JH: Mark, I‘d really like to say, thanks for taking the time. I was so much looking forward to that. I want to start with a quote, that I think 50 people have asked, or 5.000 people have asked you and how do you stick to that quote, that you rather want to have bananas than Bitcoin. Because at least, bananas you can eat.
MC: Right, okay, so let’s go through that. So, the question was, about utility. First it was about Bitcoin versus gold, and I said that both are stores of value and they’re worth what somebody would pay for them. Then it was about utility, and remember this was like in 2016, maybe 2018 at the latest, but really before the whole DeFi thing happened. So, I said, in terms of utility, I’d rather have bananas, because I can eat bananas, you know? Because Bitcoin like gold is a store of value and it’s worth what someone would pay for it. And really, where I got sideways with a lot of Bitcoin people over the years, is, I was always a big believer in blockchain. I used to write distributed database applications, I used to write software way back in the day. So, I understood blockchain very easily. But back then, remember before the fork, in 2017, everybody was looking at Bitcoin as being a currency. Remember? And it was going to be Lightning iscoming and you’re gonna be able to do more transactions. Same discussion that’s happening with Ethereum right now. And I was like, no, it’s not ever going to be a currency. And even back then, we offered Dirk Nowitzki Jerseys on the blockchain, on the Mavs websites, and we got no takers. And really my point was that it’s really not designed to be a currency. And in terms of utility, when I had that conversation, I’ll stick by it. As of 2017, 2018, those bananas have more utility and if it came down to it, and everything was upside down, you know, Bitcoin is not a hedge to inflation, it’s not an alternative to Fiat. What it has become, though, is, a stronger store of value, because of algorithm scarcity. And now with DeFi it finally does have utility, because now when you own Bitcoin and other crypto assets as well – and I prefer to call them crypto assets than currencies – you get something out of it. You know, Ethereum is more of a currency, particularly now in the NFT world than Bitcoin is. It’s just not a currency. And I know people will argue, it can be exchanged globally and people can swap it, yet still it’s not really a currency. But with DeFi in particular, you can be your own personal banker. Whatever Bitcoin is worth, sure you have to over collateralize, but you can loan money, you can borrow money, in seconds. Because it’s completely decentralized. You have complete flexibility, you no longer have to work with the bank. To me that’s significant utility. And that’s why I became a lot more positive, that’s why. When we start seeing smart contracts, when we start seeing DeFi, when we start seeing a lot of the work that’s been done over the last three years, that really was the game changer for me.
JH: I think we’ve been in touch since 2017, back then it was a bit of the ICO back and forth, then obviously DeFi, now NFT. To me the interesting question is especially the NFT side. I’ve never been a collector in the physical world. I did a bit of basketball cards. What hooked you into the NFT side? You got really vocal about everything.
MC: I forgot what the ERC Standard is, is it the 1120? Whichever one does the royalties and the enhancements for making the royalties, that’s what got me.
JH: Because of the secondary sales.
MC: Yes, the whole secondary sales aspect of it. That’s a 100 percent of it. Because that’s the game changer versus the way other things are bought and sold. And this gives anybody, with intellectual capital and creative assets the incentive to want to go to NFTs. We see it with art now, we see it with a lot of unique collectables, we’ve seen it with Top Shots. We’ve seen it. Again, I use Mintable.app a lot, because it’s a free way to get into it. They put in their own store and you get to experiment. You’ve seen a lot more people experiment by the day and learning about it. But it was really the royalties and the ability to make money in the resale market. That was a game changer. And I really look at a lot of what’s going on in the space right now in terms of the collectable market as a proof of concept for what’s going to happen in a much bigger business market. Because businesses create so much intellectual capital they can sell it. Just something like this, a YouTube stream, you try to sell advertising or YouTube sells your advertising. Maybe you have subscribers. Maybe you have high net worth subscribers that pay you for this information. But for you, sponsored ads and subscriptions are your primary revenue sources, right? Yet, all podcasts, to a certain extend, are perishable. Over time their value diminishes. Now if you’re to take that Podcast or this interview and turn it into an NFT and sell it, let’s just say I am buying that for 10 dollars, then I could watch it, and when I am done with it resell it, and you keep getting paid. Now imagine a CEO of Deutsche Bank does something legal, or gives a speech somewhere, or there is a white paper they wrote, or there is a presentation that they made, that has significant value outside the company. Rather than just sending it around to people, you could sell it. Or you could give it to your customers, sell it to the outside. And this way you know it is original and then you can make money off the resale market. So, I think monetizing original intellectual capital is going to be a big business for a lot of companies. And, you know, using Deutsche Bank as an example again. Like all banks, their business is going to have to change. I would not be buying bank stocks now at all. Not over the next three years, but over the next ten years. And it’s not just about digital currencies or sovereign digital currencies. It’s just as DeFi gets easier and wallets get easier and acquiring crypto to be your own banker gets easier, then how people do things, is going to change as well.
JH: How do you think the – and I think especially the US government, they going to play a global role in this – how do you think they’re going to regulate Bitcoin, DeFi? Do you think they are going to be pro, do do you think they’re going to try to stifle that a bit? How do you see that play out?
MC: I think it really depends on politics or certain sense, because legacy banks have every incentive to stop it. They see the writing on the wall. But I think it will be just like with other FinTech. You know you’ve seen apps, which became saving solutions. And you have seen apps create alternatives to overdrafts. And you know, whether SoFi, Robin Hood, Dave, Chime or others they provide credit cards and all that. So, I think they’ll be regulated to a certain extent, with anti-money laundering and know your customer rules, that’ll stay consistent. And I don’t think the DeFi providers really are trying to argue that at all. I think it will be taxed, so there will be reporting required. So, every time somebody sells something, much like a stock, there is a transaction. And look, it’s on the blockchain, so it’s not like people are hiding it. Some people have just a wallet address and they’ll try to hide behind that. But I think with know-your-customer, that will turn into confirmation of taxable events. And then I think they’ll get involved with digital coins. And I don’t know the economics for the Euro, but just making a penny cost more than a penny is worth in the United States, right. And just making a nickel or a quarter, or a Dime, the US loses hundreds of millions of dollars a year. And so let’s just say, it’s 500 million dollars a year that we lose minting these coins. Over the next 20 years, those can disappear and a USDC type approach will replace it. And then part three of that is, it also creates the opportunity for sovereign governments to create accounts, for every individual. And I don’t know what’s happened in Germany, but for the stimulus programs here, not a big enough percentage of American citizens that were eligible, had direct deposit accounts. So, we had to send out tens of millions of checks. That’s just stupid. You know? That all should be a direct deposit accounts/wallet, that can accept digital currency. And so once that starts to happen, because it’s smart and hopefully we’ll be smart enough to figure it out. Or maybe Europe will figure it out first and we’ll copy them. Whoever does it first. China has done it to a lesser extend, but it’s not a public blockchain. So, it’s kind of a back-ass halfwards way for them to take control of things. So, whoever figures that out first, is going to benefit globally. And hopefully it’s us.
JH: Yeah, sure. That’s interesting. Stablecoins, how do they play into it? And then maybe also, you know Facebook with their Deem, or former Libra. Some people say this is a direct attack on banks, because it allows the government to interact with the customer directly. It doesn’t need the banks anymore. Others say, no, it actually goes completely hand in hand …
MC. Depends on how adaptive and agile the banks are. There’s always going to be some banks that want to do it the way it’s always been done. Others are creating blockchain projects and stablecoin projects. Just offset and try to have an alternative, that they can offer their customers. But the game is going to change, one way or the other. I think the bigger issue is, how do you simplify wallets. Because the concept of Metamask as a chrome extension is not the best solution. The idea to acquire crypto assets and put them in a wallet, is still a huge hassle and it’s expensive. On one hand you have your credit card fees or your banking fees to do a direct withdrawal. So, if I am buying 1,000 Dollar worth of crypto and I am connected to my bank, they’re charging me. And then there’s the gas fees on the other side. So, I am getting charged there. And so that friction has to be removed and it’s still relatively new, so again, this is a lot like the early days of the internet. Where there were a lot of inhibitors but technology over time erased those.
JH: Coinbase is IPO-ing, would you be an investor?
MC: Not at 100 billion Dollars. There’s just not enough upside. There are a hundred other applications and blockchains and wallets and custodials that you can invest in, that I think are going to chip away. I mean Coinbase charges, what, four percent? And that’s crazy, and over time…
JH: Yeah, they can, they’re just dominant at the moment.
MC: Yeah, they’re dominant, because they’ve simplified the user interface. There will be people who supersede them and when you’re that big and you’re the incumbent and you change the user interface, you still have a big subsection of people who don’t want that change, because it’s what they’ve grown accustomed to. So, people will leave. And it’s like, look at the history of browsers. You went from no browser to Mozilla, with Mark Andreessen.Then you went to Netscape, you know, we don’t use Netscape. Then Google came along. Microsoft has been trying forever. I look at Coinbase much like Netscape. You looked at them and said, okay, they’re second generation, they’re dominant. Netscape servers, interfaces, everything. They dominated everything. And then they bottomed. But even before, Microsoft was coming in and bundling their browser and that led to anti-trust law suits. And then you had Google come in, and did a better job. And so you know, we have Google Pay, we have Apple Pay. How much of a stretch is it for them to extend that to being a wallet?
JH: Do you think more of the large S&P 500 companies are going to put Bitcoin on their balance sheet? Maybe also integrate into their payment system? You mentioned Apple and Google, I mean for them, it would be such an easy one, right? And then put it on their balance sheet as well, or do you think, that’s like totally irrelevant?
MC: Yes and no. I mean you see Tesla, MicroStrategy, so now it’s kind of like a stock play and you know Elon just likes to fuck with everybody. So, you can hedge, you know. What we don’t know is, whether Elon hedged all of it, or not. Or MicroStrategy hedged all of it. All we know is, they sold calls and bought puts. We don’t know. Putting it on your balance sheet is just like any other asset, and maybe it’s safer than a CD. Maybe, who knows. You certainly have a chance to earn more income, but what I do think is valuable, is hiring a chief of DeFi and if you’re a billion Dollar company taking 5, 10, 20 million Dollars and just trying to earn a return using DeFi and managing it every second of every day, just like you do cash management, because you’re not earning anything on your cash. And so even if you lose five per cent to fraud, hack or whatever and you’re making 15 per cent, because you’re a little bit risk oriented, okay, then it’s worth it. And then you can keep continuing to build and as it becomes more stable, you can put more money in or if it becomes less stable, then you take the money out. So, I think DeFi, and I’ve spoken to a lot of CEOs of corporations and even my companies and saying, ‘look, you know it’s okay to take 10 percent of what we’re doing as long as we have somebody who manages every second’. Because the DeFi game, the liquidity hunting, is crazy right now and it’s not going to be sustainable long term.
JH: Yeah, I agree. What does your crypto portfolio look like at the moment?
MC: I’ve got Bitcoin I’ve accumulated over the years. I’ve got Ethereum. And I actually bought more during the drop. And I’ve got a shitload of different small altcoins, that I’ve taken flyers on. You name it, chances are … .
JH: Doge? A lot of news out there, that’s obviously reported.
MC: The only Doge I have is like the ten dollars I bought for my son and his Robin Hood account. And I think, the last time I looked, which was last week, we had like 20.000 Doge from stuff we sold with the mavericks. And we’ll just hodl. Any crypto, anything we sell in crypto, we’re not going to convert. We’ll just hodl it.
JH: Really?
MC: Yeah.
JH: Okay, wow, that’s quite a conviction then.
MC: Yeah, it’s not like it’s a huge number. Now, I did make the commitment, if people buy 6 billion Dollars worth of Doge, from us and the Mavs, I’ll push it, you know, I’ll hodl it, so that it’ll go up to a Dollar. All you need to do is, you know, 6 billion Doge.
JH: That’s funny. Kevin O’Leary was also in the news for his 3 percent Bitcoin Ethereum allocation. How much do you guys talk on such things?
MC: Kevin doesn’t really understand the technology. Kevin just looks at it as a financial asset. So to him, it pays more, you know, you can earn more than you earn from a savings account. So, if you’re going to risk three percent and you can make more than three percent, then why not, right?
JH: Cool, and with the other sharks. Do you guys talk about that?
MC: The only thing I’ve talked about with the other sharks, is selling their tweets. So you know, did you see what happened with Jack? And I’ve actually sold some tweets with Sense. So I told them, they got to go in, in case someone’s made an offer on their tweets. Because if you don’t know where to look, you won’t find it. And I also explained to them, particularly Barbara, about putting some stuff out there on Mintable to get their NFTs out there. Just doing some basic stuff, because we’re still in that early phase, where celebrities have an over visibility and demand. As more celebrities come in, that demand is going to layer out.
JH: How do you see your responsibility in this? Because obviously I also have quite a large audience, not like yours, but relatively. And I get almost every day, I get requests for, ‘Julian, don’t you want to create this NFT and we can shell it together and it would get huge’. Obviously, I see this massive responsibility. How do you see this?
MC: I am very clear, that I am doing this to learn. You know, the only way to learn, what the markets like, where the issues in the marketplace are, is by doing it now. I am lucky that I’ve got fans, I guess, it still sounds weird to me, and people who buy things, because I am on Shark Tank and people know me. And so it’s interesting, so I get to see the cause and effect. I am not out there just saying okay, I am putting this out there let’s see how much money I can make. I am trying all these different price levels and the only thing, I’ve really done that is kind of a money grab is, I’ve raised my royalty rates from 20 to 25 percent. Because when I price low, I know they’re going to sell out in seconds. But I am trying to see how all the manifestations play out, to see how the royalties carry over from chain to chain. If it’s a side chain deal, I’d like to see what happens, when these new IPs come out. See what happens on other blockchains, and what the impact there is. That’s the only way I am going to learn, and you know, that’s how I can have an intelligent conversation about this stuff, as opposed to saying, well, you know I really shouldn’t do it, because I don’t know if the value proposition is really there. It’s no different than stocks, right, there’s some companies I’ve invested in, that were just horseshit. But I knew that demand was there.
JH: Did you get shit from the community, for like raising the secondary royalty?
MC: No, not at all. Not even a little bit.
JH: Okay, cool, interesting. What were the details of your NFTs?
MC: You mean in terms of, what part of it?
JH: What was the utility? What were the NFTs about that you sold?
MC: Oh, okay, yeah. What were they actually. I mean, one was a GIF of me, walking into work, out at the arena. The other ones were videos, that we produced. We hired artists to produce them for the Mavs, that I then sold there. That was really cool. Do you know what Cameo is?
JH: Yep.
MC: Okay, where you can go and play people, right. So, I created my own NFT version of Cameo. And what I did was, I said, if you pay me, at the time it was 2 ETHs then, and buy this, and it was just a video of me saying just that. You know, buy this and you’ll unlock a special e-mail address and you can email me, and I’ll do a personalized video for you. That just has to be legit, right, it can’t be anything bizarre. And I sold 20 of them. And I did it, they haven’t used them all summer, still trading, but I wanted to just experiment, because to me that was a new application. And there’s going to be so many unique types of applications. I just want to try to start coming up with some.
JH: If I throw in another quote, actually that I tweeted at you, and then get your feedback on this. “NFTs are a bit overhyped in the short term, totally under hyped in the long term.” How would you respond?
MC: Depends on wallets and it depends on the ability to use FIAT. So if you look at Top Shots, the two things they’ve done well is, one, use the NBA as their intro product, beyond cryptoKitties and two, there’s no wallet concept really, right. I mean, you can dig in and there’s a wallet behind it from Dapper. But the reality is, you just buy it with a credit card, like you buy anything else online. And that’s what they’ve done, that’s special. And you can do this on niftygateway, and you can do it at couple other places, but it’s more than the exception, than the rule. And so until we get to the part, and even on Dapper, on Top Shots, the fees are high, relatively speaking. You know, you could pay eight dollars in fees, for a ten dollar Top Shots or ten dollar moment. And so, you know, there’s still not that balance there. But once you get that user interface, and wants the ability for people to use FIAT. You know, and then it doesn’t even have to convert to crypto in the interim, but if it does it’s hidden, and it’s inexpensive. Then that’s the game changer. So for those people who are collectors of whatever, it’s hard to get in the game right now. You know you’ve got to buy, you’ve got to connect to your bank, or connect to a credit card. If you connect to a credit card, unless you pay it off in 30 days, you’re paying 19 percent or whatever. You’re still paying a transaction fee for whatever it is, when you buy for that credit card. And you’re paying a gas fee on the other side, and so that’s expensive. And unless you’re spending thousands of dollars, there’s transactions the five dollar transaction, where the gas fee and the credit card fees are more than what you’re spending on the NFT. And so that has to be solved. And I think it will, I mean, I remember the early days, when we started the streaming industry, with audio net, when no one even what streaming was. Just to get access to our content, you had to download a TCP, you had to have a 56k modem, you had to download a TCP/IP client, then you had to download a media player and then you had to come to our website. Then you had to connect to an interim file, a batch file, that then loaded everything up. And people did it, because it was the only way to get access to it. We’re kind of in that stage right now, in terms of the wallets and cash and connecting to your bank and to know your customer and the AML stuff (22:23). And you know, taking pictures of your driver’s licence, both sides or your passport. I mean, that’s just brutal. And so until those friction points are resolved, it’s going to be difficult.
JH: How did that work with the NBA in general? Did NBA Top Shots have to talk to the NBA about all this?
MC: Yeah, of course.
JH: Or just do it.
MC: Yeah, no. They had to have a license and so they signed a non-exclusive multi-year license with us.
JH: Ah okay, got it. Where do you see NFTs kind of heading, over the next years, where you feel most people don’t really get this right now, but this is where this is heading and that’s just going to be massive?
MC: Again, it depends on the user interface. That’s going to drive demand, because even if you look at Top Shots, which is positions that the biggest, right. There’s only 100.000 customers. And those are 100.000 customers that are all just using credit cards, so they’re not having to do something they’re not already comfortable with. If you look at other sites, so if you go to Opensea, Rarible, Niftygateway, you know, you’re talking 30.000-40.000 customers, give or take. I haven’t been to Dune Analytics in a while.
JH: No, but you’re pretty much spot on in the numbers.
MC: Yeah, and so that’s nothing. That pain point for the industry is how do you get the newbies in. How do you get people who are not native crypto people and understand why you should use Metamask versus any of these other things as wallets. How do you solve that? And that has to be solved first, before you can say this thing is going to be massive. Now that’s on the public side. On the corporate side, there’s going to be all kind. We went through an initial surge in 2016, 2017, 2018, where a lot of corporations saw the potential for blockchain but there was a lot of things undone. It’s really evolved since then. And so I think you’re going to see another surge of companies trying to take traditional software applications or SAS applications, software as a service, and utilise blockchain, because it can squish the amount of effort and bureaucracy and number of people required to do something.
JH: Is this something for example, you would consider with the Mavs, where you’re like, okay the ticket maybe is still physical and digital and there is an NFT connected to that as a collectable or something?
MC: Yeah, I mean we’re absolutely looking to change our ticketing to blockchain, it’s just that there’s a bunch of them out there and they all say they’re good but none of them has actually done anything.
JH: Yeah. What’s the deal this year? You’re on spot 8 right now.
MC: Oh yeah, we’ll get better. We got hit pretty hard by Covid. You know, we lost five of our top eight guys. Four who got sick and one was just contact tracing. And we had a six game losing streak, but we’ve been rolling. So if we keep on winning, we have a good chance. Because even though we’re in the 8 spot of the playoffs, we’re only two games behind the 4th spot, I think.
JH: Yeah, it’s quite tight.
MC: Yeah, it’s really tight.
JH: Many germans are Mavs fans, obviously, because of Dirk.
MC: Yeah, don’t forget Maxi Kleber. Maxi is probably one of the best defenders in the NBA. He’s kind of like Dirks personality. It’s a Würzburg thing I guess, he’s really, you know, kind of reserved. But he’s a great guy and a great player.
JH: What do you think, totally off topic from crypto right now, but just personal curiosity. What do you think makes it, that, and I think that specifically you catch those European players, that are, with Luka, Dirk. Right, I mean, come on, they’re like really, really outstanding.
MC: Yeah, we’ve got some bad ones too. But I don’t care where they play, I don’t care if they come from mars. If you can play basketball, I am open to signing you.
JH: What’s your thought process that goes in there?
MC: We scout, we go through a scout. We talk to them, we look at them. We look at their numbers and we try to get a feel, not only are they skilled, but what’s their mental makeup. If you look at Dirk and Maxi, and Luka, not all European players are like this. But those guys work their asses off, right. And they’re mentally tough. They keep on working harder and harder and harder to improve. And that’s half the battle. Because everybody who gets to the NBA or is even considered for the NBA is athletically gifted, they’re skilled at some level, but how hard do they work, when they get there to get better.
JH: Cool. I promised Don we’re going to be really good with the schedule, so I want to ask one final question. And it’s a bit more of a personal one. I am a dad now, to a five months old and I know that you have kids.
MC: Congratulations.
JH: Thank you. I have done financially really well. I am not a billionaire yet, hopefully soon. But a big worry obviously that I have is that my kid is not going to be hungry enough. How do you instil that hunger, what are the values that you try to teach your kids?
MC: You know, it’s a great question. And it scares me too, trust me. And I remind them all the time, I am the one that’s rich, you aren’t.
JH: Oh really?
MC: Yeah. And that you’re going to have to work for it. And they’re sick of the stories from me. They roll their eyes down, when I tell them stories about being broke and working hard. But we’re not the family that just brings home a bunch of stuff. Here’s a present, you know, or this or that. You know, if you want something, you’ve got to earn it. It may be as simple as reading a book, it may be putting together a presentation, but you know, just like my parents tried to instill in me. If you want it, you’ve got to put in the work to earn it. It’s not going to be given to you.
JH: Are you like, I have another very wealthy friend, who always said, if you earn one dollar, I’ll add four on top of that. Do you do like a schedule like that, or is it more like…?
MC: No, because my oldest is only 17 and actually she got a great internship in the past summer, where she made some money. So I can’t use that. And my middle daughter is 14, and she doesn’t care one way or the other. She’s really a great kid but she’s happy just wearing clothes out of my closet. Literally all my old t-shirts and sweats and everything. She’s happy with just chilling and my son is the youngest. My 11 year old is the young entrepreneur. He’s pushed me to get him an etherum mining rig.
JH: Really?
MC: Yeah. And I am making it go through, and you know..
JH: At 11, that’s unbelievable.
MC: Well, it’s not as unbelievable as it sounds. I mean, he got into doge coin right? That’s what got him started on it and he started learning more and got excited about it. And you know, through school, they’re trying to push him to learn Python. And he hasn’t made the connection yet between all these pieces. And I am trying to get him to make that connection. But he wants it, he’s trying to find ways to make money with crypto. But the Robin Hood account I set up, that he manages, has gotten crushed lately, because he bought Tesla. So he’s a little bit down right now.
JH: You mentioned Tech, I am curious in that. Do you see similarities right now with the dot.com bubble?
MC: There’s definitely a lot of similarities. Back then, anybody who got a good URL and set up a website, called it a business. And now anybody, who can take open source, evolve it some and create their own “blockchain”, and add a couple features, it’s a business, right? And then they put out a token, and they sell the token. Or you see the same thing in DeFi right now, where everybody’s got a savings account, DeFi program, we’ll pay four percent and we’ll make money on the delta. Which is better than any savings account, by a long shot etc. So you’re seeing a gold rush of companies, coming in, replicating or enhancing what’s done in the normal digital world, right. Which is exactly what we saw with the internet, compared to the analog days. Anything that was done in one manner using analog ways or just a PC based as opposed to centralised on the internet. It was converted and you’re seeing the same thing now. And so it’s going to start to get really interesting as some of these fly-by-nights fall off and some of the better funded work and the minute a couple coins go belly up that had VCs or whatever in them, then people get a little bit more discerning and careful about what they invest in. But that’s part of it, like I said, I’ve taken flyers and if you go to my Mintable or my Rarible account, you can see my wallet address and you can see a bunch of things that I am in.
JH: Mintable, what else?
MC. Yeah, Mintable, Rarible. And I’ve got a bunch of wallets like everybody obviously, but the things that I am willing to share, like a lot of the tokens I’ve bought, that’s what they’re at.
JC: Do you see this as a big thing going forward, that people like instead of showing off their massive painting collection at home, it’s like really this digital art thing that’s a status, that it’s that simple. Do you see that?
MC: Yeah, of course. Absolutely. You know, it’s like kids today, particularly Gen Z, other than maybe a car, they don’t have houses yet, they’re too young. So maybe they have a car and maybe they have clothes but they’re driven by a digital world. Their brand is their instagram or snapchat account or Tiktok account. And that’s who they are. And if you’re able to do a Tiktok and you’re showing off your NFT collection, or on your instagram, you’re showing off your NFT collection. And, you know, it’s a different way of showing how cool you are, or how you fit in with your friends. So yeah, I definitely see that and I think we’re going to see the other side of it too. We’re working on some things, where you just put up an instagram picture and it mints as an NFT, and sells on a platform.
JH: You put up an instagram picture and mints it as NFT and that shows you the ownership, or what?
MC: Yeah, so I can just take a picture, right now. I post it on instagram, then using some stuff that we’re doing, you select the marketplace that’s Mintable or whatever, Rarible, Opensea, it’s standardised and then it just shows up. And so then, that way, you can then sell it. You can say, okay, if you’re an artist trying to sell just by posting to instagram, that’s all you need to know to understand, other than having a wallet that connects it back to you.
JH: And everything else is automatically in the background, basically. From my last question, what do you think, let’s say a time traveler comes. What kind of news would this time traveller give you over the next year, where you feel, wow this is crypto news that doesn’t surprise you by that time traveller?
MC: Your interview with Julian was incredible, it was awesome. It was off the charts great. What else did they tell me. I think the shocking parts is going to be that there’s a lot of applications, that we now take for granted, that were really hot DocuSign, Carta, all these other things that are going to be disintermediated by blockchain and smart contracts. People don’t realise the things that decentralisation, decentralised governance and blockchain and smart contract can do yet. And they don’t realise, how simple the are. They’re not overly complex things. Now security is not easy, right, it’s hard to do right because wherever the money is, it’s continuously under attack. But just think, whether it’s Germany, United States, for insurance claims. If the governments approving your medical transaction. You broke an arm, or your kid breaks an arm and you go to the emergency room and somebody’s got to approve those transactions in the government. Or the insurance claims, in our cases. And rather than having five people sitting at a desk, that work for the insurance companies trying to find reasons not to approve it, you have a decentralised insurance company, where it’s set to a smart contract and the eight people that validate it, approve it, they don’t know each other and boom it’s approved in minutes.
JH: Obviously, and just one follow-up there, as a medical doctor for me, what’s happening right now with Covid. That was always like an idea, to have like those vaccinations stamps on a blockchain or something. Singapore is starting this right now. Do you see anything like that in the US right now, or?
MC: No, because the US freaks out about shit like that.
JH: Why? Because data protection? Or why? Or just in general?
MC: Not even data protection. It’s just in general, just like the freedom, the liberty thing. “They’re trying to take our liberties away”, you know, it’s just not good. And so, that’s just culturally where we’re different. But vaccines hopefully are transient. Obviously, Covids been awful, but by the summer, hopefully everybody who wants a vaccine can get a vaccine and it’s not an issue. Because we never had to really track flu vaccines like that. Or chicken pox vaccines like that. I don’t know if it will be for vaccines, but just like on your iPhone, if you have iHealth and there’s different information and basic information, there’s no reason apple couldn’t offer to put that on a blockchain and give you the option of making it public at some level. And that way, it’s like the bracelets, the diabetes or whatever bracelets, that people have. That’s better on blockchain, where you can have your own picture and your social security number, whatever that’s encrypted with some key to unlock it and some parts of it public, that you’re willing to share, that I have diabetes or yes, that should be on a blockchain. The problem is, not all blockchains are going to survive and so if you pick the wrong blockchain, and there’s not a centralised internet archive to protect everything, then there can be challenges there.
JH: Yeah, okay cool. Mark that was all, like really a fantastic array of questions. I really appreciate the time.
MC: My pleasure, I enjoyed it. Great questions. And for anybody, check out Mintable.app, just disclosure I am an investor. If you want to see companies, I’ve invested in, markcuban.com and you can see. And hopefully they have shark tank and it plays in Germany and you can watch it there.
JH: So many people watch it. Cool. So markcuban.com, Mintable. Any other things?
MC: Yeah, if you go to markcuban.com it will list everything and I am investing in so many NFT and blockchain companies right now. There’s a whole category called blockchain, that you’ll see us add, too.
JH: Ah, I didn’t even know. So on your website you have an entire list you’re involved in.
MC: Yep.
JH: Do you do this for disclosure or do you do this just for marketing, or both?
MC: Marketing, yeah. It helps the companies, because I talk about it all the time. All the companies that I invest in, it helps them out.
JH: Cool. Mark, I appreciate it, thanks so much.
MC: Thanks Julian.
Links & Resources
Follow Mark Cuban:
https://twitter.com/mcuban
https://markcubancompanies.com/
Lightning network: https://lightning.network
Mintable: https://mintable.app
Cent: https://v.cent.co
NBA Top Shot: https://www.nbatopshot.com
Metamask: https://metamask.io
Calameo: https://de.calameo.com
Opensea: https://opensea.io/
Rarible: https://rarible.com/
Niftygateway: https://niftygateway.com/
Dune Analytics: https://duneanalytics.com/
Mintable: https://mintable.app/