]  In the days after the scam was revealed, $47,230 worth of ape NFTs were sold.
[00:53:54]  One Evolved Apes buyer told Vice that they believed people had fallen for the scam in part because they were, quote, blinded by the art and the promises, which is almost as sad as wrapped up like a NFT.
[00:54:13]  Yeah, I don't know.
[00:54:15]  And of course, the grift never ends.
[00:54:18]  I think the grifter in the night, another like by the apes.
[00:54:23]  One of these, you know, basically, again, like trading card NFT things where there's a bunch of different pictures that you buy access to one picture in the set.
[00:54:33]  The most popular of them, or one of the most popular of them, is political punks.
[00:54:37]  Again, this is like an NFT card set.
[00:54:39]  I don't know what's punk about them.
[00:54:40]  They're just 8-bit representations of famous people.
[00:54:43]  They don't seem punk at all, actually.
[00:54:46]  The average price of these...
[00:54:48]  Punks and their famous pursuit of money.
[00:54:50]  Yeah, that's what makes something punk.
[00:54:53]  And like, they don't even look good.
[00:54:56]  Like I said, they're just like 8-bit portraits.
[00:55:00]  Like of famous people that you wouldn't generally recognize as a famous person if you didn't like see it.
[00:55:08]  Like the most recognizable, here's the David Bowie one.
[00:55:12]  Well, you shouldn't have told me who it was because I would like to guess.
[00:55:15]  Well, you'll recognize it.
[00:55:17]  I'm going to send you just the Twitter link here.
[00:55:20]  That's so bad.
[00:55:22]  Yeah, they're just like 8-bit little portraits.
[00:55:24]  They're terrible.
[00:55:25]  Yeah.
[00:55:26]  I mean, they'd be fine if it was just like, oh, I want to have a forum avatar that's an 8-bit portrait.
[00:55:32]  First off, that's snapshot.
[00:55:33]  People are selling them for the price of like a new, brand new, high-quality car.
[00:55:39]  Like Robert.
[00:55:41]  No, that's not David Bowie.
[00:55:43]  That's a man that has had a severe sword injury.
[00:55:50]  It's clear what it is.
[00:55:52]  He's been slashed across his face Tyrion style.
[00:55:56]  And it is very insensitive of you to not recognize that.
[00:56:00]  Next to him is clearly his goat wife.
[00:56:06]  And there is no reason that you should think that she's not gorgeous.
[00:56:12]  And hashtag all goats matter.
[00:56:14]  And you are sad for not recognizing her.
[00:56:18]  Yeah.
[00:56:20]  All goats matter.
[00:56:22]  So the average price for one of these fucking shitty 8-bit portraits is about $1,100.
[00:56:30]  Now, that's the average price.
[00:56:32]  You can get so much good art for that.
[00:56:34]  And honestly, take it from an art consultant.
[00:56:37]  You can get some nice limited edition prints for way less than that, like several of them.
[00:56:44]  Oh, just wait, Sophia, because one of the most expensive of these political punks was the Satoshi Nakamoto punk, which is a digital, that means that, number one, that would be a digital representation of a person whose identity is unknown because Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym and no one knows who he really is.
[00:57:02]  It's essentially a picture of Santa.
[00:57:04]  Yeah, this digital Santa picture sold for more than $64,000.
[00:57:12]  Yeah, Santa is never going to bring you enough presents to make up for that.
[00:57:16]  You could buy like a fully loaded Toyota Tacoma for that much money.
[00:57:22]  Like, you could buy a house and a lot of...
[00:57:25]  Yeah, that's a down payment on a house.
[00:57:27]  Yeah.
[00:57:29]  It's very silly.
[00:57:30]  I guess the Paul Rudd one is coming soon, so that's going to be exciting.
[00:57:34]  I'm sure that'll sell for a lot of money.
[00:57:37]  Got to set my phone alarm for that.
[00:57:40]  And yeah, the grift, of course, never ends.
[00:57:42]  Political Punks, the Twitter account, after the Evolved Apes debacle, when it became clear that that had all been a giant scam, the developer of Political Punks posted this on Twitter.
[00:57:56]  To anyone who was affected in the Evolved Apes rugpool, we will be opening up 200 pre-sale spots for our upcoming Gen 2 plebe punks mint.
[00:58:05]  Come join our community, vibe, and have fun.
[00:58:07]  We welcome you with open arms.
[00:58:09]  Had this idea after seeing at boosts take action.
[00:58:14]  All love.
[00:58:15]  We are set to make a blockchain game similar, but 100 times better than the one promised over at Evolved Apes.
[00:58:21]  Read our roadmap for more info.
[00:58:23]  It saddens me deeply to see people lose immense amounts of hard-earned money to such scumbags.
[00:58:28]  Spread the love.
[00:58:29]  So basically, like, hey, guys, I'll let you buy some of my shitty drawings because you got scammed out of your old shitty drawings.
[00:58:36]  I totally promise we're going to make an even better video game.
[00:58:40]  The responses to this post are some of, again, the saddest things I've ever read.
[00:58:45]  One person said, I have two Evolved Ape.
[00:58:48]  How can I participate?
[00:58:49]  Heart emoji.
[00:58:51]  Another person said, I had stupidly got five.
[00:58:54]  How do we apply for a spot?
[00:58:56]  And another person said, thanks for giving us Evolved Apes new hope after what happened to us.
[00:59:00]  Much appreciated.
[00:59:02]  All of these people are just going to be able to do that.
[00:59:03]  I have to say, it's remarkable to see the exact same language used by the same people that, like, again, do these women's MLMs, you know, like LulaRow and et cetera, that are just like, all love.
[00:59:22]  Boss babes just want to see you thrive.
[00:59:25]  All love.
[00:59:27]  And it's like, they think if they use the word love enough, like people will just be like, that's sincere.
[00:59:32]  And then when you're reading these comments, it's like, oh, yeah, people do believe that.
[00:59:36]  And that's what's fucking sad.
[00:59:39]  Yeah.
[00:59:40]  And God, they're all just so.
[00:59:44]  So there's another one of these fucking scams is called Lazy Lions.
[00:59:48]  And it's just, again, it's like the same lion drawing with slight differences.
[00:59:52]  Like there's a link to it here.
[00:59:53]  And there's like a lazy lion for like eight, ten thousand dollars, a bunch of them.
[00:59:57]  And they like, they look like this.
[00:59:59]  They just all, it's so fucking lazy.
[01:00:02]  Like, again, with the promise being like artists are finally getting paid.
[01:00:06]  Like the art is just so consistently shitty with this stuff.
[01:00:10]  Like some of these are selling for like 8,000 ethers for $8,000.
[01:00:14]  Nope.
[01:00:15]  Yeah.
[01:00:15]  I like the apes more than this.
[01:00:18]  The lazy lions, there's not even an artist.
[01:00:21]  They're algorithmically generated.
[01:00:23]  Yeah, you can tell.
[01:00:24]  Yeah.
[01:00:24]  These fucking lions are bullshit.
[01:00:26]  You're not even paying for something a guy drew.
[01:00:28]  Like it's just a computer generated, a shitty drawing of a lion wearing like a fucking catcher's uniform or some bullshit.
[01:00:37]  You're disrespecting yourself for money.
[01:00:40]  This is shameful.
[01:00:42]  This is absolutely shameful.
[01:00:44]  That looks like garbage.
[01:00:46]  Yeah.
[01:00:47]  But yeah, they're selling for thousands of dollars apiece.
[01:00:51]  I think most of the people that I know, like most of my friends spent less on their used cars than like a lot of these are selling for.
[01:01:02]  It's just incredibly sad to see someone posting about how excited they are.
[01:01:06]  They bought a shitty drawing of a lion generated by a computer for as much money as they could have spent on like a used Prius that would have lasted them 10 years.
[01:01:16]  Like it's just, and of course, in doing it, they're pissing carbon into the atmosphere at a huge rate, which is also awesome.
[01:01:26]  Because again, all NFTs, they're on the ether blockchain.
[01:01:30]  At the moment, the total amount of power generated in order to run the Ethereum blockchain is comparable to the power consumption of the nation of Bangladesh.
[01:01:43]  Wow.
[01:01:43]  So just that small.

=== Sadness of Digital Collectibles (05:18) ===

[01:01:45]  Yeah.
[01:01:45]  Real little.
[01:01:46]  Yeah.
[01:01:46]  Famously small country Bangladesh with a population of 164 million people.
[01:01:52]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:01:53]  Just tiny, just tiny.
[01:01:54]  Tiny little baby little Bangladesh, half the population of the United States.
[01:01:58]  Inconsequential little baby bash.
[01:02:01]  Yeah.
[01:02:02]  Ethereum is has a carbon footprint comparable to the nation of New Zealand, which is great.
[01:02:11]  Yeah.
[01:02:12]  Every single Ethereum transaction is equivalent to the power consumption of an average U.S. household over six days.
[01:02:20]  So that's that's cool.
[01:02:22]  Hey, it uses slightly less power than Chile.
[01:02:24]  So that's good.
[01:02:27]  Yeah, slightly less power than an Asian at Chile.
[01:02:31]  You're always saying that.
[01:02:34]  Oh, God.
[01:02:36]  So I don't know.
[01:02:40]  What are you, what are you, what are you doing?
[01:02:42]  What are you doing?
[01:02:43]  What are we all doing?
[01:02:44]  Who, me personally, I am slowly dying and pretending that there's some good that I can do while I'm here and trying to do the good.
[01:02:52]  What are you doing?
[01:02:54]  I'm that, but not trying to pretend to do good anymore.
[01:02:57]  Just trying to just trying to make enough money to buy a house and then hide from the rest of the world forever.
[01:03:10]  I love that for you.
[01:03:12]  What else are you going to do?
[01:03:14]  What else are you going to do after realizing this sheer mass of human ingenuity and the enormous amount of resources that are going into getting some guy rich for selling algorithmically generated lion drawings?
[01:03:27]  Nope.
[01:03:28]  Yeah.
[01:03:29]  It's bleak.
[01:03:30]  So I want to end by reading something from the book Attack of the 50-foot blockchain.
[01:03:36]  It's called a Bitcoin Fact, you know, F-A-Q, and it's what opens the book.
[01:03:41]  Question number one, should I buy Bitcoins?
[01:03:45]  Answer, no.
[01:03:46]  Question number two.
[01:03:48]  But I keep seeing all this stuff in the news about them and how...
[01:03:51]  Answer, no.
[01:03:52]  Tech journalism is uniformly terrible.
[01:03:54]  Always remember this.
[01:03:56]  Question three, how does it work?
[01:03:58]  It doesn't make any sense.
[01:03:59]  No, it really doesn't.
[01:04:01]  It's impossible to accurately explain Bitcoin in anything less than mind-numbingly boring technical terms.
[01:04:06]  So you should probably just not worry about it.
[01:04:09]  I could have written that and I know nothing about Bitcoin other than it's a scam.
[01:04:14]  And I think that's what we all know now.
[01:04:17]  Great.
[01:04:18]  Yeah.
[01:04:18]  And if you want to learn enough about Bitcoin to argue with the people who love Bitcoin and explain in detail why they're dumb, I do recommend David Gerard's attack of the 50-foot blockchain.
[01:04:32]  But if you just want to continue to be like, yeah, Bitcoin seems stupid as shit.
[01:04:35]  I'm not going to get involved.
[01:04:36]  That's also fine.
[01:04:38]  I kind of feel like I want to read this book.
[01:04:41]  It's good.
[01:04:42]  Just get into arguments with like men I hate at bars and get them to buy me drinks because I'm right.
[01:04:50]  I mean, fucking Bitcoinica or whatever.
[01:04:54]  Exactly.
[01:04:54]  But like normally I do way less work for that.
[01:04:57]  But like, you know, pandemic made me feel lonely.
[01:05:01]  So.
[01:05:01]  Yeah, we're all there.
[01:05:03]  Well, Sophia, you got any pluggables to plug?
[01:05:06]  Sure.
[01:05:06]  Thank you, Robert.
[01:05:07]  You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at the Sophia S-O-F-I-Y-A.
[01:05:12]  And you can listen to my two podcasts.
[01:05:15]  One about love and sex around the world called Private Parts Unknown.
[01:05:18]  And the other one about 90-day fiancé called 420-day fiancé with Miles Gray from the Daily Zeitgeist.
[01:05:27]  Miles Gray from the day we zeitgeist.
[01:05:31]  That's right.
[01:05:32]  That's right.
[01:05:33]  All right.
[01:05:34]  Well, that's going to do it for us this week.
[01:05:37]  It's going to do it for you too.
[01:05:38]  So don't listen to any other podcasts until we drop another episode.
[01:05:42]  Go home, throw your phone in the river, attack infrastructure to stop other people from listening to podcasts until we drop another episode.
[01:05:52]  Whoa, we just, I'm Robert Evans.
[01:05:56]  This is Sophia.
[01:05:57]  We just sailed in from the future, which is actually still the past to you listening to this, but is the future to us who recorded this episode initially.
[01:06:07]  Sophia, how is the time stream treating you?
[01:06:10]  I'm a little, I'm a little sick from the time travel, honestly.
[01:06:14]  I'll be honest with you.
[01:06:16]  We got to meet George Carlin, though.
[01:06:18]  That was neat.
[01:06:19]  That was dope.
[01:06:20]  Yeah.
[01:06:20]  Unexpected.
[01:06:21]  Unexpected.
[01:06:22]  Yeah, we told him about a bunch of bad shit, and he did not seem surprised.
[01:06:27]  No.
[01:06:29]  He was, however, surprised that you can still be a rapist and a comedian.
[01:06:38]  He was like, ha, I thought 2021, surely.
[01:06:43]  No, okay.
[01:06:44]  No, no.
[01:06:46]  Yeah.
[01:06:46]  Anyway, good times.
[01:06:48]  We're hopping in here at the end of our last episode because there's some stuff I didn't, I didn't read last time that I wanted to make a note of because it's kind of important for understanding what's happening with NFTs.

=== Money Laundering via NFTs (06:32) ===

[01:07:03]  Pretty crucial.
[01:07:04]  Yeah, pretty crucial.
[01:07:05]  I want to get across like what's actually going on because we talked about like how it's a con and like how bad an investment it is and how much of like the claims being made.
[01:07:17]  How many of the people involved are grifters, but I don't think we really got at, I think the episode as it is could leave people with the opinion that like, well, maybe this is like a Pokemon thing, right?
[01:07:27]  Where like it seems dumb to a lot of people, but it has legs for years and years and years and years because there's just some great need to own like little pictures of monkeys that you pay absurd amounts of money for.
[01:07:40]  And I wanted to, I think the context that's lacking is like money laundering and why, like how, how NFTs relate to money laundering.
[01:07:49]  For years and for decades really since World War II, one of the best ways to launder money has been to invest in art.
[01:07:56]  And there's a good quote from Natural Law Review that I'm going to read that kind of explains how the art industry works in terms of like being a money laundering vehicle.
[01:08:05]  Art is an attractive vehicle to launder money.
[01:08:07]  It can be hidden or smuggled.
[01:08:08]  Transactions often are private and prices can be subjective and manipulated as well as extremely high.
[01:08:13]  Once purchased, the art can disappear from view for years, even decades.
[01:08:17]  A lot of the art bought at auctions goes to freeports, ultra-secure warehouses for the collections of millionaires and billionaires, ranging from Picas in gold to vintage Ferraris and fine wine.
[01:08:27]  The Freeports, which exist in Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Singapore, offer a variety of tax advantages because the goods stored in them are technically in transit.
[01:08:35]  The Economist magazine.
[01:08:36]  Fucking Switzerland.
[01:08:37]  I know, right?
[01:08:38]  Come on.
[01:08:39]  Just spoken as since fucking World War II, you fucking bastards.
[01:08:43]  They are the top of the global grift chain.
[01:08:46]  Absolutely.
[01:08:47]  God damn it.
[01:08:48]  Beautiful country.
[01:08:49]  Good on you, Switzerland.
[01:08:50]  Look, someone had to be the best at it, you know?
[01:08:53]  And it's not the United States.
[01:08:56]  Chocolate's not even that good, you sons of no, it's not.
[01:08:59]  It's absolutely not.
[01:09:00]  Although it's a beautiful country to fly into.
[01:09:04]  So The Economist estimates that the freeport at Geneva, by the way, speaking of Switzerland, alone has $100 billion in just U.S. art.
[01:09:13]  And once the art...
[01:09:14]  Holy fuck.
[01:09:14]  Yeah.
[01:09:16]  $100 billion U.S. art.
[01:09:18]  That's a diverting number.
[01:09:19]  That's a lot of art.
[01:09:21]  Yeah.
[01:09:21]  And the benefit of art is that it can be sold privately and anonymously to other buyers.
[01:09:25]  It's not like a gun.
[01:09:26]  It's not even like a car.
[01:09:27]  There's not a lot of registration.
[01:09:29]  Most art never even leaves the warehouse after the sale is completed, again, for tax reasons.
[01:09:34]  And it's basically just a vehicle for transferring money in a lot of ways and laundering money from like, you know, one center of your business or like one of your accounts through another because there's just there for a while at least, there was not scrutiny on it.
[01:09:49]  And art became really popular for laundering money when they started the government, like as a result of the war on drugs, started cracking down more on other traditional methods of money laundering.
[01:09:59]  It's immoral like in an extra way because art only exists if you're experiencing it.
[01:10:06]  Yeah.
[01:10:07]  And it's the most criminal thing you can do to a piece of art other than destroying it is to just keep it in a warehouse so no one ever sees it.
[01:10:15]  It's as if it doesn't exist.
[01:10:17]  Yeah, it's fucked up.
[01:10:18]  And they're just doing it like, ah, this beautiful work that has inspired people.
[01:10:23]  Like, and it's the fucked up thing is that, like, because art inspires emotional experiences, because people react strongly to it, it has cash value and because it has cash value, but it's not really a thing that's often been governed in the same way as other things.
[01:10:36]  Like, you can kind of, you can manipulate it.
[01:10:38]  Like, you can agree, hey, I'm going to sell this.
[01:10:40]  If you buy it for this much, we can both funnel money into that purchase of the art.
[01:10:45]  Nobody's going to question that some crazy rich person thought that this painting was worth $100 million, even though it had only been worth $20 million before.
[01:10:50]  And then we get to launder more money through this transaction at this free port where nothing is taxed because it's technically in transit.
[01:10:56]  It's like this whole game.
[01:10:58]  And I should note that like that is how it has been for a while.
[01:11:01]  I think within the last decade, there have been some significant legal steps taken that have made it more difficult to launder money this way.
[01:11:08]  I think it still happens at a pretty significant scale, but like it got harder and it got harder.
[01:11:13]  And like right as kind of like when other money laundering stuff got shut down, art became the center of money laundering.
[01:11:20]  As it became harder to launder money through art, NFTs hit the stage.
[01:11:24]  And that's what they're being used for.
[01:11:25]  And so a lot of the times when you see like these, as we were talking about, this like, oh, this, this shitty 8-bit drawing of a dude sold for 60 grand or like this monkey sold for $18 million.
[01:11:36]  And it's like just one of 10,000 unique, almost unique monkey drawings.
[01:11:40]  What the hell is happening?
[01:11:41]  Well, what's happening is somebody has a pile of money and multiple wallets because while the blockchain absolutely like registers every transaction, it doesn't, you don't necessarily know that those are individual different people.
[01:11:54]  It could be one guy trading stuff between wallets.
[01:11:56]  So he buys an NFT for $1,000.
[01:11:59]  So you can artificially inflate it doing that.
[01:12:01]  Yeah.
[01:12:02]  Yeah.
[01:12:02]  So you buy an NFT for a thousand and then you have another account buy it for $5,000 and then another account buy it for 10,000 and then, or you pay people to help you do that.
[01:12:09]  But whatever way, you keep jacking up the price until some sucker buys it for a million because he's saying, wow, it's doubled in price every two days.
[01:12:18]  If I get it now, I can flip it in 48 hours.
[01:12:21]  And then like suddenly there's no buyers.
[01:12:23]  Because one of the stats that came out since we did our last episode is that like more than 90% of NFT transactions are less than 10% of people who have NFTs.
[01:12:36]  It is a vanishingly small number of people actually doing transactions.
[01:12:40]  And it's mostly at the big level money laundering.
[01:12:42]  The vast majority of NFTs sell for under 200 bucks.
[01:12:46]  Like the ones that are selling for huge amounts of money are money laundering.
[01:12:49]  And one of the pieces of evidence of this is that the biggest NFT sale, which was about half a billion dollars recently, was it was found later the person who bought it transferred the NFT back to the original wallet or transferred the money that he paid for the NFT back to the original wallet.
[01:13:04]  So like it was clearly just some guy using half a billion dollars in crypto to buy his own NFT from himself, paying a few thousand dollars in gas fees and doing that so that now this is an NFT that's worth half a billion dollars.
[01:13:17]  And that's good for this specific NFT, but it also raises the profile of the whole industry and makes people more likely.
[01:13:23]  It brings in more suckers.
[01:13:24]  You know, it's just advertising for the suckers.
[01:13:26]  That's what was happening with Beeples thing.
[01:13:28]  It's make people think that there's a gold rush.
[01:13:31]  So they rush in and spend money on monkey drawings that they're never able to liquidate.

=== Advertising to the Suckers (03:08) ===

[01:13:35]  Anyway, that's the context I thought was needed.
[01:13:40]  I think that's really important.
[01:13:42]  And thank you, Robert, for being so thorough.
[01:13:45]  I'm just obsessed with this stuff lately.
[01:13:46]  He's a good man and thorough.
[01:13:48]  He is extremely obsessed with this stuff lately.
[01:13:51]  That's how he said he starts all our meetings with the fun fact.
[01:13:54]  It's the only thing I can, it's stupid and terrible, but it's the only stupid, terrible thing I can read about that I'm not depressed at the end.
[01:14:01]  I just think it's really funny.
[01:14:02]  Fair enough.
[01:14:04]  It makes me sad because a lot of the people that I'm friends with are pushing this narrative that like, if you don't invest in this, you're an idiot.
[01:14:11]  And I'm like, you're going to have other idiots listening to you who don't have a safety net of mommy and daddy.
[01:14:17]  Yeah.
[01:14:18]  And then they'll be pretty fucked.
[01:14:20]  So.
[01:14:21]  Yep.
[01:14:22]  Yeah, it's good shit.
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