Mario Nawfal, CEO of NFT Tech and founder of Froothi, engages us with the basics of NFTs and cryptocurrency.
You don’t need to understand the technology to see his vision of the future.
Listen as he describes the opportunities and tells us his memorable quote about how humans underestimate innovation.
Connect with Wendy - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendypease/
Connect with Mario - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mario-nawfal/
Music: Fiddle-De-Dee by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
ATTENTION: Below is a machine generated transcription of the podcast. Yes, at Rapport International, we talk a lot about how machine translation is not good quality. Here you see an example of what a machine can do in your own your language. This transcription is provided as a gist and to give time indicators to find a topic of interest.
[00:00:34] Wendy: Hello listeners! I´ve got something new for you here today. We are going to dive into cryptocurrency. So even if you know nothing about it, this is an episode that you're going to want to listen to, because my guest Mario, is a very accomplished business person. He's very knowledgeable and he's promised me that he's going to break it down into bite sized pieces.
[00:01:00] So even people who know nothing about it will finally get it. Mario is co-founder and CEO of NFT Tech. He is also, he had founded an e-commerce company. That's in 30 countries called Froothi, and then he runs a bunch of other companies that are all based around crypto. Now he's also a very accomplished dancer.
[00:01:24] With the, dancing the dance called Machata and he travels around the world and works in different locations. So he just came from Australia. He's now in Dubai and he's headed off to Turkey, uh, where there's a festival, a Machata festival going on. We originally met either through clubhouse or LinkedIn or the combination of the two when he was a prior guest on the podcast.
[00:01:49] So. Welcome back, Mario. I'm very excited to talk to you about what you have going on now. Yeah. So tell me about the Machata . I just want to learn that and get to be as proficient as you in it.
[00:02:00] Mario: Yeah, so, so, Bachata with a B is, is essential Latin dance. So it's actually really one that has got a massive community around the world.
[00:02:08] And the good thing about it is that, you know, I travel a lot, as you said earlier, and the thing about Bachata and other latin dances is that wherever you are in the world, doesn't matter what language they speak in. I've done this. You can dance, you can go to a club and just dance or party and just dance with a stranger.
[00:02:23] And that was the reason I really liked it early on, because it was a great way to socialize. Whether you're in Russia, you're in Serbia, you're in Latin America, you're in the middle east. You're in Australia. You're in Western Europe, America, Canada. Africa everywhere. And that was the fascinating thing about it.
[00:02:39] And it's a social dance.. You can only dance with one person or two people just like ballroom and Latin dancing; you're dancing a couple of two people together. And then since then a development to a lot bigger than what it was. It's my, my exit away from the stresses of work.
[00:02:52] Wendy: It's fantastic.
[00:02:53] Yeah. And I don't know the dance at all, and I've danced the Merengue and salsa and Tango, and
[00:02:59] Mario: very similar, very similar to merengue!
[00:03:02] Wendy: Oh, I love Merengue! Okay. I'll have to look for a place around Boston where I live. Okay. But we brought you on to talk about cryptocurrency. So why don't you start out with the primer we're talking one-on-one first off.
[00:03:19] Give me the vision. Why do you think it's going to take over the world and then how does it work?
[00:03:26] Mario: Okay, so the best way to describe cryptocurrency is... is the following: In the 1940s, fifties, sixties, we had the efficient transfer of electrons. That means that's where technologically the technology kicked in, you had TV's you had radios through the efficient transfer of electrons.
[00:03:50] They evolved over the years to become improved products. In the 1990s and the two thousands you've had the efficient movement of bits. And that's essentially the transfer of data on the web and being able to watch videos, send emails, etc.. What we're seeing now is the efficient transfer of value.
[00:04:11] So, prior to 2017, 2018, you couldn't transfer value without having central entities on the web. You couldn't send value. I'll tell you, I'll give you examples so people can understand what I'm trying to say. When you posted an image on Instagram, what proof did you have this is your image? Like now you're in your house,
[00:04:32] or in my house. All the books behind you, the headphones on your ears, the glasses on your face: they're all yours, Wendy, because they're in your house, they´re in your area of ownership for lack of a better description, but on the web, you couldn't do that. There was not nothing to say it's yours, unless there's a central entity, whether it's YouTube saying, it's your video, Instagram saying, it's your photo.
[00:04:52] Another company saying this is your identity. EBay saying, this is your product. There's always central entities in the middle. You couldn't own something you can like you can in the physical world. Well, that's changed.. There's the technology of what we call NFTs, which is probably the most exciting thing of in crypto.
[00:05:08] Is probably the biggest piece of crypto right now. And that allows you to own something on the web, the same way, your own something in the physical world. Technologically that became possible in 2017. That's probably the best way to describe it. And now that it can have ownership on the web without a central entity, send your own something, just like your own, all the things around you when doing and all the things you're wearing and everything under your mattress.
[00:05:33] Now, that that can exist technologically on the web. It just makes it a lot easier to transfer value. When you have to transfer your ownership of your car, let's say you moved to Estonia and you want to take your car with you, just for the sake of argument. When you get there, you have to go through a central entity, whatever company, whatever organization manages, all the car registrations and ownership and the records of who owns what.
[00:05:59] And you have to go to that entity and go through the whole process to have them confirm that you own that car. Well, now, it's on the web and technologically, you can prove ownership. It just makes you a lot more efficient because now you can share the ownership of that car on the web without any central parties in the middle.
[00:06:16] Now I don't want to go too deep into this. I don't want to get too technical or what I'm trying. Oh, the only point I'm trying to make is that one of the more, most exciting aspects of crypto, is the ability to own things on the web and that's expanding the opportunities insanely. And this is what everyone's calling web three, we've had web one. .
[00:06:38] It was mainly data we've had web two, which is social dominated by, you know, Metta, which was previously called Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc., YouTube tick-tock, etc.. Web three is the concept of owning things on the web, which will open up doors that we haven't even begun to father..
[00:06:59] Wendy: Okay. So go back to the car example, I shipped the car over and then rather having, rather than showing my title, I can just pull up my phone and show that I own NFT for that item?
[00:07:15] Mario: Yes. So the NFT, which is what we call non fungible token, and that's essentially a technological way of proving ownership. That NFT represents your car and that if you sell your car, instead of going through the whole paperwork, going through their central entity to change ownership, to go through all the documentation, you can essentially send the NFT from your wallet or your account to someone else's account.
[00:07:41] And now they have the ownership, just like you have a key to your house or key to your door. Now you've got NFT, a digital key or code that proves that you own something. And you can take it a step further: you can link that code to your key, and your key will only work if you're, let's say, you connect your key to your wallet and your key will only work
[00:08:04] if you have the NFT, the proof of ownership, the technological proof of ownership in your wallet. So when someone gives you a key to using your door, you got to use, it just doesn't work. When you pay them and they transfer the NFT, now your key will work cause your key is connected to your wallet.
[00:08:19] then now has the NFT. That's all become interoperable. So this is a very basic example of what we, we can expect very, very basic, but just gives you a taste of the efficiencies and the benefits of being able to decentralize the ownership and being able to move value more efficiently and rapidly on the, using the web.
[00:08:42] Wendy: Okay. So I listened to a podcast called Modern Finance. Have you heard that one? No. Okay. Well, they get into NFTs and they've been talking a lot about owning art and owning like technologically developed things, you know, so for there, like I see that already happening, people are buying this art that was created online and they send you to different sites where you can go see which ones have an NFT.
[00:09:14] And then they're talking about dividing it out, like say you own a Picasso. And you put it in this nonprofit and everybody can buy a part of this Picasso painting. So the value goes up. You don't have to be able to afford the whole painting. You afford one little bit of it. What are you seeing play out in that area?
[00:09:35] Because that's where I've, I've seen it working. I don't see it in the cars or the houses or the other things.
[00:09:43] Mario: Yes. I think your example is really good as well. Everyone's looking at art and paintings and all these different avatars. This is the second the internet. Remember the early days of the internet, either one was like an online live.
[00:09:57] That isn't where the internet is today. It's a way to communicate a way to entertain yourself. It's a way to, you know, obviously shop, it´s got all these different utilities that were not there in the early days and no one imagined us to get there. So now you're seeing the focus and the hype going after art
[00:10:17] and those advertised and they're being able to what you said, fractionize it, where people can own a small piece of it, which is very exciting. So this is the early phase and the adoption cycle, and I try to remind everyone that with every innovation, the human brain overestimates, the short-term potential.
[00:10:33] But under a short-term impact. So overestimates the short-term impact, but underestimates the long-term potential. And that's where it gets interesting that the long-term potential kind of fees is what people are under estimating or are not even understanding. So I'll talk about what you've mentioned is that digital art.
[00:10:49] So now you can own things. Well, you can own art same as you can own your car, you can own your house. You can own your ID. You can own your financial instruments. You can own your air pods. You, know everything else that you own around you owe assets you on, but you can also own art. So that's just one asset.
[00:11:05] And that gained traction on the, you know, in the crypto space right now, because it was an easy way at one to understand like owning art, online, digital art. I own it because there's proof that I own it. The same way, if you're hanging up in your house. The concept of ownership now exists in the digital world, like the physical world.
[00:11:27] So that's just the reason it's, it's gaining traction now because it is easy to understand. It's a good example. They also talked about fractionalizing well, that's even more exciting. So you can actually, no, you can't do that in the physical world. You can't get a piece of art and then cut it into pieces and give it to different people.
[00:11:43] You're on a bizarre, you own it in the web. Cause one on code. You can actually cut out that piece of ownership. Let's say the NFT represents a piece of art. We can cut it into pieces and sell it to different people. So that's almost like a security where different people own a piece of that art because a lot of people can't afford the a hundred K or 200 K or even a million dollars for a piece of art.
[00:12:04] But now that I've cut it into pieces, they can get exposure to that asset by just a smaller amount of money, but just owning that token. The token, which is part of that piece, depending how many tokens you break it into.
[00:12:18] Wendy: Okay. So, so that's what you're saying is just that we're overestimating kind of the art and the fractional ownership of NFTs, but over the longterm, almost anything of value that we have, like a house or a car or a boat.
[00:12:35] You could have that ownership. It's like a deed, it's an electronic deed.
[00:12:42] Mario: Yes. And as time evolves, you'll even see that detach from the physical world. Like now I've given examples of where it's linked to a physical asset, because easier to understand, but soon you can build your own business or your own leisure center, your own entertainment center, whatever it is that you do.
[00:13:01] Your own spaceships in the game, any asset you can own the asset as well. And that has no correlation with the physical world. So creating an asset or an empire or whatever it is that you created in a certain game or metaverse, it's not linked to the physical world. It's a completely separate asset.
[00:13:19] And technologically you own the asset the same way, you own things in the physical world.
[00:13:26] Wendy: Now that's where it's gotten into all the video games that people play. So if you buy a super fast spaceship at video game one, you can then move it over to video game two.
[00:13:39] Mario: Yes. Yes, this is, over the panel earlier, like a half an hour ago.
[00:13:44] Very high level, very technical about games. And this is what we call the concept of interoperability, where in the past, before 2017, even today, although centralized games, you buy the game assets, you can't trade them in many cases. And if the game goes bankrupt, what happens to all your assets? Let's say you spent a lot of time on a certain game, and then that game disappeared and it just doesn't get traction anymore.
[00:14:06] They close down, whatever happens. Well, what happens to all the assets you have on there? They just gone to waste because it doesn't exist. Anyone, you can't use it in another similar game. Well, now with NFTs actually own something that means as the game goes, you should take it and move it to another game or sell it on the, on the, on the secondary market.
[00:14:23] The same way. Like I traveled and I was in shutdown, Dubai. Now we'll be in Turkey in two days, I'm going to have my same suit guests with a lot of the same things. And I move them from one world to another, the same happened with the virtual world, whether it's a game or a metaverse. The goal, eventually not now take time is to allow you to move those assets that you own between different worlds, because you own them.
[00:14:44] You can do whatever you want with them, including moving them from different worlds that, between different worlds. So that, yeah, that that's a value, fascinating puzzle that we're watching very closely with the below for the next few months and years.
[00:14:56] Wendy: Okay. So I don't play games on video, got too much going on with other stuff and you know, but I know it's huge in the teenager through 20 year olds. So buying these assets to me and I had a cousin who played a lot of, I don't know, farm yard or farm animals, and she was spending money to buy things on that, but they're not... So,
[00:15:24] I see that for a very targeted audience. I don't see like the general, public's going to buy a bunch of stuff on games and want to have them go, you know, there's a certain segment. Can you extrapolate that to something where more of the general public would use that?
[00:15:42] Mario: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think you made a good point, because again, you go back to the adoption cycle.
[00:15:47] The people using the internet today are not the people that were using it in the early nineties or the mid nineties when the early two thousands. There were not the early adopters that there was a library to late adopters. So the same thing will happen here where, you know, gamers will use gaming as an example, this concept of owning something is important to them, and it makes sense cause games on their assets and they want to own their own assets.
[00:16:09] And then thinking of the concept of games being a droppable also makes sense. Now, how do you look at the mass market? Because I'm not a gamer myself either. Well, first I see games evolving through metaverse. Okay. To those digital virtual open world, because what is the metaverse will I describe the metaverse or I define it as a digital representation of the, of the physical world we live in today.
[00:16:31] So, and you can go as far as I can Zoom, Instagram, which is they´re all metaverse, but the early metaverse what to minimize. The web metaverse allows you to own things because it has to be a representation of the digit of the physical world and the physical world you're put on stuff. You need to own stuff in the virtual world.
[00:16:49] And what actually happened is that all those games will eventually or gradually evolve into metaverses. So what I mean by this, if you think about life itself, you can think of life as game, the game of life. So all those games that we see as games right now, and we will for the foreseeable future, we'll have over to an entire ecosystem.
[00:17:08] We can go there and do a lot of the things that you do in the physical world, socialize signal, build the business, entertainment, all these things. You could do in a game as it evolves. And these are the things we do on a daily basis and the physical world. So, and again, because I don't think a business to mine, metals and build businesses and people going there to get into thang, to play a game, to compete, they can signal their wealth about while wearing some expensive clothes or having some expensive weapons.
[00:17:35] So a lot of the aspects that make our physical life, apply in games. And this will make games over time, more like metaverses. So when someone's looking at this, not from a game, you have well, a good way to look at it as you can, you know, invest in buying land. That's a good investment as an investment opportunity.
[00:17:50] For example, I'm not saying it's a good investment opportunity. I'm just saying it's a better way to understand it. First. Definitely don't invest as it takes a long time to understand the space. I think start looking at other assets, you know, you have your own appetite and wear clothes. Let's say you're a big fashion person.
[00:18:04] You wear product, product clothes within the metaverse. So it's a way to signal to the world that, Hey, our wealthier I'm successful because I'm wearing expensive clothes. We do that in the digital world all the time, especially in airports, as an airport earlier today. So especially in airports, you've got all these people wearing those branded clothes as a way to signal their success.
[00:18:23] Well, the same thing will happen in the virtual world. We can wear the project we work for, called Faith Tribe and Faith Tribe allows anyone to launch a clothing brand within the metaverse and that people could wear that brand and wear those clothes within the metaverse to signal to the world their identity.
[00:18:40] Wendy: Was Faith Tribe licensing brands already to do that on the metaverse?
[00:18:47] Mario: So they haven't licensed any big brands. I think they've got a few signs. Right now, not just allowing the, so Faith Tribe was launched by a company called Faith Connection, that empowers designers. So designers can design a piece of art that people can buy the piece of clothing with that designer´s art.
[00:19:02] So. So, what they're doing now is they democratizing fashion for the better of us, allowing anyone to mostly clothing brands. So let's say I want to launch a clothing brand on the matter of us, I can go on their platform and the whole technology and promotion is there to help me launch a successful brand.
[00:19:17] Wendy: Okay, so I'm listening and I want to go down two avenues is one. I want to understand what kind of traction you're already seeing on this going. The other is that whole other will metaverse take over real life. We've just gone through a couple of years where people had to learn from home, socialize from home family parties on zoom and people miss that human interaction. You know, there are advantages. It's easier to do work around the globe and this, by the way, any listener who's listening, this ties in, because of where we're talking about global marketing and global connections. And so NFTs and cryptocurrency are going to have a real effect on that, which we'll talk about later, but either I'd like to hear what traction's going on and then, how do you see that reconciling with real life and the connections, human connections, and touch that people need.
[00:20:11] Mario: So I'd say two things that will grab the audience's attention. Number one is, I'll kind of merge it into one. We're already living in the metaverse. We're already living in a digital world.
[00:20:24] This is reality for us. Zoom, Instagram, YouTube, Tick-tock, games. People have a majority of their day dominated by five different pillars of the web. So we are already living a digital representation of the physical world. You know, Instagram filters are the new backup. YouTube is the new entertainment.
[00:20:44] Zoom is the new board. All we're doing all that web three is doing a crypto is allowing for that digital world to evolve even further. Does that mean we'll spend less time in the physical world? Probably. Does that have, could that lead to bad results? Like, you know, us not taking care of our physical bodies as we're living in a digital world, likely. While we find solutions as we always do to these problems? Very likely.
[00:21:09] So I think it will cause problems. I wouldn't say it's lack of human interaction. It's just different interaction because the technology is not there to allow it to be very personal. It would be good if I have my avatar naturally actually see you fully see your complete perfect quality, almost real right next to me.
[00:21:23] And imagine that I can actually touch him. All these technologies are being built, allowing for that human touch and that connection. Instead of, you know, taking a few steps back, it takes a leap forward because now you can connect with anyone in the world. And have the ability to see them interact with them, see that their body language, and be able to even touch them, which is still in development.
[00:21:43] It's not there yet, but that's, you know, you can search haptics for that. So that's the moving towards virtual reality, which is a spoken part of that open metaverse that we're talking about. But it will take time to get there.
[00:21:55] Wendy: Okay. And then what about the second part of how far along the progression are we?
[00:22:01] Mario: Extremely extremely, extremely early, like barely any adoption in this space. This tastes is still experimented to find the right solution, the right way to leverage web through the concept of digital ownership. So I'd compare it to a year, 1990 a year, 2000, I'd say 22 years. No, we've got a long way to go.
[00:22:22] So, you know, 2000 is 22 years ago. Crypto's moving a lot faster because it's built on top of the web and adoption is a lot faster, but it's still a long way away from being mass adopted.
[00:22:32] Wendy: Okay. So let's jump into crypto currency. So NFTs are our ownership, proven ownership like deeds and certificates of ownership.
[00:22:43] Cryptocurrency Is like,
[00:22:45] Mario: crypto
[00:22:46] is a broad term that allows that can be used for any. But the way I would define crypto and the technology of blockchain is a way to de-centralize different aspects of our life, whether it's de-centralized mist or volume, which is Bitcoin decentralizing into the value of exchange.
[00:23:05] And there's a few examples of that and decentralizing the infrastructure being built on the web. And the theory was a good example of that, where people could build these decentralized businesses on a platform like a theory or Solano or others. Okay.
[00:23:22] Wendy: So back up here, back up, you're talking about it's crypto is for decentralizing.
[00:23:28] What do you mean by decentralizing?
[00:23:30] Mario: Great question. So the US dollar is probably the most valuable currency for you right now. It doesn't, the US dollar is controlled by the US defense. That is that has a mandate to protect the US dollar as a medium of exchange. Now, there are such as an up to a cause they want to get, you know, they want to maintain their position and the politicians or the president or the, the, it has changed or whatever they decide who stays and who goes.
[00:24:02] So the incentives are aligned to keep everyone happy short term. So the reserve bank is keeping everyone happy, short term by printing a lot of money, rather than focusing on the long term health of the US dollar. So the SRO is controlled by a central entity that makes decision on how to maintain value and those decisions are flawed due to the flaws of us being human humans, the cognitive biases.
[00:24:24] Now, if you move to something like Bitcoin, Bitcoin is governed by code, no human, emotional, or human intellect could interfere in how many Bitcoins exist, how we distribut it, any aspect of it. It is a decentralized store of value. How's it decentralized? Well, it's one. It's not run by a central entity run by CEO.
[00:24:43] It's run by code that cannot be tampered with, and that allows a fault of the, for all of it to function And the same applies to other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, Solana, and others. So in brief, essentially, crypto's allowing for a code to replace middle parties and to replace humans, to allow for the new web to function.
[00:25:05] Wendy: Okay. So if you go back to the scifi movies of the 50, they'd say, well, machines or robots are going to rule the world and they're going to own it. Why? When the machine that is governing the code, confuse everything and make more of a mess than, than having a centralized body manage it.
[00:25:28] Mario: Okay. So with your question, I concerned about having something open, what prevents us from going down the wrong path.
[00:25:36] So the way blockchain is built and the genius of it. Is, it allows for the alignment of incentives. That means whoever's participating in any protocol in any coin. I say, Bitcoin, they own Bitcoin because they're participating in it. They want the, you know, the protocol to survive. So in other words, their incentive is aligned to allow this technology to survive.
[00:26:00] So because that's how they profit, they buy into it. They have a piece of it just like you have shares in the company. So then, then they'd be looking at making the right decisions that will help the ecosystem rather than hobby ecosystem, because at the end of the day, it's decentralized, but people still make the decisions, at least for now instead of AI.
[00:26:19] So we're not going down the route of AI, replacing humans and decision. That's a far less something that's not worth discussing way, way too early to discuss that. But what we know now is that crypto allows for decentralization, which means there is no central entity that makes a decision. Well, who makes a decision as to community holders that have the incentive to maintain that protocol, maintain the value of it.
[00:26:43] So they'll make decisions accordingly to maintain that value of the ecosystem. Well, the protocol.
[00:26:49] Wendy: Okay, that makes a lot of sense. And then what do you see happening in the cryptocurrency markets right now?
[00:26:55] Mario: I really don't watch the price of the market too much because it's, the human brain is really bad at predicting things like this. So I avoid it. I think it will go up or go down a lot.
[00:27:06] You know, Bitcoin was a few cents, about a decade or so ago about. Almost 14 years ago. It was a few dollars after that. So yeah, I think that's the best way. I just don't don't pay too much attention to the price and I say, try to focus on the technology itself, how that will evolve and how we can play a role in that evolution as investors.
[00:27:30] Wendy: Okay. So let's, let's dig into what you're doing now, because I think you're getting ready to go public with your company?
[00:27:38] Mario: Yeah. So I have to be careful how I phrase this, but we're working towards listing on the stock market. That's the company NFT tech that we've reserved the ticker symbol NFT in north America, which is pretty sexy to have that ticker really does assess you get invested in this space.
[00:27:53] You know, we're coming really early deals through our network, our connections and our knowledge of the space. And then if anyone released. Anyone buying our stock will get exposure to these difficult, too difficult to get investment opportunities and getting them early at really good valuations.
[00:28:11] Wendy: And so what does your company actually do?
[00:28:15] Mario: The best way to look at it is like a portfolio company, IP company, all businesses and acquire others. While also investing in projects. So like a VC and an incubator kind of mixed into one.
[00:28:27] Wendy: Are there any other VC companies or incubators that are publicly traded?
[00:28:31] Mario: Cryptocurrency. Yes, but NFT, no, my friend who is also staying in one place here, he runs one of the biggest crypto incubators.
[00:28:39] He's also actually, I can't disclose that, but I know someone in this space was also looking at going public with a similar model. So and there's a lot of crypto companies that went public. But in terms of specific ones that you asked for, I can't think of any, but I'm sure there is. There's just so much money in this space.
[00:28:53] It's insane.
[00:28:54] Wendy: Yeah. So what are you seeing about like who's getting involved? Who were the players? What did they come from? Like talk about this. Cause I think a lot of people have this vision of it's fake money and it's a bunch of young adults sitting around paper rich. So give us the reality.
[00:29:12] Mario: Yeah. So a lot of these arguments are a bit outdated.
[00:29:15] Sometimes the paper rich will, you could turn all. Cryptos to USD, DT or USD on an exchange. So you can actually liquidate that to sweetheart cash. Gemma loves. So that's in terms of that, that particular point. And what was the other point beyond.
[00:29:33] Wendy: Like who's involved in this and how are they making money?
[00:29:37] So people that invested back in 2000 and when it was pennies, now it's up around, I think the last time I checked Bitcoin was around
[00:29:47] Mario: 42, 43. Today
[00:29:49] Wendy: it's $42. Yeah. $42,000. Yeah. I'm going to go buy it if it's 42.
[00:29:58] Mario: Yeah. So, so, you know, we try to get into projects really early and privately, and we try to look for projects that have utility, that are bringing value to our world, that have an actual use case, you know. Ethereum allows people to build businesses on top of it. Bitcoin allowed it you know, it's a good way a story of value. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other coins that allow you to transfer value as in money. The theorem allows you to build NFTs on it, same as Solana.
[00:30:26] So you've got all these different protocols that have actual utility. And then I look at games. I think games, as you mentioned earlier, it will be the early adopters of the space because it just makes sense for them. Cause they're, you know, they're used to having their assets taken away from them. If they do something wrong, they're kept getting suspended.
[00:30:42] Or if the game goes bust, they expect to their, their end game assets to just disappear. Um, so for them, the concept of decentralization where you can move your assets from one game to another, cause you actually own them, uh, is revolutionary. And we saw hundreds of millions of dollars flow into the space, into the gaming space, especially with a high quality projects like star at last, actually infinity see CRS that all.
[00:31:06] Games that are built on the blockchain. They are decentralized allowing people to own their assets with the most gangs, build their own empire, their own life, their home world, that they own in a virtual web that people could come and visit and build relationships with chat have discussions. So, yeah, these are the projects we're looking for those early projects that have actual utility.
[00:31:28] Wendy: Okay. So a lot in the gaming. At this point,
[00:31:33] Mario: Gaming is one of the more exciting ones. Metaverse also exciting, but I'm also seeing a lot of hype where people, you know, whatever, there's something sexy, just like an oh one. Everyone was launching a.com business. So right now I want to show the emotion metaverse company, which I think is.
[00:31:48] Wendy: So you think it'll be like a search engine. One of them will come and dominate and then everybody will be on that metaverse?
[00:31:55] Mario: And some cases, no, the metaverse will be multiple. So, and you won't get lost. And many of us the same way, anyone can launch a website launching a metaverse is the same as launching a website.
[00:32:04] If you don't have visitors, the metaverse is useless. You need to get people to start using it. That's the whole purpose of it. It´s bringing you to a lot of people, just make people, see China to bring them utility. Living with you is one of the more obvious.
[00:32:16] Yeah, so I'll be looking at, um, and the question was what opportunities are were looking for. Yeah, those are some examples. You know, gaming is one of them defies another. I want to get to a verse like a decentralized version of finance without having to use banks and financial institutions protocols, the foundation that allows the technology to operate, the picks and shovels approach to the technology to blockchain and crypto, we'll be, we'll be playing games in games, define and protocols, which is like a technology stack to allow for that digital world.
[00:32:49] Wendy: So talking about all these digital world, you know the podcast is sponsored by Rapport International who provides high quality language translation, interpretation.
[00:33:01] How does all the communication happen across languages in these metaverses and defy and games?
[00:33:10] Mario: English is a universal language. Like speaking English helps you tremendously, but if you speak Chinese, Russian, etc. Those other languages, Spanish, etc. , does bring a lot of value. Um, because you know, there's apps and stuff.
[00:33:23] You can have automatic translate, which makes it easier, but you lose that ability to interact and connect when you're using translation service in the middle. But since we know we've read that physical world to a digital world, you can embed translation there in the physical world, we open our mouth to talk face-to-face and that we have to look away to look at the definition of the translation of something, the virtual world in that, in a multi-verse like, I like to call it, uh, you can automate the translations aspect of.
[00:33:50] Wendy: Okay. So I imagine that the quality is not going to be there. It's going to be like a Google translate or some like audio dictation, but at least you'll get the gist when you're talking to somebody?
[00:34:02] Mario: Yeah. I'd say this is like the what's fine in the early stages. Doesn't otherwise it wouldn't make too much sense.
[00:34:09] Uh, but I don't know what Meadows would, no matter what, a bunch of smart guys named Metta, which was previously known as Facebook, they changed their name to.
[00:34:17] Wendy: Right. Yeah, no, I think the language technology is fabulous. I don't, I think with 3000 new words a day and the different slang that's coming in and the, how do you communicate, I don't think we'll ever get to a global language, but it'll be interesting to see how much people can connect. Yeah, so, okay.
[00:34:36] And so what about the impact on the global economy and conflict between countries and going to a global currency, which I, I see as more possible. What do you think will happen in the, in those
[00:34:52] Mario: areas? Sure. So how will disrupt our economy? She was the first question. And then the second question You know, the, the second question is about the utility of the, of crypto.
[00:35:02] So I'll go back to the second question. I want to answer the first one first, and then I want to better understand the second question.
[00:35:07] Yeah. So, so, uh, in terms of how that went back, our economy, as I said, the metaverse is a digital representation of the physical world. So you're essentially going to see whole economies shift to that virtual world.
[00:35:18] And we're seeing this, you know, look at the valuations of companies like Meta and Apple and Google their insane valuations, insane market caps that , those, those companies have. Airbnb, Uber. So, we already see web companies have crazy valuations. We all know that tech have crazy multiples relative to other industries.
[00:35:39] So as the concept of an open metaverse, so that, that decentralized aspect of it, we can own things on the web. What we talked about earlier, the efficient movement of value. So now that you can own things on the web.. Now it's like almost a replica of the physical world because in the physical world, you can own things.
[00:35:56] Now, finally, you can own things in the virtual world. So what we would it be too surprising to see is a shift of massive resources from the physical world to the virtual world, to enjoy that virtual represent representation of the physical world have whole planet's whole ecosystems built and whole economies.
[00:36:15] Almost. You're going to have trillions of dollars shift because the utility, the use cases, the benefits of that digital representation of the physical world is immense because almost everything, literally, almost everything could move to the digital world. So just add the numbers. You're looking at GDP size capital moving to the metaverse and then? What was the second question? The second
[00:36:41] Wendy: was, do you think that we'll get to a global currency?
[00:36:47] Mario: Yeah, that's a tough question. Really tough question. A very tough question. Like, you know, currency is a way for community to operate as if it's a representation that you belong to such a community.
[00:36:56] So currency, I think will become more of a social token, essentially a topic that not only represents value, but also represents values. The representative community. You holding a certain digital currency may say something about you may signal to the world I'm part of X, Y, Z community. So I think we'll still have fragmented currencies, but instead of being geographically limited, now it's limited by community. So different communities will build their own currency. And what will bring currency´s value is who accepts it as currency. Now, if your community accepts to create a such a currency, they'll start using it between each other. That will give it value because members are accepting it as a transfer of value as a way to pay for something.
[00:37:40] Wendy: And that is so interesting because I am like my views on where this are going are almost opposite of, or, you know, just different view is I can see a more global currency as to which one holds value and is accepted more because in a global business making cross border payments is very difficult. And I don't want to go across different platforms.
[00:38:05] I want something that's recognized,that I can pay, that I don't have all the service fees or the hassle of the pay. So that's where I see a lot of simplistic, you know, without could simplify my life. And I could see like people going to a global, to a currency that doesn't have really high inflation rate, just like people went straight to cell phones over the wired phones, but I don't see the NFTs as strong. This has been very enlightening for me to get a, more of a vision for NFT´s, like a broader vision because yeah, if I could have my ownership of my car, my house and my whatever else, right there, I still have to have the lender is going to hold anything that I'm paying a payment on.
[00:38:48] So all those things like why, no, it's
[00:38:52] Mario: not only the case. So you can, I'll give you an example. Actually, I'm going to get everyone listening to close their eyes and imagine something that might put this into perspective. Before doing so ,I want to comment on something you said, Wendy, that's true is that, you know, crypto doesn't allow for that efficient way of sending money, you know, and everyone knows what happened in Ukraine.
[00:39:09] So my dancing partner sister lives in Ukraine, or lived in Ukraine, and we were finding where to send her money so she can use that money to escape the country. Crypto was the easiest way to send her money instantly, within seconds. And someone turned that money to Fiat into dollars, frankly, for her.
[00:39:26] And she gave her cash and she might not know all the time. She might not even need to do that because she could just use that quick though to pay others in crypto. And that becomes a way of transferring value. And the real exciting thing is that there's no central party that can stop it. Now, Ukrainian banks were hit hard.
[00:39:41] Um, you know, you have other, you know, other financial institutions, barred from working in Ukraine, but you can't have crypto stopped in Ukraine because is all based on decentralized technology built on the web, now you look at NFT´s, is a completely different use case. And this is an example that I'll give everyone.
[00:39:57] It'd be a good way to kind of conclude everyone's understanding of this, because I want, I want everyone to imagine this after the podcast. So I want you to imagine waking up and appearing in a board room, we're starting to negotiate with, you know, your team next to you, and about the other people on the other side of the table, then you're negotiating your business.
[00:40:17] You can see their faces, either smell their perfume. If you're shaking their hand to say hi, you feel that handshake. And you're sitting there negotiating what, seeing all their facial expression. That's a representation of the metaverse i n a few years' time. Well, what I expect. I imagine you excited, you know, you, you decide to do a deal and you signed the dotted line, like let's do this.
[00:40:39] And let's say you're buying their property, their virtual property and their physical property. You're buying your virtual property. They have, they said to have a property that they used to run effects in the virtual world and the physical Get ally transferred to you now, your own house, your own other assets, you own X, Y, Z, whatever it is that you bought.
[00:40:58] Without going through the hassle of getting such a transaction done and giving a percentage to the middle parties, that's what allows the efficient transfer of.
[00:41:12] Wendy: I mean, if you look at Airbnb taking out the hotel industry and you look at Uber and Lyft taking out the taxi and you know, you look at those businesses and you say, okay, so now NFTs are going to come in and take out the whole real estate market. Like I could see that happening. I still don't know if I want to own a house in the metaverse
[00:41:35] Mario: that's it.
[00:41:36] Let's just, let's just, this is the next thing to get your head around. There's two arguments. Number one, what's the point of having it? What would people use it? You know, I sleep in my house. I watch TV, I relax my house. I invite friends over my house. Why do I need a house in the middle of this? Because remember you don't need to sleep in the metaverse.
[00:41:52] You don't need to go to the toilet. No one needs to come and visit. You can tell for anywhere. So a lot of the problems that our households and the physical world, they don't need to solve for the digital world. So what's the purpose of having, and I'll answer that one. The second one is like anyone could just create a virtual house is really easy.
[00:42:08] beach house that they have. Now as soon as you sign the dotted line saying, Hey, I agree to this.
[00:42:13] Now it's signed on the blockchain where there's proof de-centralized bridge got assigned. There's no central entities, no central property says, Hey, this is signed. This is true. It's all technologically there. And you can actually build that in with, after you sign it automatically without any bank, any entity, your money.
[00:42:32] Well, your crypto, your stable crypto, let's say USDT, which is like a US dollar crypto, gets transferred automatically to the other party. Okay. Now, where did the NFTs coming? Well, their home, their virtual house is represented by an NFT. It's an asset that they own and the physical house could also be represented by an NFT that proves this person owns that house and they have to be connected to the key to the alarm system, et cetera.
[00:43:00] But that's where the agent of things. So as soon as your money automatically gets transferred to the other party automatically within the code, you can build, you can build those NFTs that represent ownership of that physical house and that virtual house and anything else you want to represent, Get ally Not really, cause you don't wanna create a house in any metaverse it's like building. And New York versus building a house in Subsaharan Africa in the desert where no one is there, same house, two different locations. New York would be costing an arm and a leg. The desert would be very cheap. Why?
[00:43:31] Because there's a lot of adoption. There's a lot of people, the same applies to the Meadows. Lag is valuable and Meadows has to have adoption that have a lot of people using it because it's going to get a lot of traction. A lot of people will see a lamp. And not anyone can just create land out of, out of nowhere.
[00:43:47] Same thing with a website. Why would a website be valuable? Well, anyone could create a website. Does it make it valuable? Because no one's using it. There's no value there. So the same problem with a metaverse you find that or assets and the assets could be in game masters, like we said earlier, spaceship, weapons, etc, where the utility is using them, like using them in a game, but you actually own them.
[00:44:08] Um, but as soon as something like your land in a metaverse, well, why would you buy it? Let's say you use that property to do business things, like to do business buildings, or it's a place to watch movies. It's a place to hang out for communities that support X Y , Z. W We could use it as a stage for people to speak because we want that attention as the metaverse has a lot of people using it.
[00:44:25] So an asset, in the metaverse has different utilities, different values and people are already buying a lot of assets, a lot of land, a lot of other assets at the metaverse as they expect our physical world to shift to that digital world. And they would in their eyes have purchased those assets at really good prices before the world understands how far our everyday life, that digital world will engulf.
[00:44:52] Wendy: Okay. Okay. So I don't see buying a house, but I could see buying a, you know, a business on main street on a really popular or a, you know, Someplace where business to business services or global businesses done. But if I had a facility there, then people from all over the world could stop in, or I could go on the stage and speak.
[00:45:14] So for business case usage, I'd say that's fantastic, but I guess you could create that for socializing. Like all the people I knew in college could belong to one and we could gather easily to talk.
[00:45:27] Mario: Yeah. So. Meetings in the metaverse is like the beginning. I see, I see the look, what do you do in the physical world?
[00:45:35] We socialize. We signal our identity. We build businesses and create value. So these are the three of the corporates we do next two more. I can't remember, but these are the three of the core pillars in a physical world already. You're seeing those physical pillars, those aspects that make our everyday life represented in the digital world.
[00:45:56] You can signal by owning. Uh, very valuable NFT. You could socialize obviously a great way to interact. So a lot of the, the benefits of, of everyday physical life could be replicated in that digital world, but are being replicated in the digital world. And they've got to be replicated in digital because it has its benefits.
[00:46:18] It does make things more efficient. It does a lot for inclusivity, anyone around the world to join any metaverse.. At least for now, before human Greek greed kicks in and makes this different. But for now that's the case.
[00:46:29] Wendy: All right. Well, this has been absolutely fantastic. I know we gotta get you off to sleep off that jet lag, but I always end with favorite foreign word.
[00:46:39] So now that we're in the metaverse and NFT and you got a new favorite word.
[00:46:44] Mario: I use it as the multi-verse that's the word I'm talking a lot about, because as I said earlier, anyone can create a metaverse like anyone to create a website, getting people to use it is really hard, but the same way websites exists in what we call the web metaverse has existed in what I like to call the multi-verse.
[00:47:02] That's like a whole digital, the how the whole system, the whole earth, it's a virtual earth that people could build countries, cities within that earth. It's the best way I could describe it as in the multi-verse.
[00:47:15] Wendy: Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah. That's I hadn't heard it said that way. I like that. Yeah. And where can people reach you?
[00:47:23] Mario: Sure. I think the best way to learn about the space NFT tech, which is my main company, NFT tech.com. I think we've got a newsletter now at the bottom of it. Where if you subscribe, you get a lot of updates, a lot of insight. I don't do a lot of these interviews, do a lot of videos, educating people. Uh, you'll be able to get notified when those come out.
[00:47:41] Wendy: Okay. And final advice for people that are interested in NFT's or crypto.
[00:47:48] Mario: Remember this quote, the human brain over estimates the short term impact of innovation, but under estimates severely the long-term potential. So keep that in mind, as you understand the space and focus on educating yourself.
[00:48:05] Wendy: Oh, that's fantastic. When are you going to write a book about all this?
[00:48:09] Mario: When I stop traveling so much, like you get a job.
[00:48:11] Wendy: Actually, we should just take all your interviews and make chapters out of them. So thank you very much, Mario. Nawfal it's N A W F A L. If you want to find him LinkedIn or Instagram or in the metaverse..
[00:48:26] He's definitely somebody to keep an eye on. He said lots of success and always has interesting stories. And always, if you have questions about languages and you need translation, reach out to Rapport, translations R A P P O R T translations.com where anybody there can really help you accomplish anything you want across languages.
[00:48:48] So thanks for listening today.
[00:48:50]
