Encarta | Liver King's $100M Supplement Business, Shaan Loses $250k on Luna, & The Real World Ted Lasso

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He said that he was selling a hundred million dollars

00:03

of liver supplements.

00:06

So basically these pills where it's like instead of like eating liver just small of this pill. Right.

00:11

And I looked it up on Amazon

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and I I did a bunch of research and I think it's true. I think it's one hundred percent true. I think that's how much he's selling in in in these Amazon's

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supplements.

00:30

Alright. So so we're doing something. So the the contest is this. So you go to our YouTube, you find our full videos and you chop them up into little, like, ten, fifteen, twenty second clips, whatever you want, and you post it on social media, Tik Cox is the best one, but and you use the hashtag

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m f m clips, that's m f m clips with an s, and you just use that hashtag and we'll find you. But basically, the people who make the best videos typically the best video means the ones with the most views, but last time we actually gave it to someone who had the most views and then another person who had just cool videos anyway, you may turn these episodes into small clips, use that hashtag, and we'll give you five grand based off of quote the best ones. And we're just gonna pick what we think is the best last time. I think did we give it to two people or three people last time? I think

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two, at least two people one last time And it was a win win. Right? Like their channel blew up. They had like hundreds of thousands of views on individual videos. I think someone hit a million total. And, and then they won free money. So let's And the guy who won

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or I don't know. He was one of the guys who won. He built a business around this that's now doing a million a year in sales or or north of a you're, like, it's doing, like, eighty thousand a month or something like that. And and he came full circle. He emailed me the other day being like, hey, I think I could help drive some growth to your other to milk road.

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Would you like to pay for this service? And I was like, honestly, yeah, I would. I would like to pay for the service. Like, good on you for turning this find, like, this need that we had is indeed everybody has, which is, hey, we make a bunch of good content.

01:57

Can you chop it up, package it up, find the good bits and get help them, you know, see the light of day so that we get more exposure.

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Yeah. So it's a it's a good idea, for everyone to so that's why you guys should do it. So There's details on m f m pod dot com slash clips.

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Or if you just go to m f m pod dot com, you'll see the details, but it's really simple. Just chop up our clips or chop up our videos that you see on YouTube, use the hashtag MFM clips on pretty much anything, any social media site, but honestly just use TikTok. It's the easiest one to go viral on. But if you use it there, we'll find you, and then we're gonna DM you based if based on if we'd like it, and we'll give you five thousand dollars. Very simple.

02:35

So,

02:36

Sean, what's up, dude? Long time no see. I missed you. I know. Dude, I feel like I wrote down so many topics while you were gone and two things happen. Number one,

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I kinda forgot why I was interested in half of them. So I'm like, oh, I don't even know what this note means at this point. Like, which just shows me that this podcast is not just for the audience. It's for me to be able to just get these ideas out of my system and have this constant muscle of,

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of seeing opportunity, seeing ideas.

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And if I don't have this outlet, those just kinda go nowhere, and then they just sort of, like, that muscle starts to die. So I felt the atrophy.

03:11

The second thing is out of all these topics that I've been saving up, like, dude, but Sam comes back, I got ammo. I got stockpiles of ammo. You know, like, when you came back, it was like, you know, the prepper I was a prepper of ideas. Then I just had this whole, like, you know, underground bunker full of them. And then you sent me this thing about the Savannah bananas, and I can't think about anything else I only wanna talk about this. This is the only it is the only topic I'm interested in. So that please introduce this and let's talk about this. I don't wanna hear about your don't hear about your family. I don't hear nothing only says Savannah bananas. That's a this is a topic that I I did the same thing. So I took like a two week vacation. You took a one week vacation while I was on vacation. I saw this video and I wrote it down. I was like, I have to talk to Sean about this. The best way I can describe this thing is It's like Harlem Globetrouters,

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but for baseball. And so the story behind this is basically,

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so there's this guy named Jesse Cole, And he was an amateur baseball player and he got hurt. And he was like, well, what the heck? What am I gonna do now? And there's

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actually don't know which league of this is, but it's a minor league baseball league. It's called I think it's called the Coastal Plains League. Is that what it is? That's right.

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And I I actually don't know entirely what that is. I guess, is it like a minor minor league or a proper minor league?

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I don't know. I don't know.

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So but anyway, so it has professional baseball players, but I don't think they make a lot of money. And he bought this team. And by bought, Savannah Georgia had a has a minor league team and it wasn't doing so well. And they're like, Jesse, do you just want this? Just like figure out how to make it work and we'll just pay you or you could just, you know, pay us back when he starts making a little bit

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Alright. So, anyway,

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so they Savannah Georgia, they had a minor league baseball team. They gave it to this guy Jesse Cole. He bought it, but it was like so little money that he, like, overdrafted his bank account, which for by, like, a couple thousand dollars. So he didn't have any startup money. His wife helped him do it, and they start putting it. The team said, like, you know, how he's, like, how many great. How many people, like, come to, come to the games? They're like, I don't know, like, a hundred, two hundred sometimes.

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It's picking up. And he was like, oh, shit. What did I get myself into? Yeah. And they give him this stadium. And it's completely empty. He's like, what do I do with the stadium? How do I get people to come? He didn't know anything. And he's like, you know what screw it? We're gonna make this one thing. We're gonna do one thing which is make baseball fun. And he has, like, this naming ceremony. And they're like, well, what are you gonna name it? Like, the Savannah, like, you know, Trojan's or something and he's like, no. No. No. No. No.

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Everyone. This is I wanna introduce you guys to the Savannah bananas.

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And it's like a hilarious

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mascot of just a banana. And they're like, wait, what's going on? He's like, no, no, no. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna have fun. And so what they do basically is They have normal games in the league where they actually are like trying to win and like doing real stuff. But at the league, even at those games, what they do is like the players will introduce themselves or like the umpire, and there's like crazy videos on TikTok. The umpire, when it goes down to sweep the

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batter's box. He, like, drops down low and they play, like, get low by little John. And it's just, like, hilarious stuff. They have, like, they have male cheerleaders. They do, like, trick plays. They have, like, choreographed dances that the players do in between innings. They have, like, instead of, like, a like, a hot, like, hot dance team, They have like a grandmother's dance team. So all the the dancers are really old and move really slow and stuff like that. And then even other things at the game. So he he said, he goes, But I got this team, and he's just a baseball player. Right? He's like, I he goes, I just realized, like,

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I don't know anything about how I'm gonna, like, make this work. But I just put it all on the line. Like, they basically sold their home over drafted their accounts and, like, they went all in on this. And he's like, So I read every Walt Disney book and PT Barnum book for inspiration, and I realized it's not about baseball. It's about entertainment.

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And he's like, so I'm gonna yeah. Like, we're we're not here to be the most winningest minor league baseball team. You're here to have the most fun and create the most fun environment that people are gonna wanna feel like they belong to. And so he's like, you know, what are the things I hate about a baseball game? I'm gonna do the exact opposite.

07:07

Oh, I hate that there's just ads everywhere in the stadium. Okay. I'm gonna rip all those down and we're gonna put funny things up instead. Because I hate,

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that, like, you know, just buying, like, a beer is, like, fourteen dollars. You just feel like you're getting gouged. So they switch their ticket prices to be all inclusive. So you buy ticket unlimited, you know, food and drink or whatever it is. I don't know how how they do that without call, but, like, That's what he says. All inclusive tickets. And then they, you know, instead of,

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you know, a a baseball is really slow. So they're, like, it's a two hour, like, limit basically to these games and, like, there's no, like, we don't walk up to the mound and talk to the pitcher for, like, five minutes.

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There's no bunts There's no and they did all these things to speed up the game and make it more fun and entertaining. And then they also have like the normal game. So they play in the league And coincidentally, in that league, you know, they won the championship. So they went from actually being the worst team to the most winning team. You're just in like Ted lasso shit. Yeah. So it worked, but then they do this other thing called Banana ball. So, like, in between the normal games, they, like, continue hiring the team throughout the sees it, and they travel from city to city, and they also host this at their own league or at their own stadium. And they have this thing called banana ball, which means there's no

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no visits to the mound, a two hour limit. If someone in the stands catches a foul ball, the batter is still out.

08:20

Well, there's, like, a video. There's, like, someone comes to bat. They're on stilts.

08:24

Yeah. And then they, like, when out the first pitch, some kid comes out and throws a banana,

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Right? Like, everything is gimmicked.

08:31

And their social media, by the way, they have four thousand people that comes to every game. Look at the TikToks that I posted up there. Did you watch them? They're hilarious. They're awesome. I've been seeing these over the, like, last year or so. Like, the the pitcher does like a funny dance, basically, before he throws the pitch, and it's just like, is just so likable. Like, that's the best way I could describe it is it's so

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likable. You you see it? And, like, I wanna I wish I was there. I wish I was having as much fun as those guys are having. And,

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and, like, I love that they don't take this too seriously and boring the way that it's so counter to everything everything else you'll see in sports. Did you see, did did you ever know any baseball bros in college? Like, they're always, like, fun loving, like, sometime, like, hardcore bros. Like, cut off t shirts and dip all the time, and they're kinda, like, fun to make fun of because they're bros, but they're typically, like, really, really nice and very fun loving. And nothing like They're the real estate guys of of college in the sense that they're they're successful.

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But they're the dumbest group of the jocks. Like, you know, I I think it's, like, if you meet, I don't know, like, I don't know who might be dumber, but maybe it's, like,

09:34

I don't know. Like, the the wrestling team or something. I don't know. No way. Because it it the reason why is with baseball,

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Like, you don't have to be in that good of shape to be awesome at it. And so, like, the discipline standing. And so you're what you get really good at is killing time because it pays well so boring. So you're sitting in a dugout with your boys, or you're out in the field by yourself trying to amuse yourself while the ball does not come to you. So that breeds

09:58

a very, self amusing type of person, which is awesome. Yeah. It it it doesn't, like, the bar the discipline bar isn't exactly, like, really high. You know, like, with wrestling, you have to diet and, like, take it seriously with baseball, not really as much. And so this team, it's hilarious. And I think it's a good business. I read somewhere that it was doing like six or seven million in sales, but I could actually see this becoming I don't know if it's never gonna be like huge, huge, like multi billion, but I think this would be a sick thing to own. I mean, it's like it's like It's probably like what people thought about w c w or, what's the wrestling thing called? W w

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e. Where it was like a joke at first. And they're like, I don't know, man. This is pretty fun. And, like, we're we're getting into it. So it's kinda like that. Well, I I would say this is, to use the Alex Ramazi thing. He said on the pod, which was, like, This is a level two opportunity,

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but we're done with, like, level fourteen execution.

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Right? Like, this is the best execution

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at kind of a pretty crappy

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capped opportunity as to how big something could be. Like, he's built

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like, if he just did this brand, if if but this level of enthusiasm and branding

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into, like, a DDC product

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or a media company or, like, a casino

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or, like, You know, there were such bigger opportunities. And so, you know, this if this person ever decided to do something else, you know, shut up and take my money, but, like,

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for now, it's just like, I'm glad that this is successful. I'm glad that this exists. This is very inspiring. I sent this to to our team. And I was like, this is the level. This is what level twelve looks like. If you wanna, like, kick ass with, like,

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thinking outside the box and and building an epic brand. Speaking of level twelve and DDC, dude, your interview with Moiz was really good. I -- Nice. -- listened to it a couple times. What is she like? He's very open. That's the best part. He typically isn't that open. Like, and and frankly, I don't think he I almost think he was too open. But, like, he kinda, like, made himself a target, I think, because he's quite wealthy. And he basically, you ask him a question that we have to ask people all the time. You just said, so what do you do with your money? And that's all what you said. And he goes, well, I've got a fifty million just sitting in short term bonds.

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I've got ten million in real estate, and I pay you sat home during the pandemic because I couldn't travel and I went to my mom and dad's house and just bought real estate online.

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And he just explained all this stuff. And I was like, oh, man, that so sick that you're ex you're you're telling people that. I knew it was good because there's supposed to be an hour, and we went, like, an hour forty five, which is, like, At that point, it's not even cold, like, going over slightly over or going over time. It's like, no. You you just did a separate second podcast

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at the same time. Like, I just kept going because I was like, I really am interested in what this guy has to say. No. He was good. What was your favorite part?

12:40

Mine was okay. So the money part, I think, was definitely interesting.

12:43

The part that's, like,

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I said this on the thing, which is

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He's, like, I I I gave him this nickname of bare metal, which is, like, he does business and entrepreneurship in a way that is, like, completely to me unnecessary.

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But also awesome. Like, I would not wanna do it that way myself,

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but I love how hardcore he is about, like,

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He wants to be so close to the action. He just wants action, and he wants to be not just have action. Like, I like action, but I like action. I like to sit in the press box and watch the action from the comfort of my seat, you know, and then, you know, be able to, like, you know, head out early before the traffic hits. Whereas he's like, I'm gonna go do this. He's like, I don't just wanna buy real estate. I wanna buy real estate from a foreclosing auction where there's no pictures on the website. And then I wanna have to take, like, you know, those whatever those giant scissor plier things are called and go snap the lock off the door and then go in and see what I got. And then I'm gonna, like, try to flip this thing, and I'm gonna take so much pride in, like, this being, you know, an extra five thousand dollars a month. Of of, like, income, and I'm gonna do that forty two times this year because that's where the opportunity is. I'm like, holy shit. And, like, I'm not gonna do a broker. I'm gonna get my own broker's license. And I'm, you know, he he was just so, like, unnecessarily

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hardcore about it that it was awesome to me. He also said he said, like, I did customer service until we were at twenty five million dollars in sales and I had the most I answered the most customer support tickets anyone at the company. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He said he was, I did. I was the only service person till we were at I think it was a lower number. It's like quarter million a month, which is like, you know, whatever.

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Few million dollars a year in revenue. But then he says, even at twenty five million, even now or supply that he's like, before I left, I was still probably the number one age Meaning, like, I don't know if you ever used the gorgeous, like, help desk system, but, like, everybody's a different agent. You could just see the stats on who's closing a bunch of tickets. And it's like, that to me is insane. Like, I owe a DDC business,

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you know, way smaller than that.

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And I

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I don't know if I've ever answered customer. I think the first, like, three months, I did some customer service from my phone.

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And then, like, that was it. And even now, like, I haven't logged into the system. I have really no idea what's going on, but that's also why he's he him and why I'm me. Like One time he why he's successful and I'm happy.

14:58

One time at the beginning of the pandemic, he was like, hey, you wanna go buy some credit card debt with me? And

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he'd, like, I don't know. I didn't even, like, get into it with a bad It's like, his main answer was, like, Yeah. My answer was like, absolutely not. I'm no. Why?

15:14

Of course not. And he's like, yeah, but we get a twenty percent yield and, like, I already, like, know how to do it. And I'm like,

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dude, I just don't even wanna, like, explore that. I don't even know anything about that. And then he was like, alright. Well, I'm gonna go buy this, you know, I forget but like millions of dollars of credit card debt and we're gonna it was just crazy that he was saying that. I'm pretty sure they own. He owns, like, a hundred single family homes

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which if you talk to any a lot of people in real estate, they would say like single family homes. That's just it's not economical. It's not an interesting thing. You always should do a bigger You get bigger apartments. You get economies of scale, and he totally

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does, like, the most hardcore thing there is. Yeah. And I think the way they bought those was, like, during the two thousand eight, two thousand nine, like, crash,

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when, like, you know, there's the subprime, you know, mortgage crisis. People couldn't afford their homes. Basically, so homes are getting foreclosed on or whatever. I think what they did was they just drove into a neighborhood and they just walked, like, door to door. And I think it was like, oh, this house is for sale. We'll buy this one. And then the next one, hey, are you moving out. Would you sell? The yeah. And so they bought them all. It's almost like a multifamily complex. I think I think they bought, like, twenty five that were in the same neighborhood or something like that. And they did it. That was, like, it was, like, their dad and then the two brothers, and they just, like,

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She just, like, walked around and bought about your homes in one summer,

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which is, like, you know, the best family bonding that you could think of. One time I was like, Moies, why are you, like, buying these single family homes? And why are you selling Deodor? Why don't you do software or something that's better, like, and easier? And he goes, I'm I'm a merchant. That's all I know. He goes, all I know is I'm a he said he's a merchant, and I think I'm, like, my grand

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father was a merchant that was all there.

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I think of, I think of, like, a guy from, like, the Bible who, like, brings Jesus, like, myrrh. He's, like, a merchant, you know. And he's, like, I'm a merchant. This is what I do. So anyway, I thought that podcast was really good. That was that was great. Yeah. He's amazing. He's he's really he's really interesting. And he doesn't, like, hold back, which I think is, like, just makes him very entertaining too. Right? Like,

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I told him this echo, your brother's one of my best friends. I think he's, you know, he might be smarter and better than you at business, but you're a way better podcast guest because you're gonna, like he's, like, he wants to mix it up, and he wants to says his opinions, and he doesn't see why he shouldn't be saying his opinions. And I love that because, like, in a world full of kind of like cowardly kind of people where it's like, fear based,

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it's really nice to see somebody who's not afraid to just say what they think and what they do and be like, yeah, you can make fun of me if you think and sure. Some of the things I do are stupid, but, like,

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okay.

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And

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Did you, did you talk about Luna yet?

17:56

No. I don't think so. I don't think I've done a potty. I was in Hawaii when it happened. I was, like, on a beach,

18:01

and then, like, Luna crashed. And I was, like, went to literally zero. And I was like, oh, man. And, like, for a day or two, I just, like,

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like, it, like, kinda fucked up my vacation in a way, but not because I was, like, doing something. Like, I didn't even have access to my, like, my wallet's not just, like, on in the cloud. So, like, I just wasn't home. I couldn't even sell if I wanted to. I couldn't do anything really.

18:23

And then I didn't even wanna be doing something. I was like, I want to be enjoying this vacation. You know, whatever. Can you tell me what happened? Can you tell me, like, you had told me you're like, Luna's kinda cool. And you're you told me, like, six or eight weeks ago. Yeah. Actually, so I did something cool too in the last few days. You'll see it come out. I I

18:40

I went really over the top with a piece of content. I haven't done this since I did that clubhouse thread that was extremely over the top, but I was like, I kinda find this entertaining, and this might hit. At the clubhouse one, like, really hit hit, like, I don't know, like, twenty million people saw that thing.

18:54

I did that again with the Luna stuff. Where I recorded. I basically am creating, like, a, almost like a John Oliver style

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show. You know, his show last week tonight or whatever.

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He just kinda, like, dismantles one topic for, like, fifteen minutes, and it's, like, but it's peppered with jokes. I did that on the lunar thing. So that's gonna come out last day or two, but that was a very fun exercise to try to, Like, so tell me what hacks are trying to be funny. But the story is, I guess, for those don't know. Okay. So,

19:21

here's the short here's the short version of the story. Short version of the story is you have Bitcoin, gets big, has this, like, anonymous creator, and it's supposed to do, like, one thing really well, which is, like, basically this, like, digital gold. And then you have Ethereum gets really big, and it's got this guy vitalic. He becomes the next cult hero. First, it was Satoshi for Bitcoin. Then it becomes vitalic.

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And vitalik solves a major problem with Bitcoin, which is that he makes it programmable.

19:45

And Ethereum takes off, and Ethereum's more programmable form of money. But both Bitcoin and Ethereum have, like, one major problem, which is that they're not very good as actual currencies. Right? They're called cryptocurrencies, but you don't use them as a day to day currency. You don't use go buy stuff. And this is for like a variety of reasons. Right? Like, Bitcoin, if you try to spend it, you'll get taxed as if you just sold a home every time you do a transaction. And then the merchant doesn't want it because they're like, oh, shit. What? Tomorrow, this is gonna go down twenty percent in price? Like, dude, I'm not trying to invest. I just need money to pay for tomorrow's inventory. Like, I don't wanna take this in my coffee shop. And so it's not really you those aren't really you. So, basically, there's this idea of creating stable coins. There's a coin that's always gonna be worth one dollar. And, like,

20:26

this is the spoiler. It's like, you know, you don't want it to not be worth one dollar, which is what happened with with the Terra project. But, like,

20:34

You know, it's supposed to be worth one dollar. So the way that most people did it, the big ones, USDCs Tethr, those are the two big ones. They're, like, It's basically like, like a like a safety deposit box. You give them a real dollar. They'll give you a digital dollar. And if you ever want dollar back. They're like, I promise it's in the bank vault. Whenever you need it, come back and redeem it.

20:52

And,

20:53

and those kinda have some controversy because crypto people don't like it because it's, like, Well, how do I know you're not lying? Like, how do I know you didn't just take all that money in the bank vault and go spend it or invest it in some risky way? And that's why people think Tethr did.

21:06

Does. And, and also they're like, dude, what if the government just cracks down? This one company,

21:11

like, they could just, like, they have to operate in some country. Like, it's centralized.

21:15

The whole it's, yeah, centralized. This decentralization thing isn't real in that point. So okay. So that's the so the pro argument for this project that came out, that's the project called Tara and one of the currencies called Luna. So the idea was we need a decentralized stable coin. We need decentralized money. Does that mean that one person invented Tara And then another person invented Luna using Taris technology. No. No. Taris like the name of the company, TerraForm Labs. It's like a group of people who came together, said, we're gonna create a stable coin. And then the stable coin, one of them Like, it's called USD. So think about it like the US dollar version of Tara, u s t. And so that was their stable coin. That's the thing that's all all always supposed to be one dollar. Luna is the tote, like, Luna is the thing that backs it. Okay. So remember I said, like, the in the other version, what backs the digital dollar? It's a real dollar in a bank the way that the US dollar used to work was what backed the US dollar? Gold and Fort Knox. Right? And that that was before we got off the gold standard. But the idea is, like, what gives this currency any value is this, like, backing currency.

22:12

And so they were backing it with Luna, and Luna was meant to be this, like, it's, like, two they they basically created two coins, a stable coin, And then Luna, which goes which can actually go up and down in price as a stabilizing mechanism for the stable hunt. So whatever, these are some details. They're not super important to the to what actually happened. So But it was one guy. Right? Because I saw, like, there's like an easy guy. But, like, there there's a team. Right? There's a it's a company Okay. That's like a startup. Right? Mark Zuckerberg. That's this guy. Doquan. Got it. Okay. So doquan, who's doquan? He's a pretty interesting character. Right? Because He basically

22:43

it's like Stanford, computer science,

22:46

graduates. He starts working on some, like, mesh networking internet thing, like, That was his first startup. And then he's like, oh, no. Crypto is, like, the future. I'm gonna create this stablecoin project. So

22:56

they come out with this idea, and there's basically some people are skeptical because they've seen

23:01

this decentralized stable coin, this un this un collateralized

23:05

decentralized, decentralized

23:06

algorithmic a bunch of buzzword, but that's how you describe it. Sable coin fail before. There was a project like this called basis cash, maybe five years ago.

23:14

And basis basically raised, like, I don't know, eighty million dollars or something like that from, like, tier like, know, entries to Horowitz, a bunch of other VCs, but they didn't even launch. They were, like, they were, like, oh,

23:25

like, that we don't know if this algorithmic thing will will hold. So they kind of returned eighty five percent of the money as, like, a failed project.

23:33

So that was, like, the last big version of this that had come out. And then Tara comes out. And so Tara, the the difference was they were like, look, this works as long as there's demand for the stable coin. And so they were like, where's the demand come from? And at at first, This is, I guess, I said it was a short version. It's actually the long version of story. But at first, he came out with us with this idea that was like, look, we'll use it for e commerce.

23:54

Because in e commerce, every time there's a transaction, you know, there's like a three percent credit card fee, basically.

23:59

We can do it at one percent if we use crypto. And so it's like for a merchant, that's like, you know, that's real money that you get to save if somebody uses this this this option. And what they did was they're like, yo, we'll pass the savings to the customer and to the merchant fifty fifty. And then they, like, went and talked to all these e commerce companies in Korea where they're from. And they got, like, twenty seven large e commerce companies, including the second biggest one in in Korea

24:22

to use them. So, like, imagine, like, the the set like, not Amazon, but, like, let's say eBay. They got eBay to use it. So everyone's, like, pretty hyped. They're like, oh, shit. This is crypto with a real worth real world use case.

24:33

Finally, like, real world use case. This is And you're hyped on it. I was hyped on it. And this guy because he was on stage, he's like, look, Krypto is full of a bunch of projects that have no real world use cases and very low user bases. We have like a real problem that we're solving, and we're gonna and we have real user. We have two million people using our payments app to do this in Korea. And I was like, wow. Awesome. I buy in. And then things start to move. How much do you invest in? Can you

24:57

I started with twenty five k, and then I had an opportunity to put in another two hundred k as part of, like,

25:03

a bunch of VCs were

25:05

buying,

25:06

Luna. Like, they invested in the company, and they were got they got to buy Luna at basically, like, a forty percent discount to the market rate. So at the time, it was trading at, like, almost a hundred dollars. We got to buy in at about just under forty dollars.

25:17

But it was, like, locked up. Like, it was gonna be released over the number of years. So you did that? I did that. So I was like, oh, dude. I like this project anyways. If I get to buy it fifty percent under market, like, hell, yes. Sign me up. And also, like, these are all, like, tier one, like, crypto investors. Like, these I mean, it's they raised a billion dollars, right, from it from from investors. So it wasn't, like, some random project. It was like, oh, well, these guys are smart. They're doing it. Alright. Like, that's that validates my my belief. Okay. I'm gonna go ahead and and and do this.

25:45

And for a while, it looked like a genius move because

25:49

Luna was trading at, I don't know, hit, like, a hundred sixteen dollars. It was, like, one of the best performers last year So how much were you up by? In about a year and a half, Luna went from

25:58

under a dollar to a hundred and sixteen dollars. So it did, like, a hundred x in one year. I was in at, like, the kinda like the thirty, thirty five dollar price point overall.

26:06

Forty percent of thirty or thirty.

26:09

No. No. My my price point my actual price point was, like, thirty five dollars blended.

26:13

So then you are you went two fifty, like, seven fifty. Yeah. Exactly. My two hundred my two fifty was, like, seven hundred fifty grand. I was, like, oh, great. Yeah. It's doing well. Like, this was just the start. It was like, it was growing really fast. Like, not just the price, but like, like, the number of people buying the Sable coin was going up. Like, it went Like, I think the the stable coin had, like, at eighteen billion dollars of of TBL or something like that. So it had gotten pretty big.

26:37

But they had I I kinda noticed I was like, wait. They don't talk about the e commerce thing ever anymore, and that's because kinda, like, didn't work. Like, they basically

26:46

It was, like, working slowly, I think, like, merchants, like, kinda cared, but not enough. Consumers didn't really change their behavior. So it wasn't, like, a sexy growth story. I don't think it was working. They just stopped talking about it. And they started talking about, like,

26:58

so what they did was they're like, alright. Now instead, we'll serve the crypto community itself with a savings So a savings account. So, basically, there was a savings account on on the network that was, like, if you deposit your stable coin here, you get paid twenty percent interest.

27:10

On your stable stable coin, which is, like,

27:14

kind of amazing. Right? Because, like, if I take my dollars, I go to Bank of America, get Yeah. But that sounds like some policy scheme shit. Sounds like it. Right? But it's not. I'll tell you why. So it was, like, Bank of America gives you point o two percent. This was giving you twenty percent.

27:27

And

27:27

and so a lot of critics said exactly what you said, which is, oh, this is a ponzi.

27:31

And I will argue it is not a ponzi. It was even better than a Ponzi is.

27:36

So,

27:37

like Well, it's more not from a Ponzi. Okay. So a Ponzi is fucking stealing. Okay. Basically. So Ponzi

27:43

is Customer a gives you money, you use that money to pay out customer b, then customer b gives you money because they have faith in it. You use that money to pay out c and d. So you're taking one customer's money, you're paying out the other. This is even better. They just created a currency out of thin air, printed out, like, a billion of it. It's then

27:58

and then they just gave it away. Right? Like, and, like, the market believes it's like value. So Have you seen on, what's the where they have Patty's Patty's dollars

28:06

on Yeah. Patty's bucks. All of a sudden. Yeah. Patty's bucks. It's always sunny. Yeah. That's exactly what happened. They just created their own currency and just collect dollars. In a way, that's what all currencies are. Right? The US dollar, every country does this. They create their own currency, and you if you believe it's valuable, then it becomes valuable. If you if you cease believing it's valuable, d values, and we see this in different countries. And that's what happened here. For a while, people believed it was valuable, and they kept investing in it.

28:27

And two things happened. One was Everybody knew that this twenty percent savings rate's not sustainable because

28:33

what they were okay. The the the reality the joke that that was my joke version of description. The reality was when they raised a billion dollars from investors, they basically were like, look, this savings rate is really good customer acquisition. It's a marketing budget. Just like Uber subsidizes your rides. Like, why was an Uber ride back when we all started using Uber, like, twelve dollars when a taxi would have been twenty eight? It's like because VCs were basically giving me money and they were losing money on the rides. And that's what that's what Tara was doing. They were losing money on this savings rate, but they were getting a whole bunch of new customers. So, like, They got, like, four million people almost to create wallets on the network. So it was, like, they were buying user acquisition. Now you could argue that was either dumb or not dumb, but it was definitely unsustainable.

29:13

And everybody kinda anybody smart new that that's unsustainable, but it's like, hey, look. I get rewarded for being early here. I'm gonna get this subsidized earnings savings rate And that'll go away as this gets more popular, but, like, cool. That's my benefit for being early. That's how almost every crypto project works.

29:28

And, it's how many many startups work as well. Investors subsidize

29:33

the usage of your free product until it's big enough where they'll start to charge or raise prices.

29:38

To and then to get to the kinda, like, fast forward to the end. I care I care about your take,

29:43

like, what happened to you, but to get to the crash, what happened? To get to the crash. Okay. So all along the way, people are like, hey, algorithm stable coins, they only work when demand keeps going up. Once demand starts to fall, this thing will free fall. So, yeah, you have demand right now. That's why everything looks good. But once this starts to fall, it'll create a death spiral, meaning.

30:04

Once people stop wanting USC, Luna's price will go down. People will start. Once Luna's price starts to be now, people start selling Luna.

30:11

And,

30:12

basically, it was just like interplay

30:14

between if

30:15

if USD either started to de peg, meaning instead of being worth a dollar, it was worth ninety five cents. People will not want it. They'll lose confidence in the in the stable coin. And then as they lose confidence, they'll they'll sell, which will create more supply of Luna, which across the price of fluid to go down. And then that will cause even less confidence in the whole project. And it'll just death spiral. That was this is the belief. And all along this guy, Duquan, who started off like,

30:38

seeming like this smart kinda wanna change the world kinda guy. He had become like kind of an egomaniac and it was part of his persona. Like, he was like a Donald Trump or Elon Musk style guy where If you were if you disagreed with him, he didn't just say, you know, like, I agree. He must agree to disagree. Like, he was like, I will shit on you. I will call you stupid and poor and, like, I will make fun of you. Is that literally what he said? Yeah. He would call everybody stupid, poor, and he would basically

31:03

say you're all they're all funsters just spreading fun, which is fear teamed out, you know, and look, they've been wrong all all the way so far. They're gonna keep being wrong. And this is exactly what Elon did about people who were shorting his stock. He was like, oh, it's gonna be the short burn of the century. You guys are gonna look so stupid.

31:20

And, and and, you know, people are betting against him. People are betting for him. So anyways yeah. But he this guy forgot, like, the thing to make this work is you have to be right. Exactly. And he was right for a while until and and by the way, it's really funny. There's one Twitter account that wasn't just saying, Hey, this ain't gonna work. He's, like, specifically laid out a, like, fifteen step plan of, like, hey, look, I did the math If somebody was motivated and had a billion dollars,

31:44

they could destroy Tara, which is currently worth forty billion dollars. So they could if you put up if you had a billion dollars of cell pressure, I think you could crack the whole Tara project.

31:52

It would have to be like a smart focused person who would have to time it right. So and that's and basically, he he he retweeted that was like, This is, like, famous last word. So he goes,

32:02

man, this is the most

32:03

beep r word.

32:05

Thing I've ever read on Twitter.

32:08

Well, billionaires

32:09

wait. He said retarded. Yeah.

32:12

Really? Yeah. What a dumb idiot. Why would he do that?

32:16

You call him a dumb idiot?

32:18

Well, like, but, like, why would you What dumb idiot would do such name calling? How how can you how could you speak like that when you're, like, this, like, like, a CEO, like, a that's just crazy. It's like Donald Trump called Mexicans rapists and stuff, dude. This is like crazy. Like, people are crazy. They do crazy shit, and then they're basically their fans in his case were called lunatics. We're like, yeah. And then, like They thought that was cool. Well, I don't know if they thought that specific wording was cool, but in general, his character. I mean, he renamed himself stable kwan. He became a billionaire.

32:45

He, like, got a million Twitter followers because he became a cult of personality. Similar to you like that. One idiot, though. So anyways, he tweets and he's really an idiot because he go he said, this is the most r word thing I've read on on Twitter all week.

32:58

And he goes,

32:59

billionaires who follow me, go, like,

33:03

please go ahead and try this.

33:06

And, like, sure enough, like, two weeks later or a week later, it's, like, and try it. They did. So, basically, somebody or some group, it's not confirmed who it is, it's not confirmed also that there's a coordinated attack, but it does seem like it. People started,

33:21

somebody started dumping, like, a billion dollars worth of the stable coin. Which caused the peg to to go down. Right? When you have that much cell pressure, it won't stay worth a dollar. It's still up to ninety two cents. And then it's and then on on top of that, they were also dumping Bitcoin, which was the reserve collateral that these guys are holding. So Bitcoin's price starts to go down. USD starts to break peg, people start to panic a little bit. And they also started withdrawing from so they did three things. They took it out of anchor, the the savings protocol. So you saw a billion dollars worth or whatever, like, withdrawals,

33:53

then you saw them sell it, then you saw Bitcoin price tanking, and all of a sudden people started getting a little worried about, oh, shit. Is something bad happening? To Tara. Let me just go ahead and sell. So more people start to sell. And so you see like three, four, five billion dollars of sales happening at a very short period of time. And this also

34:10

coincidentally

34:11

or very planned happened right when they were doing, like, I've kinda, like, imagine you're like, oh, I'm just I'm moving houses right now. I was like, oh, man, the doors are open, because you're moving the moving trucks outside. So the doors are open. That's basically what happened. They were moving all the liquidity from the liquidity pool, from one to another. And so there wasn't much. There there was less shock absorbers than than you would expect when they started selling. It went from a hundred over a hundred dollars to what? What's it at now? Less than a penny. Like fractions of a client? Yeah. Okay. So how much value was wiped out? Forty something billion dollars, forty eight billion dollars. That is crazy. That is crazy. And the stable coin went from selling so that's Luna. Tara, the stable coin, the USDA was selling a, you know, it's a dollar. It's supposed to always be a dollar. It goes ninety two cents. Eighty five cents. So I'm on I'm on the beach in Hawaii, and I'm just getting texts from Ben. Yo, Tara's depegging.

34:58

And it's like and then it it goes down to seventy cents. Then it shoots back up to ninety giving false hope for a second. And then it plunges to sixty five, sixty, fifty. And I think it's currently trading, I don't know, fifteen cents to the dollar or something like that. You're you're you're out two fifty.

35:11

I'm at two yeah. Two twenty five, something like that. How does that feel?

35:14

It'd be feel shitty,

35:16

of course. Right? Like, you know, lose What did your wife say?

35:18

When you're sitting in Hawaii. She doesn't really care to know nor does she, like, want to know the details.

35:24

I told her, I said, well, from all of crypto. I was like, we lost several million million dollars in the last, like, three months because crypto has just been selling off, like, crazy.

35:33

And she's like, okay. So, like, so I should buy this bag or I should. I was like, I think it's a shouldn't right now. Let's go ahead and hold off on that. I was like, that's a level of conversation we've had,

35:41

about the whole thing. Like, she's not She's she's stressed about micro stuff. Like, if we're if we have a, like, a late fee or a parking ticket, she'll freak out. But on the big thing, she's, like, very chill. She's like But how do you feel about that now? Now that you've lost

35:53

you said several. Let's just say three million dollars. Like,

35:57

I guess a a couple couple feelings. The first was I'm not surprised. Like, we went in pretty eyes wide open, which was this is a risk reward type. And you don't just say that. You have to, like, actually know what is the risk, and the risk was always Nobody's ever made an algorithm stable coin work. And by the way, he's a spo one spoiler.

36:15

This guy, Dokwon, turns out he was also the anonymous cofounder of Basis that that got leaked as well. So it's like, dude, you know, fool us all once, you know, shame shame on you, fool us twice. What the hell is wrong with you? That's my take on it. Did he did he tweet out? Like, I'm I'm sorry. I'm a dick or, like He's it's like, look, we didn't mean for this to happen, obviously. Like, I have no because some people are like, dude, did you

36:38

did you benefit from this in some way? Like, because that happens with crypto. People will, like, raise much money, do a bunch of stuff, and, like, run away with the money. His claim is no. We didn't, like, we lost more than anyone on this whole thing.

36:49

I feel really bad that this happened. And he's kind of just, like, you know, between his legs a little bit, and he's silking, and he's quiet, he's much quieter now while everybody's, like, dancing on his grave deservedly so because he was cocky as hell. Right? So, like, That's what's going on with him. With me, it's sort of like, alright. Lost some of this money. That's not good, obviously. But, like, you know, doesn't feel good. It's sort of jarring. Like, I've had startup investments go south, but it kinda happens over a longer period of time. This is, like, you wake up on Tuesday and, like, one of your best performing investments has gone to zero in twenty four hours. It was quite jarring to watch the price drop like a knife,

37:22

and be pretty helpless. Like, there's nothing you could really do about it. Partially, excess for the lunar tokens were locked up. And partially because I was away from my computer,

37:29

you know, so, you know, whatever. But you're you're you're not I would, like I mean, I would lose sleep over that. I would be, like,

37:37

Almost

37:38

almost

37:39

not not quite scarred but like a little bit. Like, it would almost be a it would be close to where I would describe it as traumatic.

37:46

Yeah. It's not that,

37:48

for me. And again, I think it's because

37:51

I I mean, I write down whenever I do an investment. Here's my Here's why I think there's a good investment, and here's what could go wrong. And the one could go wrong was exactly this, which is, like, people think that there could be if if there was a bank run, that this would death spiral. I see no reason that this wouldn't death fire if there's a bank run. I don't know what would cause a bank run, but it's possible. And it's like, oh, what would cause a bank run was, like, either a motivated player created panic at a time when the project was vulnerable because all the the all markets, stock markets, crypto markets are all down, and they were moving the liquidity. Right? So it's like Well, the risk kinda played out. Like, that's okay. Like, it's like, you know, it's like I've had pocket aces get cracked before. And I I wouldn't even call Luna pocket aces. It's like, I had a flush draw. They got beat. Okay. You know, like, to use poker terms. Like, I had a flesher that got beat. Like, that's what happens. Even if I was a even if I had a sixty percent chance of winning, okay, I got my money in good. But, like, it wasn't my life savings. Now there's a lot of people who lost a lot more money on this because they put in a lot of money. So to me, there's also, like, a post mortem of, like, Okay. There's some rules. Like, you don't you don't put more than, you know, fifteen percent in any one project because all of them have these, like, black swan risks. And so you never wanna be that vulnerable to any one thing. Is is the majority of your net worth in crypto right now?

39:03

It was. Not not until

39:05

Everything cutting out. Well, yeah.

39:07

Not not including private, like, not including private business. No. Of the liquid stuff. No. It's a little less than half now. It's a little more than half before. So, you know, but, like, the stock market also hasn't gotten great. I don't know. I haven't really got lost so much. I don't log into my thing anymore. I I'm just I don't even look at it. Yeah. From I'm not gonna do it. I'm not gonna go trade right now. So for mental health purposes, I don't go calculate my net worth when it's when it's so far down. You know, there is a good forcing function. I'm like, alright. Great. Let me make sure earning money, working hard. Right? Like, it was very easy when when, like, over the last year, a year and a half, let's say, since the kind of COVID

39:43

you know, money printing says I mean, the whole ten years has been a bull run or whatever, but, like, the last year and a half, like, shit just inflated like crazy, So it was like, man, do I even need to work? Like,

39:54

I'll just look up every day, and I made a whole year's salary in a day. Like, you know, this is it's kinda demotivating.

39:59

To work. And then this is highly motivating to work when you start losing a year's salary per day, you know, like, that starts to, you know, like add up. And so yeah. I don't know. Like, that's, I guess, my full reaction to it. Me too. That's exactly mine as well. It's, like, you just just make more money.

40:15

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

40:19

This data is wrong every freaking time.

40:22

Have you heard of HubSpot?

40:24

HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated. Well, I can see the clients hold history, calls, support tickets, emails, and here's a task from three days ago I totally missed.

40:36

Hotspot, grow better.

40:39

Alright. Let me let

40:41

me switch topics a little bit. I wanna tell you something that's kind of I think hilarious.

40:47

Dude, have you seen the Liver King?

40:50

The guy on Instagram?

40:53

Yeah. He's just It's describing. He's super jacked, and he eats like this is not the same raw food guy, right? But he does eat, like No. A different one. He's more than jacked. He looks like the Hall. Like Yeah. He's like, comically jacked.

41:05

Yeah. Like, it's like a funny. Like, if it looks like if you popped him with a pin, he it would blow up like a balloon. Like, you know what I mean? Like, he he looks swollen.

41:12

And,

41:15

he basically, like, his whole, like, shtick and I, like, research him a little bit is, like,

41:20

We aren't men anymore. We're soy boys. And, like, the best way to overcome that is to get as jacked as possible and live like a like a manly man. Right. And so he's got, like, he's I think he lives in Texas, and he's got two kids. Any, like, the whole family

41:34

sleeps on, like, they don't use beds. They, like, you basically, like, sleep on these, like, wood crates

41:38

the floor, basically. They sleep on the floor because it's like it's kinda like we're cavemen. Okay. And I think he says that he eats like a pound a day of raw liver.

41:47

And there was a this is crazy shit. The guy's crazy.

41:51

And he also says he doesn't do steroids, which is like I I I went and tweeted about it and a lot of, like, people message me who I know who know him. They're like, obviously, that's not true. He definitely sounds scary. And if you look at him, you don't, you can just look at him definitely are doing something. Anyway, in a GQ article, he said that he was selling a hundred million dollars of

42:11

liver supplements.

42:13

So basically these pills where it's like instead of like eating liver, just swallow this pill. Right.

42:18

And I looked it up on Amazon and I did a bunch of research and I think it's true. I think it's one hundred percent true. I think that's how much he's selling in in in these Amazon's

42:29

supplements And he has his own store, and he's associated with, like, three or four other different stores. So he owns or

42:36

co owns this thing called heart and soil dot co which is all about like doing just only eating meat and fruit. It owns this other thing called the fittest dot com. Which basically, if you click at, it's like hardcore propaganda,

42:51

I mean, not necessarily negative, but, like,

42:54

seriously propaganda and like a mission statement and a brand, but it just says we were once the fittest version of ourselves, descendants of the sole survivor species of the genius homo

43:04

he explains, like, you know, like, why we need to go back to things that the product is called, like, honor. This product has fundamentally supports

43:12

for everyone, and it It's like bone marrow and liver. And then there's another one called fuel, and another one called ignite. And then just look at this picture. Look at this picture of this guy at the bottom. He's just like, this super swole guy. You know, there's, like, chain links that are really, really heavy that they used to, like, pull tires and stuff. He's just got those around his neck and he's, like, grunting as he lifts the chain links with his neck. Right? Like, it's crazy. I can't even make fun of it because it's the most make it's it made fun of itself the most already. Yeah. It's like a caricature of, like, what this lifestyle is about, which I'm not, like, entirely against this lifestyle. I just think it's hilarious. Is your lifestyle, by the way. What are you talking about? No. But this guy is kind of I think he's an idiot because

43:51

he Because, I mean, he's clearly doing something right. And I understand he's like going extreme to sell more stuff, which I'm not against, but he's one hundred percent on gear. And he's saying that he's not. So I think it's kind of that's kinda like this whole premise is based on kind of a lie.

44:07

But anyway, he also I didn't I even found out someone at the agency that he hired. So he hired an agency to get big on social media, and he got to, like, two million followers in, like, twenty four months, like, a very short amount of time. And so anyway, I thought this guy was interesting. I and I hadn't I wasn't sure if you had known about him. Very intriguing. How many followers does he have on Instagram? Does it say? One point five million.

44:29

What do you think of his supplement sites? Does that look to those numbers see real? You're you're saying that the,

44:34

you're saying that the Amazon Amazon? No. I'm saying all of his empire does a hundred million. The selling supplements on different platforms. Yeah. It doesn't look like these are all his. Like, he doesn't own all these. Maybe he's like an affiliate of some of these or something.

44:48

Like, in his Twitter bio, for example, he just has his, like, ebook. He doesn't even have, like, a site. And then

44:53

this heart and soil one, like, who are these guys? Our store. He owns a percentage of that. He owns a a large percentage of that company as well. Isn't this crazy?

45:02

Yeah. So Paul Saladino MD is the main guy. This is the carnivore diet guy? Yeah. Yeah. The carnivore MD. It's all these guys. Yeah. That thing sells like crazy.

45:11

Yeah. And and if you I dig some more research this liver king is in all the guy all that guy's photos and in his, like, on his about page and things like that. This,

45:21

hurt and soil. This is a good it's a good brand. They do a good job.

45:24

I'm in I'm gonna steal some of these ideas from ID to C brand. They do some nice things. So this company it's called Heartin Soil, and it's run by this guy named The CarnavorMD

45:32

And he's popular on Twitter, and he's, like, a doctor who says, like, basically, he only eats meat and fruit. And I joined one of his Facebook group because I actually did the All Meet thing for, like, thirty days. I wanted to try it, and he's got, like, a thirty day challenge. It was pretty fun. And in the group, I would post things like,

45:48

you know, like, is there any, like, what's a good book or, like,

45:52

seems like a good research that actually goes against this thing that shows that, like, all meat is not great and that you should eat, you should be vegetarian.

46:01

Kick out.

46:02

Yeah. And they link me up. Go red. Go red. He questions the premise.

46:08

Yes.

46:08

They destroyed

46:10

me. And they were, like, they they just I was happy. You've just well Yeah. Exhibit a.

46:18

They just ripped me apart, and I was like, oh, okay. So anyway, this There is a much I've never been called the n word before, but then I went to the carnivore group, and I I asked if meets good for you.

46:30

Dude, they did not like me. They didn't they did they were upset at me. So anyway, I thought that it was kind of interesting. It it is a little bit of a cult, but

46:38

well, okay. This, like, that this whole episode, I think, that the the thread here is

46:42

sort of like these extreme,

46:45

like, these cult cult leaders.

46:47

So the banana Savannah guy, he's basically creating, like, a a cult. Right? He's creating a brand. With rituals

46:54

and, like, members and, like, a whole thing, things outside the box.

46:58

The doquan from Tara Luna and the lunatics, they, you know, that was definitely a cult Oh, that was their name to lunatics. That's what, like, you know, like, you know, like, I, like, laser eyes for Bitcoin.

47:10

No. That's awesome. That's that's a great brand. Exactly. It

47:13

was really good. Again,

47:16

the party was great. Tell it all okay until the cops showed up and, it took everybody's money. So, you know, that that was great.

47:23

But but, you know, my personal experience with that,

47:27

do you have this Liberty guy? I think he's one. Can I bring up one more? And we'll just make this whole definition? I I I bet you I know who you're gonna say. Martin Schrelli.

47:36

I am on board a little bit. Wait. I'm I'm part of that. Call.

47:40

We're all we're all just what are Screllian addicts or something. I don't know what we what we were gonna call ourselves. I think we should we we should call ourselves the creeps.

47:48

Yeah. We're all creeps.

47:51

Martin Screlli and the creeps.

47:54

He, okay. So I have kind of a back story with this guy, but Just in general Well, explain the explain the famous backstory. Okay. So Martin Schkreli, if you just Google most hated man in America, I think he comes up as number one. At least he did at the time when I first heard about him. He is known for or he's known and hated for

48:14

being a kind of a price gouger with a drug. So what he did was he owned a a pharmaceutical company that focused on like, small,

48:23

like, less popular drugs that were, like, niche. And he would and then he bought them. So he bought this drug, this drug called Deraprim,

48:30

and he increased the price

48:32

from, like, thirteen dollars to, like, five hundred something dollars. What I don't know what it was, but the percent was like. He increased it by five thousand percent.

48:39

And so people and then immediately the news picked us up was like, oh, man. And they started calling him the pharma bro because

48:46

first he did this. They were like, how dare you? But instead of apologizing and walking it back, he was like,

48:51

fuck yeah, I did. I own this. I could change what I want, you know, like, and and, like, this is America. That's the price of this drug. And, Yeah. He doubled down. He doubled down and he loves attention. And he's amazing

49:03

at getting attention.

49:05

A lot of the attention is hate, but he's amazing at getting it. But and he was only thirty three, thirty four when he did this. And this was, basically, he controlled

49:14

two pharmaceutical companies that were each public

49:17

at north of a billion in market cap, I think. I don't know because I don't know. I can't I can't from those that might that might be right. But he also had a hedge fund before that where he invested in biotech stocks. Yeah. Just like he had done big things. And so he was he's a very smart guy.

49:31

Now people think he's a crook. They thought so some people said he was a crook because he raised the price of the drug. That's not a crime. That's just something you don't like. Then he actually got indicted and went to jail for doing something was legal, which I think was, like, he basically

49:44

paid investors from one company with, like, the stock of his other company and then, like, didn't

49:49

wasn't clear or something like that. I don't know exactly what he went to jail for, but is any way I've been to jail for two years? He went back to jail

49:55

or his, like, like, he didn't get released early or something like that for threatening Hillary Clinton. He didn't really threaten her, but he, like, made, like, a, like, a stupid joke on Twitter. Yeah.

50:04

Yeah. Anyway, so he he just got out last week. That's gotta the funny part of this. So he gets out.

50:09

And,

50:10

it's like, you know,

50:12

I don't know. Who's, like, a famous person that, like, everybody wanted to be freed It's like your free young thug or who? Like Martha Martha Stewart. Yeah. Free Martha, like, whatever. There was a group of people that were excited about his his arrival. I was excited too because I enjoy reality TV. I enjoy, you know, the drama. He's like our version of Kim he's he's our Kim k. He's he's that's exactly what he is. Exactly. So I wanted to see a plow. And so he comes back, and I just started thinking about

50:37

Shrelli in general. So I have a couple ways we can go. We can go of things I find very interesting slash borderline admire about the way he does things. And then there's

50:48

What he has been up to in prison and what's interesting there. Where do you wanna go? I have both.

50:53

I like both of those. So what has he been up? Up to impressive. And and and the back story, you you actually need to mention this. The back story was he was an early user of your product blab I spoke to him a couple times on Blab. And when the hustle first launched, we were in our first office. So this was in the first six months. We, one of our reporters was to young woman named Brena, who was, you know, like, a pretty,

51:15

like, a good looking woman, and he

51:17

she deemed him for a story. And he was like, hey, do you just wanna, like, fly up here and we could, like, hang out. And, like, he was, like, asking her out. And,

51:27

so I had a I have a little interaction with them as well. So we, yeah, we had a app called Blab that was basically if you've seen clubhouse, it was clubhouse before clubhouse, and it had video on it. So it wasn't just audio.

51:37

And,

51:38

it got

51:39

sort of popular. Like, you know, we tried using it. We tried getting podcasters to use it. We we got some kind of like marketers to use it for their kind of like promoting their stuff. Then we started getting some bigger brands. The NBA started using it. UFC started using it Oracle,

51:53

but none of them could hold a candle to our number one power user, Martin Schrelli.

51:57

Martin Shrelli

51:58

came on the app and basically broke the app from day one. First time he came on, instantly, the room filled up to like five thousand people.

52:05

And it was more people that we had ever had in one room before that hit our max limit. We were like, who is this guy? That's when I first Googled and found he's the most hated man in America. And,

52:16

he was famous enough to draw a ton of people in, but he was not famous enough to have other shit to do. Which was the perfect sweet spot, which as I said, he is the most lethal weapon in social media.

52:27

He has since been surpassed by Donald Trump and Elon Musk,

52:30

as the most lethal weapon in social media. But before that, it was Martin Shrelli. And the reason I say that is because,

52:37

he creates a ton of content, so he would go on Blab every day from about five PM till two in the morning.

52:44

He would be on that whole time

52:47

And he was the master at creating nightly entertainment. Like, you know, Jimmy Fallon,

52:52

Jay Leno,

52:53

You guys can't touch this guy in terms of nightly entertainment because he has no producers, no script, no nothing. He would hop on, and somehow or another, he would cause enough ruckus that this room would have thousands of people in it all night long watching it. Like, we were hooked to it. And we would see this in our data. Like, people wanted us to kick him off because, again, He's a bad guy for raising the price of this drug. And, like, he said this thing, that wasn't cool, but this guy was driving in hundreds of thousands of new users to us every single month. So I was like, I'm not trying to kick this guy off. Like, this guy's like, you know, he's where the action's at.

53:24

This was, two thousand seventeen, two thousand eighteen, canceled culture. Was it a thing yet? Yeah. And I was, like, I'm a startup. I'm gonna do what it takes to get off the ground. Like, yeah, the Bitcoin used the silk road to, like, get off the ground. And, like, you know, YouTube started as a dating site in Facebook, you know, this, he did face mask comparing, like, which girl's hotter. Like, okay. Not everything starts with, like, the most, like, clean-cut. You know, I think Airbnb started by, like, faking and scraping, you know, Craigslist sites and, you know, emailing them as fake people saying I'd love to book your thing. Can you just list on Airbnb? Like, dude, people do what they have to do to get your project started. Started.

53:57

And so we had Shirley, and I used to watch it at first. What I noticed was every new came in, came in to throw stones

54:04

at this evil man who raised the price of this drug,

54:07

but he did not sit there and apologize a whimper. He, like, fought back. And he would give his side of the argument. He would you up for a debate. And that's when you saw

54:15

how

54:16

how strongly held opinions could be with no logical backing, with no real rationale behind it. The argument was hollow.

54:23

And this was not just, like, average people.

54:26

People who were, like, very successful business people would come on, trying to, like, kind of,

54:30

stand on their high, you know, be on their high horse, you know, telling him what he should do and then he would, like, dismantle their argument.

54:36

Journalists from CNN and other places would come on, he would dismantle them.

54:40

And he's doing a combination of, like, a, making fun of them, b, hitting on them, and, c, breaking down their logical arguments, all at the same time. I've never seen anything like it. And I just thought, wow, this guy is very entertaining.

54:51

I don't agree with everything he's saying, but I think he's very entertaining.

54:54

It's the the data doesn't lie. He is very entertaining. He he's And I think Later on later on in some of the blabs, he would have, like, these, like, cute women in the background, and they like, clearly I just met him on Blapp and he was just like, Hey. I'll fly you out. You wanna hang up. So this is what started happening. Every started off hating him. So after about three weeks, he developed an army of believers of people who were, there's a guy who became -- Creeps. -- yeah, the Creeps. And so this guy came on, he his name was Young Screlli.

55:20

And when Martin was tired or had to go eat, young Shirley would go hold court, and he would just be like an extreme knock off version of Martin. And he would just hold court defending him until Martin came back to defend self. And then all these women started joining, and they loved him. And they were just hanging out there all the time. And they were like, when they're not like cam girls or model, they were like actual models. Fashion models, cam girls, only fans, people, whoever, and they would get on. And they would just be like, you know, Martin is like, I don't know. I would date you. And they would just get on. They were So the room was always filled with, like, his posse. It was like, you go to, like, you know, where, a mob lord is at, and he's got his goons. And he had his goons, dude, and his army was just growing. But within a couple months, the number of people who loved him outweighed the number of people who hated him. And it was, like, the most surprising thing that it was, like, watching a cult form in real time. It was fascinating.

56:09

And, I remember the CNN journalist came on, and she was like,

56:13

Martin, I, you know, I'd I know everybody kind of, you, you know, a you, but I don't wanna attack you. I just wanna ask you some questions. He's like, well, you're on my show. Let's go. She's like, no. No. No. I want you to come on CNN. He's like, this better than CNN. He's like, you're on my show. You have questions. Let's go. This these are my terms. You can ask any question you want. No holds barred right here right now. And if you're not prepared, come back and prepared, but you could do it right here, on my show. And she's like, I'm not gonna do that, Martin. I'm like, I can only do it there. He's like, and he's like, he's like, alright. Fine. Come with me to my fundraiser, Gala tonight. I'll fly you out. He bought he goes a screen check. He buys her a flame ticket. And, like, he's like, what's your email address? I'm sending this to you. And she's like, I'm not going on a date with you, Martin. And he's like, if you said it's a date,

56:53

and then he's like, you know, he's just playing people perfectly and saying Didn't didn't they? Didn't she end up quitting? One of the one of the women who hollowed at him from Washington Post ended up quitting the job at and so this is part of what's remarkable. When he goes to jail, this woman from Washpo or some place, is assigned to cover him, or cover the story,

57:13

falls in love with them, breaks up, like, she has a family. She has husband and kids, I think, leaves them for Martin,

57:20

falls in love with Martin while he's in prison.

57:23

And then Martin breaks her heart, and she's heartbroken now. And, like, you know, whatever, she gave it all up. She gave up her career and her family for Martin and fell in love with him. This guy's got some cult leader shit to him. So anyways, and he did some crazy stuff when he was unblab. Like, he would he was so loyal to his army that he'd be like, I'm I got a date tonight, but don't worry. I'm leaving Blab on. So he would leave it on in the other room, and you could eavesdrop and overhear his date, which is again. Oh my god. Prime time entertainment.

57:50

Is it wrong? Yeah. Is it entertaining?

57:53

Yeah. It is. And so this guy was phenomenal. Anyway, so I found this guy interesting. He would also do things. So, like, from a marketing perspective, I was observing, how is this guy staying relevant? Like, that drug shit was years ago. Like, what how is he staying relevant? He would just do stuff. So, like, wu tang had an album that they were selling, like, a one of one for their biggest fans. He bought it for two million dollars. And so now this guy that they didn't want so they got in a feud with him, he had this thing. And then on Blab, he would play, like, snippets, like, ten seconds of the album. And no one's ever heard it before besides him, but he would just, like, tease it, dangle it.

58:24

Like, the original NFT.

58:25

When,

58:26

there was, like, some building for sale in Times Square, he tried to buy it for ten million dollars to, like, erect a statue of himself in Times Square. And, again, it gets covered. So he was just news jacking constantly. He was just hijacking the news and putting his own name.

58:41

Did he have money when he got arrested or, like, his

58:44

I I think he was actually, like, he they he showed a brokerage account that had seventy million dollars of it. Yeah. I think he had, like, somewhere between fifty and seventy five million dollars if I remember, like, at the time. But then he, like, had a declared bankruptcy.

58:55

Yeah. And I at one point, ironically, his attorney that was defending him,

58:59

raised his price by five thousand percent and started charging him sixty thousand dollars per hour. And, like, I don't know if this is real or not, but Martin came out the news. It's like, this is outrageous. And, like, people are like, dude, the irony, you know, pot counting the kettle black. It's, like, Of course, this is just another article he wanted written about him. And, like, he's just a master of getting attention. He did so many things like this. I can't even count the number of things he did like this. And I was like, wow, this guy just knows how to stay in the cycle. And I constantly, like, reinvent himself. Because then he would like, Just when he pushes you away, he'd lure you back in. So, like, for example, on Saturday, Friday nights, he would hold, like, you know, his nightly blood thing where he's a thousands of people and it's like a roast session and he's saying outlandish shit and, like, you just feel yucky for being in there. And then Saturday morning, he would wake up at eight in the morning and he would do a live finance like session where he would teach you how to analyze stocks. And they were It was great. Phenomenal.

59:48

And I watched a bunch of them. They're still on YouTube. You could go watch them. He is so He's very smart, and he was so thoughtful and patient as a teacher. He's a he's a fantastic teacher. And so, anyway, so that's, like, the backstory. So anyways, he gets out. He said, they're, like, house prison. Right? He he immediately he gets out. He immediately jumps on,

01:00:07

on Twitter spaces. Oh, by the way, actually, that's another funny story. When he had to go speak in front of

01:00:13

Congress or the I don't know. Yeah. Congress, I guess. He had to go testify.

01:00:17

He goes there And he just with a smug look kept saying, like, I I will take the fifth you know, I I choose to elect my my fifth amendment, well, rights to not speak. He just said that on loop for an hour. But he was -- But smile. -- but he was smugly smiling and just pissing them off, and he was drawing the whole time.

01:00:33

And then he gets as soon as he left their courtroom, he jumped on Blab from his phone on the train. And he goes, alright. Who wants to see my drawings? He shows his drawings of, like, Dick, stuff like that that he was drawing on a space paper. And he's

01:00:47

live. The the hearing was still going on, and he embedded it in one screen. And he was just talking mad shit about the Congress people. In the other screen at the same time. Again, it was just, like, high level social media usage.

01:00:58

So anyways, he got on Twitter space and they were like, how was prison? He goes, Oh, it was awesome. He's, like, he he's talking about the prison system and, like, how unjust it is, how, you know, he's, like, you know, ninety five percent of people that were in there You had, like, traumatic childhood issues with parents and stuff like that. He's like, I hustled out, like, other people's lockers, you know, where I so I could store more books

01:01:20

And,

01:01:21

and he's, like, he basically was, like, so what was his, like, summary? So so first he's been blogging. Have you read his blog from prison? No. But what did he say about prison? He's he I mean, I bet you he was actually well respected there. Yeah. He's like The problem is everyone was like, tell me some stories. Yeah. Exactly.

01:01:37

And and so he, yeah, he was kind of like, you know, had his his crew there or whatever. He said he created,

01:01:42

a crypto study group

01:01:44

So he what did he say? He goes,

01:01:47

he goes, when everybody else was working out in prison, I would read because brain gains are all that matters, not muscle gains, because he's like, real scrawny. Oh my god. He's like, created a group called crypto thugs in prison, and it was just me teaching crypto to,

01:01:58

to the rest of my, like, my fellow, like, inmates or whatever.

01:02:02

And he had a bunch of, like, interesting stuff. So,

01:02:05

he had a bunch of predictions about crypto that were in there, a bunch of he read he basically spent his whole time studying about crypto, and artificial intelligence,

01:02:13

and like biohacking and stuff like that. So he's he's got this blog post with a shit ton of predictions about the future.

01:02:20

I'll I'll read you a couple of his I'm on I'm on his it just it's martin squarely dot com. Right? Yeah. I think so.

01:02:27

So,

01:02:28

I'm gonna read you some predictions on here. So two thousand twenty five, so about three years from now.

01:02:33

Self driving cars are the successor to mobile computing. They trend upwards people spend eight hours a day in your car.

01:02:40

Teslaaineer's ten trillion dollar market cap must becomes the first trillionaire.

01:02:43

Two thousand twenty six, an AI generated,

01:02:46

maybe GPT four song gets created with zero human editing and direct participation and charts on billboard.

01:02:52

Two thousand third twenty thirty.

01:02:56

Virtual reality slash metaverse is ubiquitous, widely used. All you needed was a comfortable ergonomic optical interface, that's what was the limiting item. I think he's, wrong on that one. Twenty thirty vehicles,

01:03:07

self driving cars reach majority penetration in the US. Accidents drop by more than fifty percent. And he says he just keeps going. He goes out to, like, twenty fifty. He's making predictions as to things, like, you know, twenty fifty. Life span for a newborn is now a hundred to a hundred twenty five. Ninety percent of non surgical medicine is automated.

01:03:24

Blah, blah, blah. Like most contract law is automated on is automated on chain. And so he keeps going. Now right or wrong, you could disagree with all these, but he's just a very interesting thinker, a very interesting guy who follow. Right? And he does these book reviews that are, like, very hilarious where he's like, this book, three out of five,

01:03:39

you know, first three fourth giant waste of time. Last fourth, interesting about this topic. It's like, oh, good. Like, you saved me a bunch of time reading that book. Like, I kinda trust your opinion on these things.

01:03:48

And so, I don't know, his blog is worth worth a read.

01:03:51

We,

01:03:52

I I tweeted out, asked him to get him on the pod, but I had no Twitter handled a tag. I didn't know who he was or, you know, which is kind of hidden we maybe found the right one.

01:04:02

But we,

01:04:04

we should get him on. I feel like we're big enough that we can get him. And I he's an interesting guy enough He's a he's, I don't like giving our audience, like, our platform to people who I think are full of shit. Like, for example, Jordan Belfer, I wouldn't want I wouldn't want him on. Dude, I would want him. Would you? Yeah. It's the same. Remember, people were like, oh, I can't believe you guys had Ty Lopez on.

01:04:25

Is like, well Well, due to me There's a scale. Would I want to talk to this person? That's the test. If I would want to talk to this person, That means they're interesting. Just because that you're on the podcast doesn't mean we say this person is awesome and legit.

01:04:39

I agree.

01:04:40

But I don't want to endorse certain things and maybe, like, well, how are we endorsing?

01:04:46

I don't know. But this is like a you don't wrestle with this at all? No. I actually find that super the people do this to Joe Rogue and others as well to, like,

01:04:54

why would you give him the platform to say his, like, stupid stuff? It's like, Dude, I'm gonna I'm gonna have a conversation with him or the, he or she. And,

01:05:03

because they're interesting to me, I'm gonna find out maybe they're, you know, I'm gonna find out what they have to say. They say something silly or stupid, I'm gonna try to push back and give my point of view. And the listeners should be smart enough to come to their own opinion about things. And in fact, you know, the right way to, like, the right way to make somebody the right way to, like, counteract,

01:05:22

like, speech you disagree with is not to suppress it, but to, like,

01:05:26

enable enable bring it to light. Right? Like, put the the sun as the best disinfectant type of thing. Like, bring it to light and then let people make an informed decision off of what they heard

01:05:35

And,

01:05:36

you know Well, I I I agree with that. At all just to have someone on the podcast. I'm on board with that. I I and admittedly, I'm wrestling with how I opinion on this. Like, do you think they should have made wolf of Wall Street because Jordan Belford is a bad guy? Like, no. Hell, no. No. But I don't want to And they blur to do? They put Leo Dicaprio. That's why I actually don't

01:05:54

I I I, like, buy myself watching that movie. I'm like, you know, I don't wanna watch this. This guy was a piece of shit. He's robbed a quarter of a billion dollars from people. And yeah, I'm watching this movie, and I'm like, oh, I wanna be like that. So I, like, find myself not wanting to watch it. But what I was saying was Martin Screlli is the type of guy who I actually don't agree with probably a bunch of the stuff that he's done, but I'm not convinced that he's like an evil guy. I'm I think that he's just a weirdo. And

01:06:19

he like, when he was smiling at Congress,

01:06:22

I was like, oh, I I actually think you're just weird. And you just don't know how to interact people. I don't I don't and I you know what I mean? I well, you knew what he was doing. He's a troll.

01:06:30

I think he's a troll, but I don't I think it comes from a place if he's just really awkward.

01:06:34

Not necessarily of, like, he's a horrible guy.

01:06:38

Yeah. I don't know. Horrible guy.

01:06:40

People will come up with their own conclusion, you know, I have seen a lot of people say he's a horrible guy. He say, why? Oh, because you raised the price of the drug. Why is that bad? Because then people can't afford it. Well, you actually know that insurance pays for ninety eight percent of it, and then he gave away the other two percent. If you couldn't afford it through insurance, he just gave it to you.

01:06:56

Yeah. But then insurance costs go up. Cool. Well, then you should have a problem with, like, these fifteen other things, like, You know, also if these drugs are not, like, valuable, then there's no research for these niche diseases. So that's why a lot of these niche diseases just don't have any r and d budget because there's no value in them. So just prove that his biggest crime is having a punchable face. Exactly. Exactly. You know what I mean? Like, and that's a real thing. And,

01:07:19

He trolled very he trolled. He's just likeable because he trolled and he's rude to people, and he makes fun of things. And he, like, yeah. Okay. Cool. But That's not a crime. You know? But I would love to I would love to have him in him on and talk to him because he's the type of guy. I don't think he's a liar. Shirley,

01:07:34

we wanna do an episode. This is our open invitation. I hope this gets back to you. I'm the guy who made Blab. We spent many and many hours together in a way on that platform.

01:07:43

Whenever we were getting ddos, it was because of you. I put up with that shit. So, you know, give give us one, give us a solid and come on the pod. So we'll, we'll have to pack him. Wait. Is that Twitter thing? I think that's his real account. Yeah. But is that a secret or not? Because he was in the Twitter spaces under that Alright. So that'd be cool. Yeah.

00:00 01:08:17