To be a grifter it needs to be âsmall scaleâ, Gary V is anything but small scale at this point.
Not sure anything he does would be considered swindling. He hustles, pushes product, and leverages all sorts of hype to make a buck, but the things he pushes are genuine products.
Maybe Iâm a fanboy⌠but the guy seems like a pretty upstanding citizen, if a bit over the top and annoying sometimes. This also isnât his first foray into NFTâs, he released a bunch that are tickets to his conferences for years in the future. The guy is leveraging the next big hyped up thing to maximize profitability, sound business in my mind.
Completely agree. No grift here at all. If you want to buy what heâs selling, go ahead, and if not no worries. Free will, free market, buy if you want. I find him very entertaining, interesting. Not a bit of bait and switch, very straightforward.
His message of empathy is refreshing and sorely needed in business today IMO. The aspect of NFTs that many people still donât understand is that they will have utility. I think within 10 years almost everyone will own multiple NFTs and almost none of them will be silly jpgs. Theyâll have some kind of utility and will act as a smart contract.
Think about someone winning Top Chef, for example. Theyâve got to kill themselves to get funding to open a place. With this new paradigm, they can sell an NFT to their biggest fans to get funding. So if they do well, then those fans benefit not some bank or some investor. They can also use it to sell things that arenât scalable like chef table dinners. The potential for the restaurant industry is huge. The potential for all industries is overwhelming.
I remember at one of our first Cultwine Offlines we actually asked him for ID as he was barely legal (and certainly didnât look it). He was a hustler and had a good palate at the time.
I just looked on Opensea⌠the basement is 4eth. So $14,000 to join the club (food and beverage not included but paid for when you dine). If you bought your ETH pre pandemic it would only be $800 out of pocket.
Double that if you want the private Omakase room to be available to you.
If the restaurant takes off and can garner some critical acclaim these tokens will sell of 10-100x purchase price easily. There is too much money around and too many people who love exclusivity for them not to.
Itâs not really a problem that fools exist, but I donât recall a lot of well-known grifters or hustlers (whatâs the distinction really?) selling Beanie Babies as investment opportunities to unsophisticated investors. That is the irresponsible part, and the people hyping up NFTs and web3 as some sort of revolutionary new tech should really know better than to do so.
Thanks for the tip. But I think Iâll stick with low cost index funds. Be sure to circle around and let us know what the annual average return is across all NFT investors in 10-20 yearsâŚ
Excuse my ignorance, but how is this any different than belonging to a country club? Many are member owned and memberships at the exclusive ones have increased in value. Who gives a shit that the membership can be sold on the blockchain?
This may come off as âincorrectâ, but if the local drug dealer (who has plenty of $$) wants to join the local golf club, the membership committee might reject him because heâs not the type of person that the other members want hanging around the club. If the same local drug dealer wants to buy into the Flyfish Club, whoâs stopping it from happening?
Itâs not any different, and thatâs the point. This entire Rube Goldberg infrastructure of planet-incinerating decentralized blockchains is being leveraged to create country club membership tickets, literally a problem that can be solved substantially more efficiently in a myriad of other more boring (and less lucrative) ways. Oh, but wait, weâre going to attach a crappy Fiverr-created jpeg to your country club membership ticket and create a centralized website for you to pump up its value via wash trades in order to assist you in selling to the next greater fool.
Without getting into whether a NFT restaurant is good or bad, there are a few differences between this and a traditional country club:
-Inclusivity. Thereâs no approval committee reviewing applications. If one has the money to purchase a token, one is granted membership. Whether thatâs a positive or a negative depends on the person.
-Membership fees. Unlike traditional country clubs, thereâs no yearly membership fees.
-Rentability. One can also apparently âleaseâ the token/membership to someone else on a monthly basis.
-Transferability/Equity. Unlike many country clubs, one can sell the token/membership to the restaurant whenever one wants. Do note that thereâs also a fee that the minters (the restaurant owners) receive on future transactions. This ability to trade on the blockchain can be a source of additional income by both the token owner (via profits relative to the purchase price, if any) and the restauranteurs (via a transaction fee).
-Permanent ownership. As I understand it, there doesnât appear to be any way for one to be forced to relinquish their membership. Once you own the token, youâre a member, and owner of that token (and whatever market value it may have) regardless of whether theyâd like you to be one or not. Now whether or not theyâd grant persona non grata admissions to the venue is a different story.
I will note that in most country clubs/social clubs in Brazil, one has been able to sell their membership for decades, and Iâm sure there are other places where thatâs also true. So the concept of transferable membership in a club/organisation isnât entirely unique or exclusive to this project or the blockchain.