Program Notes

Support Lorenzo on Patreon.com


Date this lecture was recorded: March 8, 2021
Guest speakers:
Various

This is a recording of a conversation that we had on a live salon the other day. It’s about Non-Fungible Tokens, the NFTs that have been making news lately

PCs – Right click, select optionMacs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Download free copies of Lorenzo’s latest books

Previous Episode

664 - Leonard Pickard’s Rose of Paracelsus Ch 4

Next Episode

666 - Winning the War on Drugs

Similar Episodes

Transcript

00:00:00

Greetings from cyberdelic space.

00:00:19

This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the psychedelic salon.

00:00:23

This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.

00:00:30

And I want to pass along to you part of a conversation that we had during a live salon the other day.

00:00:34

It’s about NFTs, which have been making a lot of news lately.

00:00:36

Non-fungible tokens.

00:00:46

Now, before I play this recording, I want to make it clear that I am not recommending that anyone begin investing their savings in digital art.

00:00:48

And that’s what some of the NFTs are.

00:00:51

It’s something like a digital baseball card.

00:00:56

The main difference between an NFT and a regular digital file, as far as I can tell,

00:01:04

is that NFTs are like baseball cards that have been signed by either the person on the card or the artist or musician who created it.

00:01:12

This is really very simplistic, but it’s the metaphor that I use to first start getting my head around this concept.

00:01:20

And to be honest, I still don’t fully understand why people are willing to pay thousands of dollars for a signed copy of a digital file.

00:01:26

However, after our conversation in the salon the other night, and then after spending more time looking into NFTs a little deeper, I still don’t intend to buy any of them, but however, I do intend

00:01:33

to begin creating them. And that’s why I’m podcasting this conversation. It’s to suggest to

00:01:39

some of our fellow salonners that maybe this is a way for you to make a little bit of extra money for your creations. So now here’s our conversation about NFTs. But tonight I thought, you know, I

00:01:53

know that I said the topic is NFTs, non-fungible tokens. And, you know, that actually leads directly into what I think is a way to

00:02:07

have some psychedelic expression of the arts. And it’s sort of a weird thing. I have to go

00:02:16

back in the salon and look and see when I first started talking about Bitcoin. But when I was first talking about Bitcoin in the salon, Bitcoin was selling for around 30 per Bitcoin.

00:02:31

And today it’s selling for $50,000 a Bitcoin.

00:02:34

So my hunch paid off.

00:02:37

I’m sorry I didn’t really follow it as closely as I should.

00:02:40

But all of the Bitcoin that was donated to me during those years, I still have.

00:02:44

So I’m happy to have held it. The thing though about NFTs, it’s a blockchain technology.

00:02:54

It makes very little sense, except for the fact that, and I’ve been noticing them for over a year now or a couple of years. And I just thought, you know, that’s really privileged.

00:03:08

You know, each one of these things is essentially, think of a digitized baseball card.

00:03:14

And let’s say a limited edition baseball card.

00:03:17

They had only 10 copies of it.

00:03:20

And for some reason, people wanted that, even though it’s digital.

00:03:26

And I got to thinking,

00:03:30

you know, that’s not going anywhere. And non-fungible token for a thousand dollars.

00:03:48

And then the guy that started Twitter sold a copy of the first tweet. Now this is the first tweet

00:03:57

that was ever issued on Twitter. There’s got to be a hundred thousand copies of it on drives around the world. But there’s only one that’s registered by the person that gave it.

00:04:09

And he registered it in the Ethereum blockchain as an NFT.

00:04:14

And so it’s a certified copy of the original one made by the guy that did it.

00:04:18

And he put it up there for sale.

00:04:22

And the proceeds are going to charity.

00:04:24

And the current bid is two and a half million dollars for that digital file.

00:04:32

Which charity copies have already,

00:04:34

pardon me,

00:04:35

which charity,

00:04:36

or I haven’t been interested enough to follow through.

00:04:40

Maybe that I understand what you’re saying there.

00:04:43

And I don’t want to interrupt your monologue,

00:04:50

but I will just say that if it’s rich guys wagging their appendages around, the charity often matters.

00:04:54

Let’s let’s get off of that. That’s what got my attention.

00:05:01

That’s not what it’s all about. Let me give you an example of what can be done with this technology. And I’ll tell you what uh if you listen to my podcast in the early

00:05:06

days of bitcoin i think you’ll hear some of my projections are are coming true today and i have

00:05:12

a gut feeling about this stuff that a number of other people have a gut feeling about it by the

00:05:18

way does anybody here own an nft i am quite a quite a bit who is this i this is Chris Lorenzo, it’s the first time I’ve been on in months

00:05:27

oh okay

00:05:28

so you can tell us a little bit about

00:05:31

the motivation behind

00:05:33

buying an NFT

00:05:35

perhaps but let me

00:05:37

I guess I should finish talking about them first

00:05:39

and then we’ll let you

00:05:40

yeah go ahead

00:05:41

because I’m very new to this

00:05:44

like I say i’ve been

00:05:45

kind of off and on looking at it and seeing that something was going on and at first i thought it

00:05:50

was sort of like uh you know those uh a friend of mine back you know 20 some years ago was after uh

00:05:57

he had young kids and there was some kind of a doll that had a funny belly or something i don’t

00:06:02

know he collected all those things i thought thought, you know, these collectibles,

00:06:05

you know, are, are, you know, I don’t understand it, but there’s,

00:06:10

there’s another part of it.

00:06:11

And the other part of it is people who are creating these things.

00:06:16

And this is going to revolutionize, believe me,

00:06:19

it’s going to revolutionize both the music and the art industries that in

00:06:24

music already that this this this one musician

00:06:27

called uh blow i think it is three blo or something like that blow uh blue anyhow he had an album he

00:06:35

released in 2017 he re-released it recently and i’m talking about months ago as a NFT and he has now brought in over $11 million doing this.

00:06:49

Now, there’s a lot of things going on here

00:06:51

and here’s the beauty of an NFT if you’re a musician.

00:06:58

If you put your music out as an NFT,

00:07:01

let’s say I created a song and it was an original song. I put it up there and I said,

00:07:07

I’m selling it for 10 a copy. I put it up there as an NFT

00:07:13

and I made a limited number. Well, the beauty of this is that when you sell something, you get a

00:07:20

commission, of course, but you also get a royalty when they sell it forward.

00:07:30

So let’s say you create a piece of art that sells for 10,000. But you’re getting

00:07:36

10% or 20 or 30%, whatever you set on every time it’s sold. That’s how these artists are

00:07:47

on every time it’s sold. That’s how these artists are disintermediating the record companies and starting to sell their music directly to the public. Now, an artist, now think about this.

00:07:54

Let’s say I own a piece of Alex Gray’s art that is worth $100,000. Now, I could maybe find some, and I needed the money.

00:08:07

So maybe I could find somebody to buy that for me.

00:08:10

But instead, if I broke that piece of art into 100 pieces,

00:08:16

and I sold 100 copies for $100 a piece,

00:08:20

well, what good is a little one hundredth of a piece of Alex Gray art?

00:08:24

But the way these things work if

00:08:25

you own one piece you have access to the entire piece so in your heart house if you have a video

00:08:33

monitor and your art is on there you have that entire work of alex gray art that you paid a

00:08:38

hundred dollars for and what’s more a hundred people have a copy of that art so those are some

00:08:44

of the things that are going on.

00:08:45

And I know that most of us are old guys that are going to say, oh, screw digital art.

00:08:51

But, of course, Bill Gates has had nothing but digital art in his house for over 20 years

00:08:55

and high-def monitors because he bought all these originals that he didn’t want hanging around.

00:08:59

So they’re in vaults.

00:09:00

And there are museums now who are putting in entire room installations of digital art.

00:09:08

Now, why would somebody buy a copy of something that there’s like the first tweet that came out?

00:09:15

There’s got to be a million copies of that. Why does somebody want the original certified copy

00:09:20

of that? Well, because they’re collectors and collectors collect things and

00:09:25

there’s a market for them. So maybe this might be a good time. Now, maybe Chris, you can talk a

00:09:31

little bit about how this market has become viable. Well, so I mean, first off, let me give

00:09:38

you some credit. You know, I’ve been deep in the trenches and I’m arriving into this NFT moment.

00:09:42

To hear you explain it like you did well done because

00:09:45

most people fumble and it’s it’s fascinating right like first and foremost this is one of

00:09:52

the reasons I’m even back here on the chat I happen to seeing that this was tonight’s topic

00:09:56

and like I’ve been now balls deep in these markets for the last six months and I’ve witnessed over

00:10:00

the last two months NFTs emerged like a rocket. And it’s been fascinating for even me to accept what this can mean in the long term coming from crypto.

00:10:12

Because, like, for instance, I’ll answer first, right?

00:10:15

Why do I own some?

00:10:16

Well, I happen to have, you know, did okay in crypto recently.

00:10:19

And it’s like, I’m still limited in what I can spend my crypto on, especially if I don’t want to cash out and make it a taxable event and make it and turn it into capital gains.

00:10:28

Right. So like I’m sitting here like, oh, that sounds nice.

00:10:31

And then to things like Top Shot, NBA Top Shot, which I loaded up on as an investment last summer.

00:10:38

Now I got NBA players foaming and I did well. So I’m like, let me see what we got here. Right.

00:10:43

And then I got into this space and I started to see beyond what I was like, well, listen, I know there’s probably money laundering

00:10:48

here and it’s, you know, Ponzi nomics at play and there’s a bunch of that, but it’s crypto.

00:10:53

Okay. So what I started to see, like you were saying, Lorenzo was the real artists who looked

00:10:57

at this and said, Oh, I can own my masters outright. I can, just like you were saying,

00:11:03

I was describing to someone the other day,

00:11:05

it’s not just the individual artist.

00:11:07

Imagine, you know, say an album like Thriller, right?

00:11:11

If it was tokenized and it was made as an NFT

00:11:14

and you happen to be able to have every artist credited

00:11:17

on that album, a part of,

00:11:20

in the governance token of that album,

00:11:23

they’d be able to add into an item every time,

00:11:25

like you were saying, it was sold, also make money.

00:11:28

And we don’t have to have, you know,

00:11:29

famous bass players or some of the best backing singers

00:11:32

end up homeless on the street.

00:11:34

And it started to really teach me

00:11:36

what the revolution could be here.

00:11:39

You know, I’m coming from music,

00:11:41

so that’s a huge deal, right?

00:11:42

And it’s already starting to pick up.

00:11:45

And I was having a discussion with a buddy the other day.

00:11:47

The first artist that really gets it and makes it their strategy,

00:11:51

and they’re not just toying around with it.

00:11:53

Kings of Leon released an album, I think, yesterday or the day before as an NFT.

00:11:58

I mean someone who’s going to grow up and emerge, right?

00:12:02

As this NFT is blowing up, I think they have a huge opportunity

00:12:06

to get this across. Because once again, going back to when I got into the space and seeing

00:12:11

what’s possible, when you start talking about VR, AR, I have Terrence McKenna in my head,

00:12:18

right? And here I am now myself trying to build a VR art gallery of some of the best pieces that I find for myself.

00:12:27

This is, I think that they’re dope, right?

00:12:29

I got an Oculus in the mail now because I started, there’s this platform that came out where I can just, I don’t even have to move my NFTs.

00:12:36

I can attach my wallet address and it builds this VR room.

00:12:41

And it’s making me so excited now for crypto because i see this is my adoption point i see

00:12:49

nfts being the secret sauce we’ve been missing for people to get what crypto is and can be

00:12:55

um it’s it is what you make it right make an nft and i’ve minted a few myself just to go through

00:13:01

with it um so you know to, let me get off my bully

00:13:05

pulpit. Number one, I’d love to answer any questions if I can, that anyone has about any

00:13:09

of this stuff. As well as I’m so happy to be back here on this moment because I’d even love to give

00:13:16

out some NFTs to you guys. I’ve got more than enough. I want to show like it’s evolving the

00:13:20

value proposition. It’s really, oh, well, why is it worth that? I mean, I say the same thing when I look at sports cards and stuff, right?

00:13:26

But a lot of people spend a lot of money on that.

00:13:30

So at first it was an investment strategy for me.

00:13:32

Now I’m in it for the culture and it just,

00:13:35

it’s exciting to see that there’s an innovation like this coming when I was

00:13:39

getting a little weary about the waters the last two months here and NFTs came

00:13:43

like a diamond in the rough so

00:13:45

yeah I’ll shut up for a second Chris can I ask you a question yeah so um what is the relationship

00:13:53

with scarcity in these subjects because if you’re talking about musicians or artists producing um

00:14:01

let’s just stick with musicians musician producing an, you want that to reach as many people as possible. So is scarcity required in this? Or can you indefinitely issue

00:14:11

infinite copies of a particular body of creative work and still maintain a market? Or is the market

00:14:18

the fact that it’s a scarce good? So I mean, again, this is where it gets in the nuts and bolts of

00:14:23

crypto. So I could say, well, in theory, anything’s possible because it could depend on the blockchain you choose to launch on. What tokens are you minting? You know, is it, do you want it to be limited or is it a large album release? Guess what? No one’s done it yet. Right? So you’re asking a question that we don’t even really have an answer to yet because because there’s only a few artists who are sitting there minting singles.

00:14:46

Right now, what they did with the Kings of Leon album,

00:14:50

how they did it like this,

00:14:51

and this is what they do for some of the NFT auctions,

00:14:54

is they make it scarce by saying, okay, it’s an open edition.

00:14:58

So instead of there being a one-of-one piece

00:15:01

or five pieces that there’s a silent auction on,

00:15:04

they’ll leave the auction open for five minutes.

00:15:07

And however many people buy or make the token within those five minutes is how

00:15:13

many there will be. Right. And then obviously that varies on your market.

00:15:18

You know, are people looking at it as an investment?

00:15:20

Are they buying you to support the artists? Are you, you know,

00:15:22

is your first launch? Are you a band like Kings of Leon?

00:15:30

So it’s a tough question to ask or to answer because there’s plenty of answers,

00:15:31

if you understand what I’m saying.

00:15:35

And how much have they made on that so far?

00:15:36

It’s quite a bit, right?

00:15:39

I haven’t checked in because I know it was a 24-hour auction,

00:15:41

which I believe ended a couple hours ago.

00:15:47

So I don’t know the final tally, but I’m sure everyone’s been doing pretty well in NFTs recently.

00:15:48

And look, I’ll be honest with you guys. It’s making me a little weary when I see Lindsay Lohan and Soldier Boy out here

00:15:53

saying, how do I make NFTs?

00:15:54

And Mark Cuban, because I love him,

00:15:56

bringing in all this other fresh blood money

00:15:58

because I don’t want to lose what’s really good about this right now.

00:16:04

How many unknown people have broken through?

00:16:08

None.

00:16:08

Well, the only one, I don’t know if you guys are familiar with Beeple,

00:16:13

but he has made headway.

00:16:15

I believe two weeks ago he had an auction and a piece go for $6.6 million.

00:16:21

So he has been the biggest one that has used nfts as his platform to really hit mainstream at

00:16:28

least in my world right he’s a big name within crypto and and sort of this this space was he

00:16:34

already a big name no he was not that’s what i’m saying that people don’t invest in brands that

00:16:41

they don’t know anything about so somebody has So somebody has to break out of this.

00:16:46

And the only thing that I heard

00:16:48

that I really, really, really like

00:16:50

is that when a piece of

00:16:52

art changes hands,

00:16:54

the artist gets a royalty. Now I don’t know if

00:16:56

the artist’s estate gets a royalty or whatever,

00:16:58

but this has been a big deal in the art

00:17:00

world because

00:17:01

a lot of

00:17:04

pop art, well a lot of pop art, well, a lot of art, period,

00:17:07

but particularly pop art in New York in the 60s, guys were, you know,

00:17:11

they were doing these big paintings, and they were using them to pay their rent.

00:17:14

And then they turn around 10 years later, and somebody’s getting $5 million for it.

00:17:22

And they’re like, well, where’s my piece?

00:17:26

Well, it doesn’t work like that.

00:17:28

And so that’s why I’m curious to see what’s actually written down on paper

00:17:34

and how much of this stuff actually really changes hands.

00:17:38

Yeah, and so, Lorenzo, like, man, you’ve got my mind flying,

00:17:42

and maybe we’ll talk offline about some of these ideas, but I see that you’re seeing what’s possible with this. And for you to interject the salon into this space, man, you’ve got my mind flying and maybe we’ll talk offline about some of these ideas, but I see that you’re seeing what’s possible with this.

00:17:47

And for you to interject the salon into this space, man, it’s entering into a whole nother ballgame of what’s possible in terms of influence of what you’ve been doing in the psychedelic salon.

00:17:55

So I’m glad you see that vision because there is so much to be tapped into here, man.

00:18:01

And I see you energized about it, too, which is roughly my jimmies as well.

00:18:04

tapped into here, man. And I see you energized about it too, which is roughly my jimmies as well.

00:18:13

Here’s the thing. Bitcoin is a token. If you have one Bitcoin, you have one Bitcoin token.

00:18:19

If you put up a unique piece of art that you created, that piece of art is a token. Now,

00:18:25

Bitcoin is a fungible token. One Bitcoin can be used the same as any other Bitcoin.

00:18:29

But these are non-fungible tokens, NFTs.

00:18:34

But it is the same as a Bitcoin token that people give value to.

00:18:36

Why do people give value to Bitcoin?

00:18:39

Well, because other people do, and they have some, and they start trading it. And this is a way to trade electronic funds for people.

00:18:44

And this is a way to trade electronic funds for people. Right now, 75% of all the Bitcoin has been held by people for over four years.

00:18:51

They’re looking for things to do.

00:18:53

They transfer it to Ethereum or to Ether, and they can buy these things.

00:18:57

And these things are appreciating faster than the other coins, the other cryptocurrency.

00:19:02

So that’s the whole thing behind it. Now, I’m not suggesting

00:19:07

that people go out and invest their life savings in these things and buy, you know, baseball cards

00:19:12

or whatever, unless you understand what you’re doing. But I do think artists and musicians

00:19:18

can create things like this and move their art forward. It’s a perfect example of what you’re talking about, Larry,

00:19:27

about artists getting paid as the art appreciates in the future. It solves that problem. I realize

00:19:33

that people are going to resist it, but the young artists, this is where they’re going to be going.

00:19:39

Yeah, and I don’t know if anyone’s familiar with this recent thing that’s going on with Taylor

00:19:43

Swift. I just was hearing a radio piece on a couple of days ago.

00:19:46

Not the biggest fan, but I’ve got no problem.

00:19:48

But what she’s done recently because she had this huge fight over her masters that she couldn’t get back is she’s going back.

00:19:55

I wish someone told her about NFTs because she’s going back and re-recording all her albums and putting them up on all the streaming services.

00:20:02

So she gets the rights and the royalties back.

00:20:05

And so people listen to her new re-recorded versions.

00:20:08

And like, I respect it, but I’m sitting here back like, well, you should,

00:20:11

this is why we have NFTs now is because,

00:20:14

and that’s what’s so fascinating about this.

00:20:16

When I saw that story is I’m like, oh, that’s hand in hand.

00:20:18

No wonder NFTs are coming.

00:20:20

It must be percolating, right?

00:20:23

And that’s what’s curious about this whole thing is that’s

00:20:25

what i’m saying it’s a value it’s evolving the value proposition because like you were describing

00:20:29

about bitcoin we agree that it’s worth that and trade it well with nfts now it’s art right

00:20:36

chris i’m not opposed to your argument about nfts but i think it’s important to separate that

00:20:42

the taylor swift dispute over the masters is

00:20:46

about a shitty contract not about the superiority of nfts and if you’re and if you’re if you’re an

00:20:51

artist at the beginning of your career that wants distribution for your work you’re going to go with

00:20:56

the contract that gets you distribution so i’m not persuaded that a con a a musician without

00:21:01

any muscle behind them doing a nft album is going to produce the result that

00:21:07

launches you to super startup. Charles, I think you might have been right in the past, but I think

00:21:13

you’re off track because of the way things are working today. I worked with a rock band

00:21:20

back, Seven Mary Three, back a long time ago i was their their uh their mascot i’d

00:21:28

appear on stage i was larry the janitor and i’d push my broom and play air broom and these guys

00:21:34

had they did have a number four hit called cumbersome and they toured for five years

00:21:39

they got a big record deal and they all wound up working at Walmart because the record companies take all the money.

00:21:48

And they got jack shit.

00:21:49

They had to tour to sell their records, but they had to pay all that money back.

00:21:54

And, you know, this is a new model.

00:21:56

And if you want distribution, you go out and get it yourself.

00:22:00

You know, authors think if they’re going to get a big publishing deal, they don’t realize they still have to do the publicity and most of the money burdens on them. And these companies

00:22:10

just are taking advantage of artists, writers, musicians. No question about that. But if you

00:22:14

want stadium tours, you know, young Taylor Swift. Who’s doing a stadium tour today?

00:22:22

Taylor Swift. I mean, that’s coming back. No that’s no no no nobody’s doing taylor nobody’s doing

00:22:26

stadium tours because there’s a pandemic i’m telling you by 2023 the stadium tours are going

00:22:32

to be back on so so i’m just saying if you want access to economies of scale you sign bad deals

00:22:38

at the beginning let me say let me to that point charles i will tell you this okay because what

00:22:43

i’ve watched happen over the last two and a half months,

00:22:46

when the price of Bitcoin was starting to skyrocket,

00:22:49

what we’re dealing with again, and I’m disappointed in the developers

00:22:52

and the teams who are still driven by greed in this space,

00:22:55

we are dealing with scaling issues all across the space.

00:22:59

Every exchange, everyone’s on a wait list to get verified, KYC,

00:23:03

gas fees are rising because there’s more

00:23:05

congestion on the network we are dealing with scaling issues and what we’re dealing with

00:23:10

ultimately at the end of the day is people who do not want to put in the work to build the systems

00:23:14

and the networking to solve the problems we’re talking about so i will give you that because

00:23:18

right now i don’t know if the nft model we’re speaking of ideally could scale right now. But I believe that it can in the future.

00:23:27

But I will give you that.

00:23:28

At this moment, that’s why I thought it was interesting with King of Leon

00:23:30

because they’re not, you know, they’re not to that level,

00:23:33

but they’re big enough.

00:23:34

But I’m also like, are you guys just doing this for a buck, right?

00:23:37

Because, look, do not get it twisted.

00:23:38

There is a bunch of that right now.

00:23:40

I need that out of here, right?

00:23:41

It is a bubble.

00:23:42

It’s getting a little frothy, right?

00:23:44

I get all that.

00:23:47

If you

00:23:48

watch America’s Got Talent,

00:23:50

what has happened to all

00:23:52

of those people who have been so incredible

00:23:54

on there? How many of them have gotten

00:23:56

deals that are getting them to a stadium?

00:23:58

One out of a thousand?

00:24:00

This is a way.

00:24:01

People don’t have to do stadium concerts

00:24:04

to have a nice living being an artist

00:24:06

you’re going to be a musician with 2 000 fans on this model you know you don’t have to have a

00:24:11

stadium concert and as long as we’re trying to sell kids on getting stadium concerts we’re going

00:24:16

to set everybody up for disappointment except one out of a million well i don’t i don’t think that’s

00:24:21

what i was saying lorenzo i was simply just saying you have to separate the Taylor Swift example from a young person signing a bad contract.

00:24:28

I wasn’t at all pouring water on your enthusiasm.

00:24:32

Well, see, and to that distribution model, right, it’s fascinating.

00:24:35

Let me tell you guys what I’ve witnessed over the last week.

00:24:37

There’s this guy who’s popular on crypto Twitter who has a really good heart.

00:24:41

I’ve been following him for a while.

00:24:42

He hit well years ago, and he gives back a lot, right?

00:24:47

And that’s like he shows a lot.

00:24:48

There’s a lot, but I know he’s got a good heart.

00:24:50

And recently in this next bull run, he’s finally been de-anonymizing himself

00:24:55

and doing podcasts and getting out and face on all that sort of stuff.

00:24:58

So what he’s been doing with this NFT craze is because he has such a huge platform

00:25:02

in crypto Twitter and a lot of people follow him and listen to him and trust him.

00:25:06

He’ll have on an artist who’s about to do a drop the night before that drop

00:25:10

for exposure.

00:25:11

So far he’s five out of five out of making them millionaires off of the

00:25:15

exposure they get.

00:25:16

And they’re only selling pieces for under a thousand dollars in the,

00:25:19

in the NFT space.

00:25:20

That’s actually not that much.

00:25:21

I know it sounds like a lot.

00:25:22

And you know,

00:25:23

I almost cried the other day because it’s like, these are artists who literally like, they wouldn’t know any other

00:25:28

way. They are good or great at what they do. And they found crypto through their own courage of

00:25:33

doing that. And this guy’s trying to give back by having his platform. And it’s like almost as good

00:25:38

as being able to have that level of distribution because he still has the eyeballs. But again,

00:25:43

he’s just some random guy on crypto Twitter. And there’s a lot of, there is still sharks, right? There are a lot of sharks

00:25:50

still. And that’s where I’m trying to engage in the space because I’m not in this for the money

00:25:54

and I never was. And that’s the problem still. And with NFTs, we have a huge opportunity

00:26:00

to take this adoption to the next level by bringing, like you were saying, Lorenzo,

00:26:05

before we got on NFTs, bringing back to creatives. Because imagine if all those starving artists

00:26:11

didn’t starve and could make more music or write more poetry or write more books or make more

00:26:17

NFTs, digital art, whatever the case may be. I think that’s going to have a difference in our

00:26:22

culture when we’re looking here starved for an answer right and everyone’s feeling an itch about man we need something more this is not working so

00:26:30

that’s what i think is fascinating about it at the end of the day now now the the other thing to

00:26:37

to keep in mind is what what some people are saying about this who you know are people that

00:26:43

that know something about money.

00:26:45

And I’m talking, of course, about Elon Musk and Mark Cuban.

00:26:49

And they’re both heavily into it.

00:26:51

And Mark Cuban says that he, Mark Cuban is not a fan of Bitcoin.

00:26:55

And I’ve never understood that until now because he’s in Ethereum and he’s into NFTs.

00:27:11

to NFTs. And he’s the one that started these NBA NFTs that are just catching fire. And he says he thinks the NFTs right now are where Bitcoin was 11 years ago. So here’s a guy that’s a

00:27:19

multi-billionaire that I think should at least have some say in the game to, we should be paying attention to.

00:27:26

Yeah, precisely. But the point, the point is just, you know,

00:27:29

people should make good faith due diligence efforts to include the,

00:27:32

the intellectual property owners.

00:27:34

Absolutely. Because look, I will tell you in the space,

00:27:37

there’s a lot of people who don’t know the, what the value,

00:27:39

what you’re saying, who think, Oh,

00:27:41

let me just copy and paste a Google image and throw it up as an NFT. No, that’s not how this works. And I will tell you that there’s enough of people like me.

00:27:49

Listen, when you’re going and spending thousands of dollars on a piece of digital art, you better

00:27:54

be doing your damn due diligence, right? And like, when it comes to the counterfeit issue,

00:27:58

it goes beyond just intellectual property and stuff. I actually believe in the community to

00:28:02

where, listen, we’re making sure we know you

00:28:05

cannot counterfeit this. Where’s the contract address? What blockchain is it minted on? We can

00:28:09

go back and look, do blockchain analysis. Ooh, like, have you minted more? There’s been so many

00:28:14

opportunities. And I actually think, look, the struggle right now, and I’ll tell you guys from

00:28:19

deep within the spaces, there’s still too many people who are not in this for the culture,

00:28:23

who are not in this to try to advance what could be done. And the greed is getting in the way. And when there’s a

00:28:29

top cycle coming like right now, when, by the way, guys, Bitcoin will get over $100,000 this year.

00:28:34

When we start to see those price targets, I am a little bit concerned about what’s going to go down

00:28:39

in the space at large. We cannot have what happened in 2017 with the ICO craze happen

00:28:45

with NFTs. I totally agree. And that’s why I’m building a computer to try to throw my hat in

00:28:51

the hand. I want to build a platform to help artists do this. I reached out to two artists

00:28:57

already, young kids who I’m helping do some designs for me for my clothing, and they didn’t

00:29:01

even know about NFTs. I’m willing to get art that they want to give to me meant for free,

00:29:06

just to show them how it works for no money. Just to say, guys,

00:29:09

this is a revenue stream for you. Right. And that’s why I’m in it.

00:29:12

Cause you’re Charles, you’re right. There’s a lot of there’s there’s,

00:29:16

it’s the sharks.

00:29:16

It’s the people who don’t give a fuck about what you’re saying is who I’m

00:29:20

really concerned about. We could lose that.

00:29:22

We could lose the opportunity.

00:29:23

What I’m talking about because too many people don’t say that. And like you said, they just go on there

00:29:28

and then that will be a problem, right? And then it’s a squirrely thing. And you know what I mean?

00:29:33

Yeah, Chris, I think it’s the sharks and I think it’s the well-intentioned naive.

00:29:37

You know, there’s a really naive set of attitudes about copyright and trademark in the online

00:29:44

environment. this idea that

00:29:45

just because I’ve made the fan art

00:29:47

means I own the right to distribute it.

00:29:50

Well, you don’t.

00:29:52

I don’t own any of these.

00:29:53

If you make your bootleg Batman movie or whatever

00:29:56

and put it up on… Let me finish, Larry,

00:29:58

please. And if you make your bootleg

00:29:59

Warner Brothers property and it’s

00:30:01

a minute and it’s disseminated

00:30:04

through this, then you’re setting yourself up for an issue know, an issue, whether or not you made it just because

00:30:09

of naivety. So Chris, I think that there, I think this is a good area. I just think that there needs

00:30:13

to be a lot of education about what you’re leaving yourself vulnerable for. Oh, that’s why I’m here.

00:30:18

That’s why when I saw it was an NFT topic, I wanted to pop in. That’s why I’m willing to help

00:30:22

anyone who has questions online, offline, because I believe in this. Like Lorenzo, you were saying, I’m so glad your mind’s going where it is

00:30:29

when I’m, I’m opening collectors packs of William Shatner. Right. And I’m sitting there saying,

00:30:33

why don’t we have a psychedelic salon pack? Right. We could sit there. We could do NFTs

00:30:37

of particular episodes. We could NFT your audio clips, bro. Like you’ve got, you’ve got years

00:30:42

worth of content, Lorenzo, and you could tokenize all of it, dude. And you already know your mind’s already going there. Revenue streams, dude,

00:30:48

you already are in the crypto space. You’re already in that 1%. And it’s about the give

00:30:53

back and to be able to promote the culture, going back to the creative aspect. Then we get to have

00:30:58

a space. I will tell you guys the type of psychedelic art I’m seeing is blowing my goddamn

00:31:03

mind. It’s blowing my mind. It’s something

00:31:05

that I’m like, oh, am I tripping right now? And just to see where it’s going is why I’m sitting

00:31:11

here spending my money on it. Because number one, I love it. I love the art to begin with. I don’t

00:31:16

care if I make money on it. But I also know it’s going to help incentivize the adoption and the

00:31:21

other artists to see, oh, he sold for that for how much? And, you know, I’ve seen artists from third world countries go and blow up.

00:31:27

There’s a kid who’s doing VR freaking Nike shoes that are augmented reality,

00:31:32

and he’s 16 years old.

00:31:34

And that, like, warms my heart.

00:31:37

You know what I mean?

00:31:37

But you’re right.

00:31:38

And that’s the naive part, right?

00:31:39

Because then you’ve got people who don’t know any better,

00:31:42

and that’s what I’m saying with the top cycle.

00:31:44

That’s where the sharks will come in in and they’ll take advantage of them and again when i’m seeing lindsey

00:31:48

lohan saying how do i mint an nft i’m like oh god here we go you gotta be ready for those people

00:31:55

i have a technical question so what is the dpi that one has to do for something that is going

00:32:02

to sell and you put up on a wall.

00:32:05

Well, you got to understand there’s pixel arts right now.

00:32:08

These things called CryptoPunks, which were big in the last bull run.

00:32:11

And it’s pixel art.

00:32:12

It’s like 16 by 16 pixel art.

00:32:15

But then there’s 4D rendered VR NFTs that are like a minute long

00:32:20

that you can interact with.

00:32:22

So it’s really up to the platform you want to create.

00:32:26

Is it a video? Is it an audio file? Is it an image?

00:32:29

What is the DPI you wanted to make it at? Is it a high res file? You know,

00:32:33

it’s, it can be whatever you’d like.

00:32:34

I bought a Justin Roiland NFT that was just a hand-drawn photo a couple of

00:32:38

weeks ago.

00:32:41

Larry, you say you don’t,

00:32:44

you don’t own your art anymore

00:32:45

because you sold it to publishers

00:32:47

can you create new ones like

00:32:49

Taylor Swift

00:32:50

why would I do that

00:32:52

I’m saying that when you’re talking about

00:32:55

my video

00:32:56

that is all collage

00:32:59

no I’m not talking about your videos

00:33:01

I’m talking about your books

00:33:03

your

00:33:04

creatures that you’ve created.

00:33:08

Can you create new versions that are like animated GIFs and things like that?

00:33:15

You have an audience.

00:33:16

That’s the thing that you have.

00:33:18

You have a huge audience.

00:33:20

Larry’s not interested in that.

00:33:22

I can see the embarrassment

00:33:25

Flushing on him

00:33:26

So I’m going to take him off the hot seat there

00:33:29

But are there people that we haven’t heard from tonight

00:33:31

That have opinions?

00:33:31

It would be really interesting to hear what other folks have to say about it

00:33:34

I got an opinion for you guys

00:33:39

Yeah, go ahead

00:33:40

I think it’s really cool

00:33:42

I see both sides of the issues

00:33:44

Or all sides of everything i’m just

00:33:46

kind of like eating my popcorn back here listening to you guys talk um and it’s a really good

00:33:50

information so thank you and uh i think it’s kind of like i see it from the outside like a

00:33:56

kind of a scheme but a good scheme where i’ve always thought it would be nice if everyone could connect with

00:34:06

hundreds to thousands of people,

00:34:09

just like Facebook or something,

00:34:11

but they would donate or like every once in a while,

00:34:15

give a dollar to each person that they knew.

00:34:18

And so like having a kind of like a Patreon thing,

00:34:24

that’s what I see it as but for artists or people who

00:34:27

are uh you know have things to sell or digital art or whatever or music and i think it’s a really

00:34:34

really good thing that i think it’s going to take off but i don’t i don’t think it’s snake oil by

00:34:39

by any means you don’t think it’s what i don’t think snake oil by any means. You don’t think it’s what? I don’t think it’s snake oil by any means.

00:34:48

Yeah.

00:34:49

I think it’s something that can blow up,

00:34:51

but I don’t know if it’s going to take over the future,

00:34:54

but it’s definitely something that’s going to blow up to a good amount,

00:34:58

just like Bitcoin.

00:35:00

The people who are investing in these things are like Chris,

00:35:03

who have made lots of money in cryptocurrency that, you know, is kind of almost like unexpected wealth comes in sometimes.

00:35:13

And, you know, it’s not like it’s burning a hole in your pocket, but, you know, it’s kind of fun to spend some of it and all.

00:35:20

I’m not going to spend Bitcoin because I, and I guess the reason that I’m saving Bitcoin

00:35:25

is because my bad experience, I spent it before it was really worth a lot. So this is a similar

00:35:31

thing. It’s like collecting baseball cards or porcelain or ragtop dolls or whatever they were

00:35:39

collecting at some time. You know, it’s hard to see how it really is going to go on, except for two things,

00:35:49

musicians and artists. Those two groups of people have a lot to gain from this. This is a whole new

00:35:56

distribution method, not to make you another Alex Gray or a tool, but to make you somebody that could win America’s Got Talent and not have

00:36:08

to make a living in lounge act as a lounge act for the rest of your life. Now, this is a way to

00:36:13

really to build an audience. If you can build an audience of one or 2000 people who are looking

00:36:19

forward to your next release and you get ongoing things things this is the thing that larry brought out that i

00:36:25

think is so unfair to artists and artists when they’re young and starving the the way they get

00:36:31

known is art collectors buy art of people they think are going to become known and become famous

00:36:36

so they’re making an investment but the investment doesn’t pay off for the artists other than you

00:36:42

know in the future but that piece of art you know’t paying off. It’s being sold for instead of a thousand, it’s for a million now. And the

00:36:49

artist doesn’t get a cut on that. So this is a way to possibly change some of that. I’m not saying

00:36:55

it’s going to last forever, but, and I’m not saying people should put their life savings in

00:36:59

this, but I think to spend $50 to create one of your own pieces of this and see what happens might be a worthwhile investment.

00:37:07

Just like 100,000 today.

00:37:14

So, you know, you don’t have a lot to lose if you want to give it a try.

00:37:18

But on the other hand, maybe we should come back here in six months and see what happens.

00:37:23

I’m going to give it a try.

00:37:24

I’ll tell you that right now.

00:37:25

And Chris, I’ll get together with you offline and we’ll talk about some ideas I have.

00:37:30

You obviously have some.

00:37:30

Oh, man.

00:37:31

And let me just give you this, Lorenzo.

00:37:33

Please let me give back.

00:37:34

I’ll talk to you about blockchains where we’re not paying gas fees.

00:37:38

Let me give you that alpha so we can cut costs and really experiment.

00:37:41

So if we’ve got to make some mistakes, we don’t got to worry about.

00:37:51

And let me point out to everybody here that Chris understands this. We’re not talking about cryptocurrency or Bitcoin or anything else. We’re talking about blockchain technology

00:37:55

that is being invested in, billions of dollars being invested in by all of the financial

00:38:01

companies. Blockchain technology is going to change the world. Now,

00:38:06

here’s a thing that you’re going to see, a lot of news stories recently that Bitcoin is using up,

00:38:14

miners are using up more energy than the country of Argentina, I think is the latest one I heard.

00:38:20

And there’s a lot of pros and cons about that. But here’s the thing.

00:38:25

What if we eliminated every bank in the world and every escrow agency in the world and every

00:38:32

corporate company, county courthouse in the world that’s registering deeds?

00:38:38

If we got rid of all of those, how much energy would we save?

00:38:43

Could we run the whole world’s financial energy

00:38:46

networks on blockchain. And that’s what’s happening. Like it or not, blockchain technology

00:38:53

is as big as web, as the web in 92. That’s what’s happening. So pay attention to blockchain. You

00:39:02

don’t have to pay attention to crypto or NFTs, but anything to do with blockchain, you know, listen up.

00:39:08

Let your ears perk up and look into it because that’s the new internet.

00:39:13

Yeah, and one quick thing.

00:39:13

The last time that I wanted to bring this full circle for myself, the last time I was able to attend one of these salons,

00:39:19

we were still kicking around how potentially Burning Man could be pulled off, right?

00:39:24

And NFTs, I didn’t know about to this level to where I’m sitting there now.

00:39:28

There are so many possibilities when you think of platforms like Burning Man to get into

00:39:33

this space to provide tokenized tickets.

00:39:36

There’s a whole experience.

00:39:37

And it’s just interesting that even coming back here on this NFT topic, I cannot wait

00:39:42

to be able to show you.

00:39:44

I’m going to start showing links. I’m going to show you guys what’s possible with this stuff to

00:39:48

just help the narrative out because it’s what matters right now is belief in this with adoption

00:39:52

and everything. And I’m coming, I’m starting to see the forest through the trees again. This is

00:39:56

why I’m saying I’m coming back up underwater from all this. Cause I spent a lot of time in the

00:40:00

markets every day, 10, 12 hours a day, the last couple of months done well enough to where I’m

00:40:04

trying to step back

00:40:05

and like show my wares. Like, this is what we’ve been able to do here.

00:40:09

And that’s why I’m coming back to this space because Lorenzo, again, man,

00:40:13

this is, I been with me since I was 16, 17 years old, man.

00:40:16

And like, this is why to see,

00:40:18

to be here talking to you about NFTs and you’re ready to start tokenizing

00:40:21

and making collectibles, man. It’s what a time to be alive.

00:40:25

You know, Chris, I think one of the things that might be helpful

00:40:29

as folks are positioning this for psychedelic communities

00:40:34

and communities that are really interested in mindful consumerism

00:40:38

and sustainable consumerism is to have an understanding of who’s buying this stuff.

00:40:44

I mean, you said at the beginning of this, you know, mostly it’s folks like you, but definitely

00:40:49

there’s some money laundering, but what can you do? It’s blockchain. And I get all of that. But

00:40:54

I do think it would be helpful as you’re preparing your prospectuses for people to articulate

00:40:57

who actually is spending this money, who’s the audience. And that will also inform

00:41:02

who is best suited to bring their work to this marketplace.

00:41:07

Well, and a real quick point on that.

00:41:09

I actually am working on a sort of a grand master thesis and all this.

00:41:12

I almost turn into a book at some point.

00:41:15

But the beautiful thing about it is right now the space, even though you see all this money, is still early adopters, right?

00:41:20

It is still people who’ve had crypto.

00:41:22

But what you’re going to see over the next six months because because the market has shifted, is cheap transactions, lower cost of entry.

00:41:28

When the crypto bull run hits and you’ve got people who put in a couple hundred bucks or

00:41:32

20 on an NFT because all of a sudden

00:41:38

the ETH just did a hard fork and now the gas fees are pennies on the dollar and you don’t have to,

00:41:43

you know what I mean? So like we’re getting there there i’m trying to build the consumer you feel me so but you’re right

00:41:48

that you’re right it’s a great point that’s right and and by the way i’m i’m going to podcast

00:41:54

tonight’s uh the salon tonight because i think out of our whole uh fellow salon or audience there

00:41:59

there’s probably a few hundred people that this would be useful information for and that are going to pay more attention to it.

00:42:06

And some of them are going to maybe become famous artists, who knows,

00:42:11

or at least build an audience for themselves.

00:42:13

But I think it’s worth looking into,

00:42:15

particularly if you don’t have any other connections right now,

00:42:18

if you’re looking for a way to get a toehold on something,

00:42:21

this would be a good way to start, I think.

00:42:25

Start following the boards and following what people are talking about.

00:42:28

And that’s what I’ve been doing.

00:42:29

And obviously, I’ll be talking with Chris now because as I put ideas together for what I want to do.

00:42:35

Now, there’s more to this for me than making money.

00:42:40

As a writer, I want people to read my stuff.

00:42:48

as a writer i want people to read my stuff you know i i’m i’m i’m you know at the end of my life i’m not going to become a multi-millionaire and all like that i want people to read myself so i’m

00:42:52

trying to think of clever ways that i can can make my my uh little writing little essays and stuff

00:42:59

like that uh more people want to read them because they’re collectibles or whatever. I don’t know.

00:43:06

I’m working on ideas about that. And I’m encouraging all writers to think about this as

00:43:12

well because, you know, there’s a way to put things into audio books, oral things. You can

00:43:19

put MP3s, MP4s, up to 30 megabytes, I think, and even larger. You can put a link that only the person who buys it can get access to.

00:43:29

So I have some really private things that I might want to sell access to simply because I don’t want it to disappear when I die.

00:43:38

That’s one of the things I’m considering is how do I make my digital library accessible

00:43:47

considering is, is how do I make my digital library accessible, and yet not just dump it on the public, because I want to make sure it’s available to people who care about it, you know,

00:43:50

and so there’s ways to do it. So that’s one of the things I’m thinking about, as an old person who’s

00:43:56

a writer. Young musicians, young artists, I think at least should take a look at it and, you know,

00:44:02

check it out. Doesn’t cost you anything to check it out out well listen i i i don’t know when we’ll come back and do this particular one but we will definitely

00:44:10

be back to talk about this again chris and i are going to get together offline and we’ll come up

00:44:14

with some ideas for you and we’ll see what happens and keep you apprised of how we do in the meantime

00:44:20

uh some of you will be able to make it on Thursday, too, and we’ll see you then.

00:44:28

Until then, keep the old faith and stay high.

00:44:33

And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.

00:44:35

Namaste, my friends.