Mortgages, NFTs, and What's Next - Interview with Miki Furman

Grab your drink and get ready. This is the caffeinated hustle, the best place to learn about entrepreneurs and FTS and life expert advice and guest interviews to launch your business and NFT journey further than you ever imagined. Now, here's your host, entrepreneur, coffee fanatic and founder of the NFT project, caffeinated creatures, Ben Carson. All right, team. So Mickey is a mortgage broker, real estate agent and a Bitcoin and a TN doozy as his thirst for knowledge and search for truth gives him a unique perspective on markets, finance and future technologies. And he definitely didn't like the intro, that's fine. But oh, it's got Mickey, you're obese, because I want to talk about something specific here. That's going to be pretty cool. But you're just so wide in your knowledge. Like literally, we just had a 15 minute conversation on podcasts. And there was zero interest for podcasts on any part of this. I'm just, there's gonna be a fun one. These, everyone just strap it right. This is gonna be good. But welcome the show, Mickey. Thanks for stopping by. Thank you. Of course. My pleasure, man. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So I want to dive deep. But before we do, let's just knock out just a basic, you know, let's say five minutes or less. Give us a background of yourself what you do how you got there. And you know, just listen to learn more about you. Yeah, absolutely. So So my story is super unconventional, I guess you would say so you mentioned you know, the mortgage broker. So that was the first sort of pillar, I guess as to what you would say that I do, or what my day to day is, and the way that I sort of got into that. So I'm 34 at the moment, and back when I was right before my 19th birthday, you know, I was on the I don't know if you remember this website from back in the day called work. Habilis Does that ring a bell? Is this website where you would go to apply for a job basically. So I'm on there one day, and I'm looking for a job and I see some opportunity at a company called HSBC finance, they didn't know much didn't have a financial background. It's not something I particularly went to school with or for. And it's not something that as a kid, I was like, oh, man, I want to you know, grow up to be a mortgage guy. It wasn't it wasn't in my purview at the time, I applied. Nonetheless, it said, you know, you got to wear a tie and talked on the phone, which I had some sales experience on the phone, I was like, okay, perfect, you know, so I applied, luckily, basically got hired. And that was back in Oh, six. So for you guys out there, because I'm in Canada. But you know what that was, it was at the peak of insanity, right? So I got in kind of like as things were booming, and I had a really good opportunity to sort of understand that business and understand the market. And that got me interested into the economy and politics and all these other things. And then obviously, 2008 happened, it wasn't that bad here in Canada. I mean, it wasn't great, but it was far from what you guys had going on over there. And so survived that and you know, then eventually went on to be an independent agent, meaning I sort of, you know, worked for myself did my own thing under a brokerage, and I spent a lot of time in that business, I still do it, it's I wouldn't say it's my greatest passion, obviously, I'm sure you can tell. But that's how I got into that space. And then about a year ago, just because from being in that business, obviously, you have a lot of exposure to real estate and real estate agents, it's obviously a big part of my business as it is. And I figured it would just make a lot of sense to become a realtor as well and sort of offer an all in one sort of product or experience for my customers, right, it just be more value add for them. So that that's how I got into that. And yeah, that is my day to day, nine to five, I guess. Yeah, that's really so Do you enjoy being the agent or the broker more when you do both? Well, I mean, the difference between them as it's just a licensing thing, the business in itself, are you saying like a broker of record, as in running the shop? Is that what you mean? Maybe when you say, broker, what do you do? Because I'm assuming you like making all the paperwork. So it actually goes through and the deal doesn't fall apart? What do you do? Yeah, and that's and so I mean, the main difference is just the wordage. The job description essentially is the same to be a mortgage broker, you know, it's just, it's a license that allows you to run a team or start your own office. So I did that just as a, as an in case because I was in the industry for so long. So I went from having my standard mortgage agent license to then upgrading it to my broker's license. But the day to day job is pretty straightforward to simplify, I connect people with money from all walks of life. So whether you want to buy a house or whether you want to refinance, whatever the case is, you would talk to someone such as myself, and I would basically, you know, connect your profile and your your your whole situation and find the most suitable solution for you versus you going to, you know, Bank A, B, and C and rate shopping and not really knowing what's going on because they don't offer that level of service. A lot of the time when you walk into your traditional bank, right, they sort of just throw rate at you here it is take it or leave it kind of thing. So it's more of a concierge service for your finances, for lack of a better word, I would say. Cool. Yeah. Is that something that you deal with all sorts of types of people or is it kind of on the higher end stuff? So where people are looking for a mortgage broker? So I mean, just you know, before we got started here, I'm sure you kind of noticed, like, my passion is being creative. That's the way my mind works. I don't like paperwork, to be honest, I'm not into sitting there and math. Like, it's not really my thing. I'm a people person. And so what I find I know, I don't have a specific clientele. I mean, I would say it's wide ranging. So I've got people that that do happen to fit that criteria. But a lot of the business I do happens to fall more on the I think what you guys would refer to it as would be hard money, like hard money lending. So more on the private side dealing with like, let's say, you know, I have one person on one side, that's an investor. And he has a specific appetite of the type of people and deals that he wants to lend on. And then I have clients on the other end that might fit that criteria, and then it's just sort of connect them and you know, find a reasonable solution between the two of them type of thing very cool. Well, I do like real estate, the point of this podcast hear a little bit. Today, at least, this specific episode is going to be a little more not on the entrepreneurial side of mortgages, but on the future of it, because you are also very experienced with NF T's and you were a big fan of that. And so there's a rare opportunity here to talk about something most people aren't talking about yet. So I've explained when NF t is in another episode, but I like to get a perspective. So in your own words, what is an NF T to you? So I mean, an NF T to me, if we just it's interesting that we're still in a time and space where NF peas I guess, are sort of subjective, where we're asking people like, what is it for you? And what is it? You know what? I mean? Yeah, right. But I think it's gonna evolve. I think it's early. If I had to say what it was, I mean, just think about the internet in the early days in the 90s. And as to where we're at right now. And there's a lot of people that I talked to, because, and you're probably the same way you mentioned, you got into the space, like in October of 20.1. Right? Yeah, I would say that I started actively paying attention more or less around the same time. I was noticing things back in the spring of 2021. Unfortunately, not enough, I missed the whole meme thing of the board. Election, unfortunately. But yeah, man like what is it? So in essence, you got to start at the beginning, in my opinion, you've got to look at the blockchain and the technology that that houses first. And so the blockchain is nothing more than an open source Ledger in which all transactions can be viewable. And you have different block chains for different things. You know, you can shift over to the Bitcoin Blockchain, for instance, you can go over to Solana, you can go to Aetherium, and stuff like that. But for NFT, specifically, I would say most people, when they talk about it, they refer to the theory and blockchain. What that means is that it's essentially in my opinion, I think it's going to be a storage of data, no different than where and how we store data and information on the internet, although we're kind of doing this now. And this is like late stage web to sort of behavior, right or an activity. You know, at the early days of the internet, you had web one, which was basically read only, right. But at the core, every website is built on the internet. So the internet in this case, look at it like the blockchain. And then you know, various internet protocols were built on top of it. So for example, like browsers, whether it's Chrome or Firefox, or whichever, these are just different applications that are built on top of it, but at the core, that data is stored on the internet, right, like on servers and stuff like that. So an NFT, in essence, doesn't have to be a photo. It doesn't have to be a JPEG, as we're familiar with right now. To me, I think we're just in the very, very sort of early stages of the whole NFT. And just the entire technological revolution that's happening right now. And so we're sort of in a novelty phase, right? It's almost like, if you remember, in the 90s, you know, when emails started, they made a whole movie about it, like you got mail, I was a movie about literally, email, like, like, it was a rom com built on this idea that a guy sent an email and like, you know, the technology was new, but it didn't end there. And it was just, you know, just kind of starting and finding its footing, and then it evolved. So today we're using NF T's with photos. But at the core, an NF T is a smart contract that is programmed onto the theory or salon or whichever blockchain that it wants to integrate with. And it not only shows things like ownership, right? So for example, web to you don't own the content. We're using platforms like social platforms, whether it's Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and we're putting up our content on there for the purpose of hoping and trying to get visibility that then later, we can sort of figure out how to monetize through a brand deal or some affiliate relationship and stuff like that. But the truth is, that is not actually owned by you. And that's the biggest difference in separator between web two and three. Right? So this right now that you're gonna put up on whichever platform or multiple platforms you don't actually own. And that's important because that's sort of the exchange and the deal that I will say that you're making with these various social media platforms, when you decide to post on them right. This is why they can either D platform you or sort of shadow ban you. They decide and In exchange, you get some visibility, but you don't monetize on it, per se. Or if you do happen to get monetized, whether it's through a YouTube or stuff like that, or tick tock, whichever. And I'm sure you know this, it's not such a great deal. It's almost like, I guess kind of like the record deals that you used to probably see happen in the 70s 80s, maybe 90s. Right, the pre streaming era, that's kind of where we're at right now, in terms of where web two is what it is. But NF T's you kind of know, I kind of took us farther, but you have to do it, because you need the scenic background to really understand what you're looking at, right? Because it's so much more than like, oh, man, it's a picture of a cartoon monkey. Like, no, it's, it's so much more because it really at the core represents ownership beyond ownership at all. It also means that you as the creator of a project, and that, by the way, will be business owners as well, not just guys that are starting projects for the purpose of you know, selling out a meant and sort of making money on it in that traditional sense. Because, again, we're still in that very novelty space of it, right? Like it's going to evolve. And I heard Gary Vee say this, and I thought it was it was a great sort of take on it. Like, for example, take a pizza restaurant owner, right? Sometimes restaurants in order to generate business, what they'll do is they'll give out, they'll sort of give out like, you know, those stamp cards where you go enough times and they stamp it each time and eventually got something for free. So let's imagine for a second you go to your own a pizza restaurant, and as one of your marketing strategies to capture more market share would be to issue you know, again, I don't know who would do this. But let's say they give out a lifetime piece of card for free for whatever reason, somehow you've eaten so much pizza at this place that the owners decided to give you this, for example, right. So you as the holder of that card, right? There's only so much pizza, you can eat, at some point, the value of it is going to go to zero. But if it's done in the form of NFT, you can theoretically then sell that to someone else for whichever price point hypothetically, now the owner of the pizza store, he's still involved because remember, at the core of what an NF t is, there's a smart contract. It's self executing, and it's programmable, which basically means within it, I can write you know, at this stage, this should happen at that stage, you know, this should happen. And sort of do it in a way in one shot where down the road, I can bake in things like royalties, for instance. So that same pizza shop owner that gave away that initial free pizza card, you know, to that person, for example, that really good customer, whatever, that customer then goes to sell it. For instance, let's just say, now, a portion of the sale is going to kick back to the owner of the pizza restaurant. And that's just one very sort of simple way to look at it. Because it's almost like we're in the early days of the Internet and then saying, okay, what can I use the internet for? I mean, it's really just limited to our creativity, in my opinion. It's boundless. It really is. And just for everyone listening, this was entirely unplanned. This was just off the cuff Nikki's just very good at what he knows and, and I'm really happy that he's on here, because you set me up perfectly for what I want to ask you next. And that is, I've I've heard Gary Vee talk about this, of that in the future. You know, NF T's are gonna represent houses, they're gonna represent property. And so in your pizza example, as a business owner, you have pretty unlimited creativity in what you want to do. In a real estate business, you have regulations that haven't caught up to this. So it's gonna be a while. But at some point, the regulations the whatever reasons, we will get the government to catch up when they catch up, because you deal in contracts already. Because you're a fan of this, you, you are probably one of the best people to talk about this directly. Where do you see the abilities of smart contracts with real estate to work out? Because there's a untapped market there that's going to change entire industries whenever the technology finally gets mass adoption? Absolutely. And it's interesting that you brought that up. But I mean, I think that it's almost going to be sort of like a forced evolution. And then when it comes to NF T's entering the space, it's just going to be for the purpose of creating better efficiencies. And here's what I mean. So, for example, if you look at the real estate market now, and I don't know what it's like out there, but I would suspect it's similar. So if you circle back to the beginning of the pandemic, right, things and most real estate markets across North America would say we're sort of stable, right? And nothing different than the year before. It was sort of on a predictable trajectory, for lack of a better word, right? I would say COVID kicked off, the government responded, because, you know, they were scared that the economy was going to go off a cliff. And for that initial two week period, where things were really scary at the very, very beginning, it sort of did you had the stock market crash you had you had everybody at home, so the economy essentially grinded to a halt. What did the government do? They printed a ton of money, right? They put this out there by way of the Fed printing tons of stimulus and these checks that everybody was getting and more than ever, PPE loans and all this stuff and the fat and again, I'm not gonna get too technical, but it's interesting because it does connect to housing, mortgage, all of it. It's all interconnected. So they also bought up I think 40% of the mortgage bond market. Pretty much what that means, though, is the debts that were being created by the banks, by way of doing mortgages, were being bought by the Federal Reserve as a backstop. Right, it was creating liquidity and keeping confidence in the system, which is key. Same thing happened here. But what's happened in the last few years and without actually knowing or asking you in advance if I had to adjust the housing market where you're at, was probably booming was a nice if I had, okay, which is kind of odd that something develop in the city that you're from that something really happened to make that sort of makes sense as to why that happened? Did you guys have a massive, you know, immigration come in? Like, no, right? Like, neither did we, I'm in Toronto. A lot of money been printed that inflates the system. This is this is why, you know, not just web three, but crypto and stuff like that. It's very important for people to look into. But the reason I brought that up what's happened here at least, and maybe somewhere out there, housing and homes and our market have essentially become unaffordable, so unaffordable now that for people to get in. It's one of two things mainly, okay, and this trend is only going to continue. But it's either going to be multi generational families, where you have two or three generations purchasing together and moving into property. Or for people that are you know, in the millennial or Gen Z or Zed, whichever you guys said, No, we're different on this, but Gen Z or Zed, whichever applicable both ways, they may not be able to actually get in at all right. And so because they're not what I'm seeing that sort of starting to become popular is fractional purchasing, like fractional ownership. And this is actually where I think things like nfts could make a seat like make a splash, I think because if the traditional way of buying a house has become so unaffordable, but we still understand the value in buying a house, not from the perspective of just housing. But this idea that, you know, as we grow, and we want to become more economically stable, and independent, we have to buy assets, because if we don't, we're strictly dependent on our, you know, our time in exchange for money. And yeah, that could be good. But at the same time, you can't really get ahead because you don't own anything that will make you money while you're sleeping. So this idea that we have to buy assets is only going to be stronger, and more critical for our financial well being. And so that means if you take everything I just said, and combine it, I do think that makes a very strong case for the possibility of NF T's entering the space. And I think some people have alluded to it. But it happens in a variety of ways. And you can have it happen by people buying property together. And having things like land registry title, use the theory and blockchain, for example, as a way to store data, right? So right now what happens, you buy a house, and it's very archaic in the sense of how the property gets registered for the purpose of verifying ownership. You have things like mortgage fraud happening, you have people losing properties due to you know, title fraud and stuff like that. And these are hiccups in the system that are basically just indicated to me have a sort of archaic system. And so with the Etherion, Blockchain or maybe salon or one of these other blockchains that can sort of house and store data, right. I think that creates a massive opportunity to create better efficiencies and this space, what it looks like, exactly, it's hard to say. But I would imagine, McGann like with the net from the NFP strictly perspective, let's say you and I want to buy a property, right. But again, it's unaffordable. So we can't really do it on our own. So now, you know, property x down the street, whatever. And I'm speaking more to like major markets, whether it be a Toronto, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, the places that I know, really are sort of too expensive. I don't know the price point out there. But like I got to tell you here, and in those markets, I mentioned, it's almost impossible for one individual to buy it from a variety of standpoints from like, the down payments or from the ability to carry it right. It's very difficult. So what could happen, you could see a property come up on a website, we put out as a project. So you have one company that may own multiple properties that they don't sell off, but in selling them off they fractionalized ownership and you could buy X percentage of that property through an NFT to make it more sort of relatable. I'm not sure if you've heard of royal Do you know Royal? Have you heard of them? No, no, check them out. Very cool. So royal, and that ft space is mainly right now the main music platform for NF peas so you have open see as a marketplace you have they have a lot of them right or looks rare was another one wearable stuff like that. So So Royals exclusive to music. So NAS the rapper who was big in the 90s and still kind of big, he's very future friendly. And he did an exclusive dropped to two new songs off the most recent album that he did. And they did it as an NFT. And so each song had an offering of Yeah, it was Dude, it was awesome. So it's like each song had an offering of I think 75 Android NFT is associated with it. And in buying it you as the holder of the NFT, one of the utilities was you would get a piece of the royalty streams that he would get. Do you see what I mean? And that then allows an artist to fund their project. Or I was involved, not involved. But I bought an NFT that got me really thinking, what's the guy's name is really good. artist name, I forgot. But anyways, he in combination with this executive producer that's in the movie business got together, he created art, the art was featured in the movie that art and became an NFT than if it was done sold for the purpose of raising funds to produce the movie. You get what I mean? And then the holders want, right? So the holders in that scenario, gotta pee. So the revenue sharing of that movie and the numbers that it ends up doing stuff like that, that's amazing. How do you know all this? Do you just like, consume content for like 18 hours a day? And like, between blinks like this? Isn't? This is incredible. How do you know this much information? I'll be honest. So like in Canada, we had a pretty heavy lockdown on and off for the last few years. As I said, I live alone. I'm naturally curious. So I love doing stuff like this. I love having conversations. And Twitter. Twitter is the most most underrated resource probably out there, I would say. So. I was involved in a lot of Twitter spaces where people from the space would get in and sort of share alpha, as they would call it right. And sort of I would listen and then I started thinking and so that story, I just told you right now for raising funds to produce a movie. Let's take it back to the old world. Like one of my favorite movies. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it's called Goodwill Hunting. Matt Damon Ben Affleck. Okay, haven't seen it. Okay, so watch it because it's incredible. But basically, this is a movie from the 90s. And Matt Damon and Ben Affleck wrote it. They were in their 20s at the time that were virtually unknown, and they were chopping it around. And they were trying to get it made. And they themselves were having a hard time because the producers and executives in Hollywood didn't know them, right. And we live in a world of status. And if you're not known, it makes it hard to make the case that the movie is going to do well because you're not gonna be able to bring people into the seats. So they shopped it around and many studios said we'll do the movie, but you guys can't be in it. And that's where they kind of had this non compromising position where they're like, there's no way we're only allowing for this to happen. We don't care as long as we're in it. Funny enough, Harvey Weinstein, not Harvey Weinstein, and Miramax who Yeah, that guy unfortunately. But like his company, Miramax in the 90s was a legend there behind every big movie, they convinced him to do it. But what I'm trying to say is think about how persistent the creator and the artists had to be to bring that movie into fruition. The world may have never known about that movie, or this potential movie, had that not happened. But in the NFT space, for example, just because of its decentralization and ability sort of to raise funds, opens doors for creators to not only do what they love, but kind of get their stuff to happen. And that, to me is very exciting, in addition to everything else about the space. No, that's, I mean, you're you're just saying exactly what like to hear. I mean, we're literally launching a project that's going to change a lot of people's lives. And I mean, it's web three technology, it didn't exist before, there was no way we could do what we're going to do 10 years ago. I mean, it's just so this is this is the future. And this is awesome that we're being a part of it. You know, it's like our kids are gonna read history books about what was made here. And I don't know, it's just cool to be part of something like that. Absolutely, man. Yeah. So I actually read recently, I think this happened like maybe six months ago, there's a startup company called property. Have you heard of that? They sold their first house as an NFT. But they did it really weird to get around all the legalities because they weren't allowed to do it. But they still did it? I think I did. I don't know if I read the article. But I do remember hearing something with that company name. And that's a very good point that you brought up with when it comes to the legalities? Because it raises the question then is it a security or not, and this is the issue that's facing a lot of projects, like benefi space, for instance, certain crypto projects, for instance, like different coins and stuff like that. And I do think we're gonna see regulation come down the pipe. And to be honest with you, in some cases, it is needed, because it'll only allow for greater scale to happen. Like, again, if you'd look at the 90s and the internet at a time the dark web was was out there, you could easily access it back then. And then regulations and things like that sort of happened and it kind of gave us the internet that we know today. And so I think it's inevitable and in some ways that might be the sort of setup for mass adoption. That's the con because in terms of NFV adoption, I think I read a start and for crypto overall Bitcoin included, I think global adoption is like under 5% for all of us so small and and Coinbase opening up is going to help that a little bit but it's still so new for those listening that haven't heard it yet. Episode Five, I believe I did a deep dive on NF T's and where the SEC stern currently stands and why they don't classify the security but they are definitely starting to crack down on ICOs, I think is where they're really starting to have issues with because there's a lot of scams going on there. I mean, there Literally, they want people to make money, like the SEC is not out like screw the little guy. But there's a lot of people that just are just taken advantage of. I mean, it's I see a lot more arrests happening to like people are starting to finally get, you just can't do what you're trying to do if you're taking advantage of people, they're trying to find ways to get you caught. And they're, they're going to take care of that because it's not fair to everyone else. And it's funny because I don't know about you, but like you being in the space and observing and and stuff like that. A lot of the people that is so so again, back to you asked me how do I know this stuff like that Gary Vee says, Before you invest $1, or even consider yourself as being in the space do 50 hours of research? Yeah, because that's gonna really help you understand what this is. And you shouldn't invest the time anything that you don't understand that's regardless of anything. But you know, a lot of those same people that don't want to invest the 50 hours that are also some of the most vocal critics of the space, which I find funny. Like, why don't you just do the research? If you don't agree with it? Cool, no problem. You're not proving me wrong. I didn't invent it. I'm just a fan of it. You know, at the same time, one of the arguments that they make, it's like, you know, there's all these rug polls or scams that happen and stuff like that, which Yeah, there is I hate it about I hate that part about the space. And there are a lot of people that have rug pulled and stuff like that. But again, early 90s, early 2000s Internet, remember how many scams happen there, every other day, you're even now, like you're getting links and emails from Nigerian princes that claim to have $50 million. That's just a click away, you know, from whatever. So it's like, this is human behavior. This isn't, you know, a product or a project or any of that stuff. This is just beings doing what they do. Right? Yeah, that's sad to say, but that's very true. And there's no scenario, let's just say like this, there's no scenario that if you went back in 99 2000, before the market crashed, and you didn't know what happened, there is no scenario you would be able to pick every winner that still around Amazon was around in the.com. Bubble. And so Ask Jeeves. So as pets.com, you know, you don't know which one is going to work until afterwards. But if you're allowed to be along for this journey, there's no reason not to take at least a partial risk or partial dip in because it's not going away. Even if you pick the wrong ones, you'll be the first one to figure it out the right time, the second time around, because you've already been experienced everyone that waited until it was just totally the right time, it was too late. You need to figure out some part of this. Now you need to put some time into this. Absolutely. And that was a good and interesting point that you just brought up because it kind of got me thinking like speaking to Amazon in the late 90s. I've just read a quote like on Instagram or something again, you never know for sure if this happened, I feel like it did. But cool nonetheless. So apparently, I don't remember what university this was. But they brought Jeff Bezos. And this is like the early Amazon days when they were just selling books. And they brought him in to give him to give a presentation on his business model to a classroom of like business students and stuff like that, right. And so he comes in, he tells them all about this concept of Amazon and this online bookstore and stuff like that, and his goal and hope to become a retailer. And so the class sort of deliberates over the presentation he gives, and they have to make the decision of like, okay, is this something that's feasible? Will this be a successful business? Or will it not this was kind of what the way they had it set up? Funny enough, the group of students that were analyzing his they said, Sorry, Jeff, you know, you seem like a great guy, but you should really sell right now and get out because Barnes and Nobles, and the big guys are going to get in soon, and they're going to wipe you out. So again, like nobody really knows its determination. Yeah, it's crazy, right? So it's determination that's gonna get you there. And another interesting story I could share about that specific point that you mentioned, so late 90s the.com, bubble and stuff like that, I read this, Peter TEALS book, great book, I think it's called zero to one. And he talks about how back then and Silicon Valley, because of the hype, which again, we sort of saw in the NFT space right before this recent sort of bear market cool off that we're now having, it was just insane, right? Like you have these sort of derivative projects, for instance, being made of every other popular project. So in the in the late 90s, early 2000s, guys in Silicon Valley, like would be in their apartments, in robes, eating Cheetos, writing, you know, some sort of business plan on a napkin and launching IPOs that way. And so of course, like you're, you're riding the wave of hype, 90 to 99, or 95% of the products or projects are going to fail. So everything you're sort of seeing now is actually a positive and good for the space. And the same thing like you're seeing in the stock market and the housing market, what happens on these downturns economically, it's meant to flush out what's ineffective and not efficient. And so once we pass through this, we come out the other side, which can happen in six to 12 months or 18 months, I can't predict exactly, but give or take, let's say you're gonna see a consolidation, I think of the efficient projects and then you're gonna really start seeing scale, like scaling happen on a mass level, probably in the next two to three years, or at least that part of this cycle. I think so we're very early very early. And the fact that I'm gonna be honest with the NFT market moves a lot faster than any market I've ever seen to the point that like, we could have like the next Bull Run like by next Wednesday, for all we know, because it just moved like we've only had the earliest projects. I believe crypto punks came out in 2017. And more, they've came out in 2021 of April. So like, the most established projects are 14 months old right now, you know, so like, we truly, it's just a crazy time, but it's a it's worth taking the time to learn about because it's not going away. And it's yes, at some point, you're gonna have mass consolidation, you're gonna have to clear when it's sticking around everywhere else as everyone else has gone, but it's not going away. I just want to add, like, so again, that's just my opinion is just my own take. We may not agree. And that's cool. Like, I just like to share my two cents, I don't think we're gonna see the level of pandemonium that we saw previously. And I think that the reason we saw this level of crazy in all markets, all markets literally, like, I never asked you before we started this, but you told me your real estate market was booming, right? How could I possibly know that unless it's connected to something bigger? Like I said, this whole COVID situation with the pandemic. I think that the response monetarily that the government put towards that is a big reason why you saw everything sort of behave like it was on steroids. And so when this sort of passes now, and we get to a more normalized, what we're used to sort of environment, which I think should happen in the next few months to a year or so. I don't know if we're gonna see the level of volume in that space. And then it's not because NF peas are changing, or because it's gotten worse or interest is deflected from it. I just think that people were getting stimulus tracts. And you know, the difference between either being above middle class or below middle class Matthew had to do like again. 2020, you saw AMC, you saw GME, right. 2021, you saw NF Ts? Why are people doing these moves, why it caused them to make these crazy speculative plays. And it's because it's speaking to the bigger economic picture, which is that, you know, working hard and trying to make it the way we're used to, is not enough. And that separation between either being middle class or not, is getting thinner. And so people have to do things to try and propel themselves into one or the other, preferably on the way up. But that's not a bad thing. Again, it might get offset by the fact that you're gonna have the consolidation, and then the scale adoption sort of happen, which may compensate it but for people watching don't necessarily pay attention to volume specifically and compare it to what we saw in 2021. We may not see that until mass adoption takes place, because that to me was an anomaly. Personally. I mean, that's a very good point. And that's, that's not something to be ignored. I think that that you could be 100% right there. Honestly, I think it's a very good point, the only thing I would push back against that would be the fact that we had less than a million wallets and NFT holders in general and Coinbase is opened up their marketplace, and they have something like it's an astronomical amount of new money coming into the space. But you have very good point, the fact that people are looking for ways to compensate where they're, they're falling short, and they're taking risks. And if people don't have any money, they can't take the risk. They have to just feed their family and they can't do anything else. So it depends on how the economy does in general. Exactly. But to add into something you said, I'll bring up another point by like, I think something that's super underrated and not spoken about in terms of like potential for the space is p2p like play turn. I think that's wildly understated and under spoken of, and I'll give you an example. So p2p I'm sure you know, but maybe for the listeners like this whole play turn concept. I mean, what are we seeing now on streaming platforms like Twitch? Right, where you have people gaming at a level like we've never seen the amount of users on games like fortnight or I don't remember all the names, I have some friends that play but like fortnight, that's all they do, they just write fortnight drives me insane, just play the game nuts. And it's not but people want to watch, which is fine. But what it's saying is that gaming is becoming a massive market. And when you introduce sort of this p2p concept, and that means you as a gamer can generate and get rewarded and coins for participating or playing or even doing well in the game that makes things really interesting. And I'll give you a quick story, an example. So a couple of months ago, I read this article, and I don't remember the game. Exactly. It's one of the NFT games though. And basically, in countries in the Third World, I believe places like Thailand, stuff like that. A lot of the local population there does not have economic opportunity, just given the climate, the jobs market, stuff like that. So believe it or not one of the rising and growing populations out there is playing games that are p2p. Now, that's cool, because they're actually making money now and able to sustain themselves. And, you know, it's interesting from the perspective that like who would have thought that we'd get to this place, right, all the kids that you saw obsessed with video games as kids and their parents would be like, go to school, you don't get paid video games, like, now they are so I take that mom and dad but like, that's what's even more interesting is they have the one of the gaming companies I talked to, they're like, they have some concept of like being a scholar, which basically means you're an investor. So imagine there's a game player or kid that's playing, that's a really good player out there somewhere and I'm over here and now like he can afford to buy the NFT but he's really good at the game. So I as an investor would buy the NFT and I would sponsor him in the sense where I own that. He now gets access to the game. He generates a living and earns I fit but I'd make a percentage of income off of his gaming. Like just think about stuff like that. Right? Like it's really crazy. And I think that's going to be massive in the coming probably months if not years for sure. I mean, what yeah, what's stopping you from going that far to just saying, Hey, I've got money I'm gonna go sponsor a doctor to go through med school because I can't afford it. And I'm gonna get pizza maybe forever. Yeah, that's crazy. That is crazy. Sponsoring people like, based on future earnings? Yeah, maybe. We're just literally commodifying everything but yeah, baby could be carrying a future right? Oh, my goodness. You'd be surprised, man. Anything's possible. Right? That's crazy. All right, Mickey. We're gonna wrap this up. This has been an awesome I love tea talks and I love the future it's gonna bring man but I really appreciate all the time working. You know our listeners get a hold of you check it out on social worker they find you? Absolutely. So the main two platforms that are most dominant on and spend a lot of my time on would be AdSense too. So sem as the to dot dollars. That's for Instagram. So AdSense to dot dollars. And on YouTube? I'm just cents $2. Okay, perfect. And Oh, perfect. Put both of those in the show notes. You guys can get a hold of them. And last question we ask every guest is what is your favorite caffeinated beverage? Simple man. Just an all black Americano. The stronger the better. And you know, it's not it's every time I request and I'm like, yeah, just black. They it's almost like they have to confirm it with me. They're like, just black. I'm like, yeah, like that's you don't want coffee. Yeah, no, I'm good. Just give me the black coffee and I'll read my way. That's great. Well, buddy, I appreciate your time. This has been a blast. We'll talk soon. Absolutely. Thanks. Bye. Thanks for listening to the caffeinated hustle. Sponsored by caffeinated labs LLC. For more information for to connect with Ben. Check us out online at caffeinated labs.io. Or email us at support at caffeinated labs.io. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Or give us a follow on social media by checking the links in the description. We'll see you next time.