This Is the Recipe for a Successful Web3

31:18What do you think about when you're like, hey, I need to grow this brand. I need to get it out in front of people that are not in this space and grow our ecosystem, which is going to benefit your community. How do you guys think about that? What goes on in your head when growing a brand? I mean, this is really hard now, right? Growing brands outside of... First of all, I think the crypto crowd is in terms of people are some of the most powerful there is because you want to build a brand within this. Everyone wants to build a brand within crypto because people have real money in crypto. Like the buying power of the crypto participant is much higher than the buying power of people like outside of crypto, in my opinion, for the reason that they actually have access to their money.

32:04They don't need to wait three days for JP Morgan to make a wire. So that's one of the first things. We ran an analysis on our holders once a couple of years ago and I think there was like a quarter billion dollars in people's wallets that held rug radio NFTs, right? And it was some crazy number. I was just talking to Mando about this yesterday again. And so this is real money, right? people, I mean, maybe it's less now because it's two years ago. Their price is maybe a little less now, but you get the point, right? And so I think the most important thing first is to try and build a strong foothold within this niche.

32:35I think NFT brands and crypto brands try to go outside way too fast and then just get burned. Like you said, Disney has a foothold. Disney's massive. In 2021, every single NFT brand was like, yo, I'm going to be the Disney of that. I'm going to be the freaking McDonald's of this. I'm like, dude, I'm never going to be. I'm sorry. It's not because you can't, but it's because you can't just like sell out NFTs and think you can just take out Mickey Mouse, dude. You know what I mean? And, you know, I fell for the delusion too, and we all did because we're just like bullish and we're excited and we're genuine about it and we love this shit, right?

33:10But it's just like I started real weird. I'm like, I'm not going to go and take out Fox News day one, but maybe over the next few years, we'll be bigger than them within crypto, which we probably already are, right? So it's like I think focus first and foremost on like your core group. Like those 20 ,000 World of Women holders are there. Those 10 ,000 Myriad Markets participants or like the Real Vision core crew. Like that could be much more interesting than trying to like go into a bigger pond, right? I think that's the first step. And the second step is once you have that foothold within crypto, right?

33:43Once you've already built that brand, that narrative, which takes years, right? Then try and get out there. And I'm sorry, I'm going to use the same example. user like what these guys did they did collaborations with coinbase moon pay jupiter three of the major brands within crypto right arguably and now they're finally doing year two they're finally doing x games at wall star and they'll probably do other brands like little things like that i think that's how you do like pudgy penguin same thing i've been a pudgy holder since the first day like i was one of the earliest supporters of uk etc he's a good friend of mine same thing he built an extremely strong brand within crypto took it to the moon and then went to Walmart and then went to this and went why because Walmart looks at us like a very powerful group of buyers they see us they see dollar signs literally right even especially the tax man right so it's like I think use that to your advantage when wanting to grow a brand within the space whether it's personal or like a brand like this or what you know fees building and then take it out through collaboration I think that's like your forte because everybody wants a piece of crypto Like we talked about this with Mando this morning on Rekt Vision.

34:50In Davos, crypto two years ago, I went to Davos, was like we hosted an event like in a pub, like in the corner little thing that smelled like, you know, whatever. And now crypto was like, yet President Trump, CZ, Lutnik, everybody and their mothers was talking about tokenization, even everything of assets at Davos. So they're coming and they're going to want a piece of all the brands that we're building. And that's the way I see it. So it's just about really building from inside first and then focusing on the collaboration outside. Because let me tell you, outside of crypto, outside of our little bubble, which I love, everybody wants a piece of us.

35:23It's just about managing to get to that point first. Now, kind of, you know, a few years ago, we heard, and I think Gary V, I heard him saying this a lot, like 99 % of NFTs, like 99.9 % of NFTs aren't going to last. Do you guys still think that's true today? It happened, right? I sat down with Gary Vee. I was just chilling with him. I'm having lunch. I'm having lunch for a minute. And I was like, yeah, I'm doing this thing. Rug Radio, blah, blah, blah. Running by him, shooting the shit. And he's like, just make sure when time comes, take your money off the table because 99 % of these projects are going to zero.

35:59He's like, no, Gary, dude, you're stupid. You're wrong. He was talking about how this guy's like 30 years older than me. And of course, I knew better than him, right? And I lost like 90 % of my portfolio like six months after. Gary Vee was right. But point being is that he was right. Like, look at NFTs nowadays. This is just a fact, but it's not just NFTs. It's all the crypto. It's the altcoin market. It's the meme coin market. It's everything, right? But that's, again, going back to what V was saying, focus on that 1 % that's actually doing the thing. Always look in the bear market who's actually doing the thing, right?

36:32Mando, who you all know, didn't leave one day. We host those shows together. We've hosted 3 ,000 episodes of FOMO Hour five days a week for the last four years together. When we were doing 10 ,000 views a day, whether we're doing 80 viewers a day which happened in the summer of 2022 we were still here and now look at our brands Yeet his casino he's built is crushing it we're crushing it Rex crushing so look at those the people that are within that one percent that are actually sticking around during the bear bear bear markets and are just trying to figure out I wouldn't say judge them based on their pivots because maybe you have to pivot just so it is but judge them on like are they actually showing up and do they have the great passion dedication to keep it going and stick to that so yes gary's right and he will always be right and there will be more memes more alts more projects more icos more everything and 99 of them will always go to zero but if you focus on that one percent i think that's life-changing enough yeah um i definitely want to pivot to meme coins in a bit uh because you know talking about culture you know evolving right but before we do that i because brook you touched on something that i wanted to ask because how do you manage, especially as a founder, right?

37:46Because NFTs and Web3, like one of the things that we thought about this was, you know, transparency, right? So how do you manage building in the open and kind of letting people know like, hey, this is what I'm doing versus like building in private and kind of, you know, surprising people, right? How do you guys think of that? I want both of you, you know, your takes on both of this. It's super hard. First and foremost, you have to have a presence on X. sorry guys V I'm preparing my answer already sorry V I'm so sorry but it's kind of like what works best or at least be present with your community etc but that's just the expectation in a way you could tell that like some projects success is directly tied to how successful their founders are I think recently when Alon founder of Pump Fund went silent in Q4 2025 you saw a sharp decline in the Pump token and then when he tweeted the first week of January I think Pump had a 12 % candle in one hour.

38:46And we're talking about a billion five in market capitalization for that. So I think this speaks volumes to that. Should it always be that way? Is that bullish? I don't know, but just saying that there's a correlation. I think it's about managing expectations. I think in 2021 NFTs was so delusional that we had to check. Like I was doing a town hall every single week saying this is what we're working on. This is almost like a checklist to my mom, but to my holders. In that way, this is not, it's actually, this is the best way to burn out. FYI. And then it was bi-weekly and then monthly. And then we started cutting that off.

39:17And, you know, we recently ran through this issue actually last week where some people could be unhappy with the way, let's say, Myriad is going because it takes a long time to build a damn prediction market. But if you look from inside, I'm like, everything is so bullish because I know about the announcements that we've got coming. Like last week we announced a partnership with World Liberty Fi, right, which is President Trump's project, et cetera. We're the first prediction market to do USD1 pools. and the week after we launched a wall with Moonpay and yesterday we announced the Ton Foundation thing.

39:44I knew this was coming but last month in December because it's the holidays, you're not announcing anything with the holidays, duh, from a media perspective, it makes no sense but people are like, yo and people are home, so like what's happening, this project's dying this is slow and I'm like and I want to just like scream this is what's going on but I can't because also legally speaking, I'm not allowed to announce that I'm doing something with Liberty File until January, whatever and there's embargoes and there's news and then Bloomberg is going to call you and then this and that. So it's just like managing that expectation.

40:15I have to say, I don't know. Because no matter how transparent and active we are, I think I'm one of the most active people on X in the history of crypto. There's like 80 ,000 tweets. I host a show every day. I have 400 ,000 followers. You can't be more doxed than me. And I still managed to get some criticism, somehow constructive as well, on how we're doing it. So I don't know, Bijan. I don't think anybody's cracked the code there and I don't think anybody ever will because you're never going to manage to make everyone happy maybe you have the solution have you cracked the code have you cracked the code I mean look at my Twitter of course I cracked the code no but it's interesting because you have the polar opposites here like the profiles you have the best marketer the best media guru in our space and you have the leader that has done a lot for our space, but it's completely silent because I'm not a social media person.

41:18I like to operate usually behind the curtain. That's why nobody knows me at Pudgy, even though I was very extremely instrumental and even Lucas says it himself. Without V, Pudgy wouldn't exist anymore. So you have both polar opposites. I think there's no secret recipe like Farouk say. I think you have to find the right, the thing that works for you. Right. And I think I have to be honest here. I'm still trying to understand what works for me. Because again, you know it better than anybody. Like it's taxing to be always on social media and having to communicate 24-7. But at the same time, CT, crypto, Twitter needs that because they feed off this information to make their own decision about NFTs in general.

42:12Right. So but at the same time, where do you then find the time to actually do the work on on building a company from your NFT product? Right. And so for me, I'm the doer. I work. I have my heads down and I work and I'm going to do it silently. but when you hear me you're going to hear me because I have something big to announce so I'm more of the silent type again I don't think there's a perfect recipe I think it depends but I'll let you know when I find the solution I don't know I'm still testing so yes but meme coins huh? just to wrap a bow on that I think that it's a double edged sword You say something's coming And then A lot of things can happen You hit with delays Things out of your control And you have everyone asking when, when, when And if you don't say anything Then everyone's like Oh, this guy's lazy He's not doing anything Sitting on a beach somewhere Doesn't care about us So yeah, it is very tough, right?

43:16Just shipping is a solution, dude Yeah Other people will see if you've pushed it or not Absolutely So yeah, meme coins Meme coins So talking about This is not financial advice Yeah, not financial NFA, all of that, right? Not medical advice, right? But like talking about how this culture has evolved, right? We've seen meme coins just really just hit the waves and just be, just take over absolutely like almost everything in our space, right? For at least the time. How do you guys think of NFT or meme coins? Is it, do you think it's good for our space? Do you think it's bad for our space? Are you kind of like indifferent on it?

43:55What's your general opinion on meme coins? And then we'll kind of just go from there. I don't know if I should tell you about my meme coin love story. Maybe not. Maybe for another time. Because I'm a hodler, so I don't do meme coins. Or have. I have a little bit. But I think meme coins is so interesting. You know, you may love it or you may hate it because you've lost a lot of money. but it is still essential to our space because it has taught us critical lessons. And to go back to what I was saying earlier, for me personally, I think it taught me and taught the whole space that, again, utility doesn't matter.

44:46We don't care about utility. MemeCoins is the proof of that. It has no whatsoever utility at all. Okay. But what matters, and that's why they were so successful, because meme coins were a big hit. They're still somewhat something. It was successful because of the attention, because of the identity, and because of the culture linked to each of them. Right? That is your entry point. That is what drove people into meme coins. Now, again, it's your entry point. It's not your retention loop. So, let me ask you, everybody, by a show of hands, who made money on meme coins? Congratulations, guys! Well done!

45:36Okay, on the other side, don't be shy. Who lost money on meme coins? Yes, welcome to the club, guys. Welcome to the cloud. Here we go. And that's what I mean, right? I mean, utility is not a thing. But attention, identity, and culture is not a thing either long term because we've seen, history has shown that meme coins goes to... Zero. Exactly. Zero. Zero. that's what I was pointing out about to point out exactly except dodge dogecoin and pepe as well I think those are two good examples of like meme coins being able to survive and sustain itself but the reason why they did that is because that ugly frog and that optimistic dog actually have meaning for people.

46:46They mean something. They are symbols of the internet culture, right? And that is your emotional connection. It's right there. That it is. That's it, basically. And that's why, for me, meme coins are so interesting because they have to prove that utility culture are not things long-term. Short terms can be very successful, but long-term, it's not a thing. I think that frog is beautiful. There you go. I love that frog. It's this emotional attachment to an ugly frog. I am emotionally attached to Pepe because I am the top 50 biggest fake rare Pepe collector on chain. I mean, but I mean, yeah, I mean, I think if you don't like meme coins, you mean as well not even, like, it's just, it's part of crypto, it's part of DNA, it's nothing you can do or change about it, whether you like it or not, right, it's just, it's always going to be there.

47:42You can also hate casinos. I love blackjack, you know, hit the casino here and there, play a little roulette, 17 black's my favorite number, and that's never going to change, right? and the similar things happening in the space but what's so different from meme coins and trading perps right except you can't get liquid in meme coin however you can get rugged very fast and they go to zero so as long as you know your risk which you've you've said you know well enough then that's just part of the game at the end of the day like the asymmetrical gain meme coins offer to people is enough to keep people on the edge you're not going to make a thousand x on bitcoin um you're not going to make a thousand x in any major as a matter of fact or any altcoin at this stage but you may hit a thousand x on a meme coin and that's just the truth right now you have to be really lucky and that happens to maybe the 0.01 percent but there's always going to be that one story on x like i turned this amount to that amount and uh and that's enough for people to to make them return to the meme coin casino and that's how you need to treat it you just tokenize the shin of of internet culture and they're going to exist as long as as crypto exists right and you've seen like pump fun is arguably one of the most successful companies in the history of companies not just crypto i think it made a billion dollars in its first year in revenue of profit or something right close to that in its first year in operation i don't think there's been one company in the history of companies that's ever done that right it's one of the most successful examples so there's appetite for this shit and it's it's always going to be like that you know now it's like you said utility is almost a farce so sometimes i look at meme coins and people who don't like meme coins i'm like well you're selling me the 17th l1 and you know what like i kind of rather buy mog you know because at least i'm not being lied to it's just in the inner culture and i know what i'm getting with it you know just to be fair i'm not saying i don't like meme coins you said you like them i like what you said yeah exactly okay just you made perfect no i agree with you what you said is right it's like you know your risk it's gonna go to zero and actually now they rug faster than ever did the average hold time on solana i think is down to 30 seconds literally i think there was someone did some research on chain 30 seconds so now instead of getting rugged in like three days you get rugged in 30 seconds by the way so if you're not tapped in like don't buy mean coins um that's why i have to take a step back from it because damn i just can't even keep up with the work but just saying like there's still this asymmetrical gain and they're always going to be around and as long as you treat it for what they are then then you're never going to get mad at it.

50:09Yeah, I really like what you guys said about nobody caring about utility. I feel like there have been meme coins that try to add utility to their coin and then immediately just tank their price. Nobody wants that with meme coins. They just want to, like Farouk said, they want to enjoy, get involved in the crypto casino, you know, be in the trenches, right? But I've, and within our Real Vision community, we have a Degen channel. And at first it was literally all meme coins. And I was very surprised at the way they were approaching it because we had people charting meme coins. And then they weren't really approaching it from a cultural perspective.

50:47They were approaching it from a charting perspective. And I wanted to get your guys' take. Can you chart even meme coins and like find these entries? Like how? How? You know? So it is like a cultural thing, right? You're tokenizing culture. and I've heard it referred to as kind of liquid, more liquid versions of NFTs. And then you have communities like SPX that are, you know, I'm going to flip the S &P 500. And they're like, they actually have like a goal behind it. So it's just fascinating to hear about, you know, getting rugged in 30 seconds as opposed to three days, right? It's very different from NFTs in a sense.

51:26I mean, I don't think you can do, you know, I mean, a TA is astrology for men, right? and I think you know you can't really chart a meme corn unless you're talking about a major like Dogecoin but that's not really like Rice expanded it right or Pepe for a say like that was great now but you know yeah can't really chart a meme corn yeah I think that could be wrong yeah no no just stick to Doge and Pepe just to be safe right yeah I mean no financial advice no no not at all right I think for me at least I don't I never charted and I just I think for me at least the way I look at meme coins is if it makes me laugh or if I get the meme, I'm buying it.

52:04Like Fartcoin, for example. I heard someone talking about it on a space. It was like 25 million market cap. And I just started, I was just laughing just to myself. And I was like, I have to buy this. All there is to it. Yeah, nothing else. That's why there's no financial advice. That's a great point. I mean, people are in it just to have fun. They want to have fun. They want to participate into something that brings them joy. That's all it is. and especially in our space. That's all it is. We're young and we're going through that economy that is rubbish, really, and we just want to have a break.

52:42We want to have fun. That's it. That's why it's working. Yeah. So, you know, kind of before we wrap up here, I want to ask you two, you know, we talked about how NFTs have evolved, but I want to kind of ask you two about, like, not necessarily where it's going, but like what excites you most about the future of this space um yeah we'll start with that shall i yeah go ahead please thank you um what excites me about web 3 in the future in the space here's i'm gonna give you one statement and i can expand on it but what is my excite me and what I'm thinking about and that might be controversial but I think web3 has to disappear to go mainstream and let me explain what I mean by that I think we've been trying to force mainstream people like web2 people to just learn web3 learn how to use a wallet learn how to You use a blockchain, you learn what is tokens, learn what is a protocol.

53:58We've been forcing people to learn Web3 so that they use it, right? I don't think anybody wants to be forced to learn something that they don't want to learn about. Humans are lazy. Okay, we're all lazy, aren't we? We're all lazy. I mean, yes. Thank you. Thank you. so I don't feel like I'm the only one in the room that is lazy. Thank you, guys. We are lazy. That's just like our nature. If you want people to use something, you have to make it simple. You have to make products that work and simplify people's lives. That's the only way you're going to get to mainstream. So make it simple so that people can use it to be even more lazy, basically.

54:49bottom line but what excites me is ai but ai combined with web 3 because i think web 3 is not going to go mainstream if we continue putting it as the front end it has to be back end because it is too complex for mainstream it is it has great properties right ownership and trust, but it is bulky and it is hard to use. AI is intelligence, right? It's thinking. It is though centralized control. But if you combine the two, it creates an intelligent systems that is easy to use. So make web 3 the back end. People don't have to understand how it works. They don't care. We don't care how the internet works, but we love it.

55:46We use it every day. right make it backhand web3 and front end you use ai to make it accessible for people to use i think about it that way i think ai is going to make web3 usable and web3 is going to make ai safe fair and hopefully monetizable for everybody if we do things right so that's the way i'm excited about the combo of AI and Web3 for our future. Farouk, same question to you. I mean, I'm excited about production markets. You know, we haven't scraped this. We just scraped the surface here. You saw the rise of Polymarket and Calci last year, especially with the raises, right? They were going billion for billion at the end of the year.

56:33I think Polymarket went all the way to$12 billion valuation raise and with$2 billion coming from ICE themselves, right? and then couching the 10 billion mark and then the rise of more and more markets coming out you know we're talking about a multi-trillion dollar asset class that's coming out you know what I love about prediction markets is unlike meme coins etc those are just metas right there's just things that come and go whereas prediction markets were actually revolutionizing futures contracts right like we're able to trade these things and soon we'll be able to trade them maybe on the stock exchange there was a point in time in the 20s where prediction markets were actually doing more volume in the stock exchange and And then they kind of almost like purposely killed them off and made them somewhat illegal.

57:14And you've seen this entire, this huge comeback. So I'm really excited for legislation around this. I'm excited for the Clarity Act to pass. I'm excited for all these things that's going to allow this industry to thrive even more. Even though, you know, for the longest time with the previous administration, we were like every single homie of mine had an SEC, you know, Wells notice. And thankfully now they're all gone, right? And we're able to finally like do things. you know whether even though prices are down and from a trading standpoint it's demoralizing af to be in crypto when you see silver rip and then you're like bitcoin is just like down making a new low every single day and like what am i doing here uh you know and they're tokenizing the entire stock exchange like what my my altcoins are useless you know and and from a trading standpoint it could be super demoralizing but from a founding position and from a from operational standpoint i don't think there's ever been a better time in the history than to now than to be a founder in crypto so i'm super excited about that like i think this is like really cool and i'm excited for for obviously i'm tunnel vision on prediction markets right now because that's what i should be um and so i'm really excited for the growth of that asset class uh this year yeah absolutely i mean i'm excited for both of them i'm excited for ai i was about to ask you what are you excited about you're excited about dude no i'm i i i'm excited for both of those things honestly um as prediction markets really like they just really fascinate me just as and I don't want to compare them to gambling um but they just as somebody who like who knows that world it is really fascinating me I've I talked to friends about it it's like it's kind of like gamifying life in a sense like you just there's random things just I think that that space is going to absolutely blow up um and I'm and I'm just really excited to see what where both of you are going to take your prospective projects and companies.

58:59And I think we're all excited to see that and we're going to follow that journey. And then kind of selfishly, because I have the CEO of World of Women on the stage, I want to share a story because NFTs, honestly, they really did change my life. I was just some random degen that just made, and for me at least at the time, an obscene amount of money off of GameStop. And I ended up like losing it everywhere else I put it. I had this money and I put it everywhere and I lost all of it. I didn't buy Bitcoin with it because I thought, you know, Bitcoin's a rich man's game. I'm not going to make any money off of that.

59:33And then I stumbled upon World of Women in their early days. And that ended up actually saving my entire portfolio and allowed me to actually stay in crypto. That's how we do it. So I want to just thank that project. And I'm really excited to see where you end up taking it. and Farouk, I'm really excited to see how you move this entire space forward because I think a lot of people, I know me in particular, when I first got into NFTs, you were the first person I followed and that I kind of learned a lot from and I think we just love seeing both of yours evolution and maturity in the space. So looking forward to that.

1:00:13I want to thank you two for joining us today. Thank you. And yeah, thank you everyone as well for attending. Thank you.

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