Why Blockchain, Cryptocurrency and NFTs are Important For You to Understand with Joel Comm: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Sales Evangelist. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives, and we'll be breaking down why blockchain, cryptocurrency, and NFTs are important for you to understand. To drop these value bombs, I am brought to Joel Kamm and to EO Fire Studios. Joel is an internet pioneer, New York Times best-selling author, international guest speaker, podcast host, serial entrepreneur, blockchain enthusiast, and an eternal 12-year-old.

0:34He hosts the Bad Crypto Podcast. And today we'll be talking all about the power of Bitcoin. We'll talk about how to be responsible about your own investments, do your own research, Fire Nation, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to our sponsors. Marketing Made Simple, hosted by my friend, Dr. JJ Peterson, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Marketing Made Simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy and more importantly, make it work. A recent episode on whether vulnerability is a superpower in business is a must listen.

1:08Listen to Marketing Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts. Ever thought about giving a TEDx talk? It's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world and four-time TEDx speaker, Taylor Conroy from Thought Leader can help you get there. Visit thought-leader.com slash fire to join Taylor's free training where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions. All right, Fire Nation, I have a longtime friend since 2000 and really 12 is when we started seeing each other at the same conferences and having great conversations over that time. And now here we are in 2021.

1:50He's literally my neighbor in Palmas del Mar, Puerto Rico. So I get to see him in person a lot more now, which is awesome. He gets to spend a lot of time in my pool here in Puerto Rico. And obviously, I've had him on the show three times before. So this is numero cuatro, number four for Joel Calm being on Entrepreneurs on Fire. And we're going to be talking about, and again, I know we had some details about this in the introduction, but I want to really make sure you get why blockchain, cryptocurrency, and NFTs are important for you, Fire Nation, to understand. So Joel, say what's up to Fire Nation and give us a little catch up about just what's going on in your world.

2:38What's happening, EO Fire? It's been a few years since I've had the opportunity to speak with the Fire Nation people. And hi, neighbor, like just waving to you from across from Palmas Del Mar and just moved here a couple weeks ago and following your lead. Was actually supposed to move last May from Denver and then COVID hit and everything got canceled. So I finally made it and I can see the ocean right outside my window here and I love it. It's absolutely beautiful here. Well, we love having you here and I have a couple Palmas rules that I've told Joel about, which you get to learn Fire Nation when you move here too.

3:17So we'll keep those private for now. But there are some rules when you live down here, and they're only rules that improve your life for sure. But something interesting, Joel, is that you decided to go down a little crypto rabbit hole a few years back and have a podcast called Bad Crypto and The Nifty Show and NFTs and all this jazz. So talk to us about that rabbit hole and where it's taken you up to this moment in time. My career has been one of pivoting and playing with the cool toys. Like I've just, I've always been a nerd and into technology. I bought my first computer when I was 16 years old back in 1980.

3:55So now I've thoroughly dated myself. It was a TRS-80 Model 1 with 4K of RAM and a tape drive for a storage device. And so when the internet came about, I built my first website back in 1995. And, you know, fast forward to today, I've done just about everything that's not illegal, immoral or fattening, you know, online for business. And about four years ago, I really started to explore blockchain and Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. And once I finally understood it in early 2017, it blew my mind because it reminded me of technology that was as world and game changing as the internet was. When I discovered it, I thought, wow, this looks, taste, smells, feels a lot like that.

4:45And I had to learn more. And what I discovered going down this rabbit hole is the deeper I went, the wider it went. It is an amazing world. It is totally going to change just about every vertical known to mankind, not just payments, but because of smart contracts, it's going to change all these industries, entertainment, travel, insurance, health the power the list goes on of all the industries that it's going to change and just on a lark myself and my friend travis wright who's a leading marketing technologist and a good friend we decided because we were having these conversations about crypto and blockchain every day on messenger why don't we start a podcast we're like that sounds like fun right sound familiar let's start a show kids and we started the bad crypto podcast not because because crypto is bad, but because we didn't know a lot.

5:43We're bad, right? We are just learning and wanting to take people on a journey with us. And we make a lot of bad dad jokes, right? So that's, you know, it's bad crypto. It's got attitude. If anybody doesn't like the show, we could say, well, it's built into the brand. I mean, we're bad and we have fun. And during that time, we've become one of the top crypto podcasts in the world. We're in the top 100 of all business podcast on iTunes. We've had over 10 million downloads in that time. And we have interviewed most of the biggest names in crypto blockchain that are pioneering everybody's future.

6:23All of you in Fire Nation, your future is being pioneered by the people that we've had the opportunity to speak with. And just last year, while we've been tracking NFTs since they first surfaced in 2017, we started producing our own as pioneers of non-fungible tokens, digital collectibles. And now not only are we hosting another show called The Nifty Show, which comes out two days a week, including a live YouTube every Friday, but we are creators and have created our own brand new intellectual property called Blockchain Heroes, which are superheroes, digital collectibles based on blockchain and cryptocurrency personalities and trends and concepts.

7:09We have sold over a million dollars of our own NFTs and done over four and a half million dollars in secondary market sales. So we have our eyes on this whole blockchain, Bitcoin, crypto and NFT arena. And I've been talking with you about it. And you are, you know, you're at this place where you're super excited and you're like, tell me more. I'm like, well, let's do a show. We could talk about it. Exactly. And I mean, Fire Nation, again, I've known Joel since 2012. And if there are three words that I do think describe Joel the best, he is a pivoter. Pivoter is something he's been able to do so many times.

7:50And I love that about him. Number two, pioneer. He always is looking for that cutting edge to be on like the what's next? What's coming? And he loves having fun. And what I love about it is you really did all three with this most recent rabbit hole into crypto. Like you pivoted into it. You are an absolute pioneer. And you looked at me the other day and you're like, John, I'm having more fun than I've ever had before. And how cool is that Fire Nation? We can literally look at a friend and say, I am having more fun now than ever. And guess what? He's also having a lot of financial benefits from that fund that he's having as well.

8:31When he mentioned some of those numbers, that's some crazy stuff. So let's just get right into the big B word, Bitcoin. Isn't Bitcoin, Joel, just a made up word? Aren't all words made up? Somebody had to be the first one. Oh, what we call this right yes it is it was actually created by a person who we do not know who we actually is he's got an anonymous identity and goes by the name Satoshi Nakamoto and back in 2009 Satoshi Nakamoto released a white paper on Bitcoin which you can go download and read for free at Bitcoin org to this day And the idea was to create a new form of digital currency that would be decentralized and secure on a type of database called blockchain that was a public ledger that was immutable, that was unchangeable, that was unhackable.

9:31And that this would be the future of payments. They would be peer-to-peer, person-to-person without needing an intermediary. intermediary. Imagine not needing to pay a fee to your bank to transact money with somebody else or to hold your money, right? Imagine not having issues with saying that you paid somebody for something and they're saying you didn't, but being able to check the public ledger, which is available to anybody to see, to locate every transaction. They're all verified. Imagine it being secure and unhackable. And that's what Bitcoin, this made up word, is really all about. It's a digital currency that is fully decentralized, meaning it is free of any one financial institution or a government entity having control over it.

10:25In fact, there's no Bitcoin Inc. There's no CEO of Bitcoin. You cannot write to technical support of Bitcoin. Now, if you have an account with an exchange, say Coinbase, where you're buying Bitcoin, sure, they have customer support. But there isn't somebody to complain to at Bitcoin Inc. because it doesn't exist. It's decentralized. And within that lies the power of cryptocurrency and of blockchain. The power belongs to the decentralized masses, the people, we, the people of the world, rather than the financial institutions and the politicians that seek to govern how we live and how we operate.

11:12And when I discovered how Bitcoin is created and how that works, I was fascinated. I said, wow, this is going to change the world. Fire Nation, that last sentence is the most powerful and true one. This is going to change the world. Now, Joel, you got into a little bit about this and the last part that you just shared there, but I do just hear a lot of people always saying blockchain is this technology that is so superior to everything else. what exactly does that mean when people say that blockchain technology is superior and why is this true think of it as a super fancy database but the most secure database the most efficient the most effective the most transparent all of the things that you want in you know the storage of your money your payments your contracts your transactions all of those things that cost billions of dollars a year in customer support, in aggravation because there's problems with double billing and because amounts are disputed.

12:27Blockchain doesn't have those issues. It's all transparent. It's all efficient and effective and unhackable. And because of that technology, because of how secure and effective this fancy database is, think how many industries that changes. You know, in the future, your money will make money for you through terms such as decentralized finance, which we have now. Your collectibles, and not just your collectibles, but anything that requires a deed of some sort, a proof of ownership, will be a non-fungible token. I know we'll talk about NFTs in a little bit here, especially because people are hearing so much about them in the news and wondering if they're a fad or, you know, some crazy investment scheme.

13:17But blockchain itself is going to change everything. And you know that this is true because in the beginning, people laughed at it, right? What did Gandhi say? First, they laugh at you, right? Then they, or first they ignore you, then they laugh. I don't know. But either way, the first steps are nobody cares. And then they start paying attention. They try to defeat you and then they acquiesce and they adopt. And all you have to do is look at what's happening with the major financial institutions in the world, the JP Morgans, the Goldman Sachs, Chase, Visa, MasterCard. They're all beginning to adopt blockchain and plans for Bitcoin for their customers.

14:02We have major corporations such as Tesla and MicroStrategy that are investing billions into Bitcoin. We are reaching that point that we are not yet mainstream. We're still early adopter, but it's coming very soon. And the day is also coming where we will no longer use physical currency. Those dollar bills that you have, you know, we've been on a path for a long time with credit cards and checks. Remember checks and now PayPal and Venmo and Zelle to going cashless, crypto is the last thing to fall, the last domino that takes us fully to a cashless society and a more secure and more efficient way of managing.

14:51I remember when I would walk into my grandmother's house, she was always at a table hunched over this piece of paper scribbling. I'd be like, Graham, what are you doing? And she was like, I'm balancing my checkbook. And I'm like, I grew up thinking that all my grandmother ever did was balance her checkbook. Like that's literally all I thought that she did. And I was like, oh, I guess that's what adults do. Like we just spend our lives balancing our checkbook, like whatever that means. And like, I've never balanced a checkbook. Like that's just like sharing. Like I just happened to come of age when balancing checkbooks just like never, like we're actually relevant in this world.

15:27And I did take the liberty, Joel, to look it up. First, they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win. So Fire Nation, Bitcoin has been ignored. It's been laughed at. It's being fought right now. Guess what? It's going to win. And Fire Nation, we got so much important stuff to talk about. When we get back from thanking our sponsors, are you ready to start your year off with increased revenue, faster growth, and record-breaking performance? Well, a powerful sales platform can make it all happen. And for that, there's the all-new Sales Hub from HubSpot. Sales Hub is an all-on-one platform thoughtfully built with the tools and insights you need to communicate on a personal level with every lead, prospect, and customer.

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18:38With over 2 million customers and a solid 100 % money-back guarantee, CB Distillery is the source to trust. and I have a 20 % discount to get you started, visit cbdistillery.com and use code FIRE for 20 % off. That's cbdistillery.com, code FIRE, cbdistillery.com. Joel, we're back and I want to talk about actual application. Let's really break it down for Fire Nation. How is blockchain being used in the real world today? The beautiful thing about doing the Bad Crypto podcast is we've had the opportunity to interview hundreds of people and also these people representing various projects. So I'd like to break it down for Fire Nation in a way that the masses can easily understand.

19:26And that is the music industry. The music industry is a very broken industry. And if you're a songwriter, you sign a contract and that contract is with the record label. Now, I want you to think about how many hands are in the till when a song is written and sold. You have the record label and the executives. You have their marketing team. You have the producers. You have the song engineers. You have the songwriter. You have the musicians. You have the studio musicians. And there's others, right? Then you have distribution channels. And all of them get a piece from every song. Now, there has been a couple of projects that have been put out there that have solved this problem because let's say an artist wants to sell a piece of music, say sell a song for a dollar.

20:17They're not going to see the royalty from that music for about a year. It's kind of like book royalties, right? You and I have experience that. You sign a deal with a book publisher and six months later you get a report for that six months, but then you don't get paid until six months after that. It's very, very long. There's a lot of hands and they're grabbing their piece. With blockchain, there's technologies out there now that an artist can sell their song on a platform, say for a dollar. It's purchased by the consumer who instantly downloads and owns that song. And the moment it's purchased, a smart contract is executed on blockchain.

20:57And that$1 is instantly divvied up to everybody who has an interest in a royalty from it in a matter of minutes. So, for example, the smart contract could be written in such a way that says the songwriter gets 15 percent. The musician gets 10 percent. The producer gets X percent. The mom of the artist gets two and a half percent. And it instantly shows up in the wallet. There's no royalty statements or delays to getting paid. That's because of blockchain. It's secure and it removes the middleman. Now take those same notions of programmable smart contracts on blockchain and apply them to, say, the power industry.

21:44What if you could harness your solar power and sell it to another person on your grid, on your block for cryptocurrency, peer-to-peer, without needing the energy company to do it? Say you wanted to purchase a home from somebody else and just pay them in Bitcoin and eliminate the banks and the agents and all of the middlemen. Sorry, real estate agents, but the world is changing. Apply this to just about any industry that uses a contract of any kind, and you're going to see that every industry is now ripe for disruption. Every business that feels as secure as Blockbuster once did, as retail once did, as Nokia once did.

22:36Nokia was completely disrupted by Apple and the iPhone. Walmart and so many retail giants were completely disrupted by Amazon. And Blockbuster, well, hello, Netflix. They ruined their fund and there's no more Blockbusters. This is going to happen repeatedly in dozens, if not hundreds of verticals. And everybody who's listening now, you need to be looking at the vertical you're in and asking the question, who is playing in my sandbox in the blockchain arena? And the questions to ask yourself are, what are some of the problems that my vertical is experiencing? And can blockchain help to alleviate or fix those problems?

23:24Odds are the answer is yes. And somebody is probably already doing something about it, meaning it's going to impact you. This is why you've brought me in. And this is why it's important that everybody pay attention to what I'm saying, because in all likelihood, your vertical, your industry is already being disrupted and you don't know it. Buyer Nation, don't be the person that finds out too late that your industry is being disrupted. Keep listening to content like this. Stay ahead of the curb. I mean, this is stuff that isn't the mainstream news, by the way, now. I mean, here's a guy that for 5 ,000 days in a row just made one image online, never made more than like$100 off of it before ever, Beeple, and then decided to, hey, I'm going to let Christie's put up a little auction of my everydays, 5 ,000 of them and one NFT, $69 million later, he's like, oh, so this is how you make money as an artist, non-fungible tokens.

24:30So we've heard NFTs being batted around those three letters in the news. We've maybe gone the next step and heard about non-fungible tokens. What the heck are NFTs? What are non-fungible tokens, Joel? First of all, let's talk about what's fungible because that's a word that a lot of people might not know. John, if I say, hey, open your wallet and hand me a dollar and let's say you've got$10 bills in there,$10 bills. Doesn't matter which one I give you. Hand me a dollar. You're not going to turn to me and you're going to say, oh, which one? Because they're all the same. Each one is treated identically.

25:08A dollar bill is a dollar bill is a bill. That is something that is fungible. Each one is treated the same. When something is non-fungible, it's unique. So if I say, hey, John, you tell me you're buying a house and I'm going to say which one because they're not all the same. Each one is unique. In fact, you could think of human beings as non-fungible beings because each one is different. A non-fungible token is an item on the blockchain that is unique from every other one. Now, it can look the same, but it has its own unique identifier. So another way to think about it is a piece of art, maybe a lithograph, and the artist creates 500 of these lithographs and they number them one through 500 and they're numbered and signed at the bottom of each one.

26:00Those are non-fungible pieces of art, each one with its own certificate of authenticity. A non-fungible token on blockchain is an item, which could be a piece of art, could be a digital collectible, like a trading card, could be a house deed or a deed to a motor vehicle. Anything that requires proof of ownership, it's like the ultimate certificate of authenticity. And we're hearing the hype about it because of people. The media always comes in at the beginning of the early adopter part of a technology cycle. We've just exited the beginning of 2021, the pioneering part, and we're now in the early adopter where the media comes in and does their thing and they start asking the questions, is this a fad?

26:52Is this insanity? Is it going to be tulips or beanie babies? And the furor is going to die down and some people who have spent too much on some digital collectibles are going to have a rude awakening but i can tell you that what you're hearing about right now is just the beginning of nfts they're here to stay they are going to be ubiquitous and it's the same people that said back in 1998 that you know we didn't need the internet and people would never you know go for e-commerce those same people, the ones that are saying NFTs are just a fad. They're not, gang. They're here to stay and you will own some.

27:34You will own some, Fire Nation, but do you want to own some in 10 years or do you want to own some maybe in 10 hours? And this is maybe a good time, Joel, to give a little teaser of a conversation we're having tomorrow on Entrepreneurs on Fire with a certain someone who's doing something pretty cool in the music space. Why don't you kind of give a little breakdown there? Pretty excited about this. Two gentlemen that Travis and I had the opportunity to meet, known one of them for three years and the other one more recently, are super savvy in the crypto and blockchain world. And they've come up with a way to disrupt the music industry with NFTs that not only look beautiful, but have a purpose.

28:20and so I don't want to say too much more about it but there's some really interesting things happening with the technology and those of you who appreciate art, appreciate technology or appreciate music or you're just curious and want to play, you're going to want to listen to this interview that is going to be coming up with our friend Noble Dracone. It's going to be awesome. Fire Nation is coming out tomorrow. If you're listening to this the day that this episode came out. And if you're not, then it's still the next episode. So just go and listen to that as well. And if you listen to this 10 years from now, you're going to be like, oh man, I literally could have got in on that 10 years ago if I listened to Entrepreneurs on Fire every single day like I should.

29:07I mean, this is some really cool stuff. This is so much fun. I mean, I'm having so much fun. Joel's having so much fun. This is the future. Joel, before we say goodbye here, Why don't you just take us home? Anything you want to share, the major takeaway you want for Fire Nation from this episode, let us know how we can find out more about you, follow more about you with Bad Crypto, with the Nifty Show and everything you have going on. And then we'll say goodbye. First of all, it's important to note, I don't believe you are a financial advisor. Are you, John? I am not. No, and neither am I. And we've always been super clear with our audience.

29:42There's a lot of people out there that will hype up certain projects, whether they're stocks or whether they're cryptocurrencies or NFTs. And there's videos out there on YouTube where people just pump things up and they expect you to go buy just based on their hype. We always tell people that not only we are not financial advisors, but you should not do what we do just because you're hearing us talk about it, but that you need to be responsible for your own money, for your own investments, your own future, and do your own due diligence. Do research. Really go down the rabbit hole so you understand what it is you're getting involved in.