Brian Fanzo is a digital futurist keynote speaker who translates the trends of tomorrow to inspire change today. His customized and personalized programs showcase real-world stories and examples of forward-thinking people and businesses. He teaches companies of all sizes how to leverage technology in real-time in order to engage their customers at the right time. Brian has a gift for bringing people together online and offline.

He has worked in 76 countries, highlighting his passion for change, collaboration, and technology.

Transcript

Brian Fanzo, P2: Early Adoption the 101 on NFTs, Web3, Blockchain and Creator Coins

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

coin, creator, people, cryptocurrency, rally, community, blockchain, metaverse, adhd, funding, holding, create, nf, bought, podcast, web, money, launched, friends, beauty

SPEAKERS

Holly Shannon, Brian Fanzo

Holly Shannon  00:06

Welcome to Culture Factor. I'm your producer and host Holly Shannon. Our new season looks at creators, innovators and entrepreneurs. Why? Because the creator and gig economy is emerging. Talent has gone to work for themselves. The new year starts with the 101, or the beginner guide, for NFTs, blockchain, cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, and all those Metaverse and Web3 topics we keep hearing about. We're all going back to school on Culture Factor to understand this decentralized economy. From creator coins to the tax implications of selling crypto, let's unpack these emerging technologies in really simple terms. Join me and feel free to send in your questions. Would your brand like to sponsor culture factor? It is your opportunity to be a part of a podcast that is ranked in the top 2% globally and heard in over 89 countries. Email holly@hollyshannon.com. Subscribe to Culture Factor and share with a friend now. Okay, welcome back to part two on Culture Factor. If you missed the first part of our conversation, add it to your queue now. 

Holly Shannon  01:14

You mentioned something earlier. And I'm sorry, I'm gonna keep you on a little longer because I would love to have an understanding of creator coins and token economy. Are they the same? Or are they, were they created for different reasons? Could you share about that?

Brian Fanzo  01:33

Sure, sure. So you know, and, you know, for anyone that's interested in that Facebook group, you can just, literally in Facebook, search NFT 365. And it's open for anyone to join. I am referring to it as a pop up Facebook group, and the only reason I say that is I wanted to get myself an out, that I didn't have to manage this Facebook group for the rest of my time. But I just brought on a community manager for the Facebook side too. So anyone is welcome into that Facebook group as well. So you'll I look at the this Web3 world, which is what blockchain is. And I just like, to quick step through, right, like Web1 was this idea of the internet, right? And, and all of a sudden, we were able to connect on things like eBay and, and Amazon, of course, emerged. And then Web2 was this idea of content and social networks. And all of a sudden, the internet wasn't just something that we broadcasted a website. All of a sudden now, it integrated this idea of telling stories, creating content, and social integration. Web3, and where we are going right now and we're kind of in the midst of this transformation, is a shift in saying the platforms like a Facebook or an Instagram will no longer be what owns the data and the and, and where we kind of interact, we're actually going to give that ownership to us as individuals and and there's really like four ways that you can kind of like the where I look at these as entry points into this like this like mindset shift. And one of them is NFTs, one of them is cryptocurrency because cryptocurrency is a very like, decentralized approach to sharing the the shifting a value in money, the third one is the creator coins which I'll talk about in a second, and then the fourth is the Metaverse. And the Metaverse is probably the the furthest one out but I will say like the gamers, like my daughters, I have three daughters under the age of 12, like they're very heavy into Roblox, one of the online games. And for them like the idea of having an avatar, interacting with their friends, like I bought my daughters gift cards for their Metaverse characters because they wanted to give them a different sweatshirt that their friends were wearing online. And so like it sounds foreign for most of us, right and it is a little bit out there. But it is a place that we're going and so where creator coins kind of fall in, right, the place that I like to look at this is creator coins enable a layer of utility like a NFT does where cryptocurrency doesn't. I'll give an example: if you if you bought Bitcoin a year ago, you know, Bitcoin was you know, I believe it was like $22,000 for one Bitcoin a year ago, and now it's north of $36,000. So if you bought that one Bitcoin, you would, the value that you you purchased would have gone up, but there's nothing you actually get for holding that Bitcoin. There's no, there's no, nothing that's enabled, there's no additional benefits. What creator coins are is, is kind of like the hybrid between what an NFT is and then what that cryptocurrency is. And so it is fairly new, I did not hear about it, the concept, actually until Clubhouse this past February, when I was in a clubhouse room and someone said, you know, hey, we can create our own economy. And so I applied for one, and I was able to get a coin in March and so my coin is the ADHD coin. And I like I like to refer to as the superpowered coin. You don't have to have ADHD or anything in that space, but that's kind of the name of the coin. But what makes it unique is that it is, the more people that are holding it, the more its value goes up. And so I'm able to use that for rewards and incentives for my community. And the beauty of this is, it's not you sending me money, it's rather you holding these coins. And by simply holding them, you're going to help increase the value and the price. And then I'm going to give you certain things that, if you are holding, in my community, if you're holding 193 coins, and I, my hotkey number was 93 so I just liked that kind of, you know, the number association there. If you're holding 193 coins, you get access to a weekly webinar and zoom call with me without having to pay any money. It's it was something that we had, we used to pay through our mastermind group. And now you simply have to hold that coin. And, and what I mean by holding, I think this is the important aspect, is you create an account on this on the website that my coin is hosted on, which is called Rally, you create a free account, and then you can buy the coin. And my coin, you know, when we launched it was it was worth $1.34, I believe, when we launched, and just recently, we passed over $10. So I know people in my community that say, Hey, Brian, I believe in you, I'm gonna buy some of your coin to support what you're doing. And they were able to remove, you know, one of them removed, you know, over $10,000 put a down payment on a car. And they did that not because I gave them money, or they gave me money. But they were simply supporting me. And it's a lot of it is that like 1000 true fan model, right, where together we're building this own economy. And what is nice about it is like for my for my community, you can actually even send the coins to each other. So today, one of the people came into our Discord and they shared like this entire breakdown of how they're looking at their business and their work from home schedule, in 2022. And it's really detailed, really nice document. And four people in the community sent them five ADHD coin, as just like a thank you for doing that. And, and it might sound like, hey, we can just send money that way as well, like Venmo, or Paypal or whatever it may be. But what is neat about this is that the more people that are holding it, the more the value goes up. And so you almost kind of, we are creating our own little economy around here. And you might be thinking like, well, how does it get it's like price and value? It is a little bit different than let's say a cryptocurrency. Because the terminology is, it's bonded on three different price points, rather than just one price point. And the reason that is, is it's supposed to make it a little bit less volatile. And the the fluctuation in the price can go up and down. But I will say like from my community, you know, pretty much majority, the people that we now have, I think 1200 plus people that are holding ADHD coin in their, in their portfolio right now at the moment, a majority of them are will say, you know, and I'm not putting words in their mouth, but they'll say, by simply holding it, they're getting rewards every week, because that's that's a benefit every every Sunday, based on the percentage they hold, we reward them for doing so. And they also get this additional access into our my community and the things that we're creating. For many of them, if they bought $100 of the coin, within a couple of weeks, they've already got $100 worth of value. And then if they want to sell the coin a month from now, they can actually sell it back and they don't have to sell it to an individual they just convert it and then they can send it to their their bank account or to into a cryptocurrency. So, I know it can sound really like like, a little bit of like funny money. And it's a little bit of like, wait a second, like how does that work? And I will say when I got the coin, I thought of it like oh, it's kind of like Patreon. It's kind of like affiliate marketing. And I couldn't have been more wrong. And I spent four months like not really understanding the nuances. And now I can say like, it's been an amazing, we've, you'll 4x the value of our coin and the people that are holding it just in the last 90 days and most of that's because like, I actually give away in q4 of last year, I gave away $19,000 of my coin 19,000 US dollars worth of my coin as a way to like incentivize and to, like people that were reviewing my podcast, I gave them you know, 10 coin just as a as a thank you. And what's beautiful about this idea is it shifts the, like kind of the control. And and like I will say like, the creators that are on this platform right now, they, they go from all extremes, right? There are people that are live streamers on Twitch. There are, actually American Idol Justin Guarini, for those familiar with him, second place to Kelly Clarkson, he has his own coin. Carole Baskin from the TV show Tiger King has her own coin. And then there are business leaders. There are creators that have their own Facebook group or community. And there also are musicians. Megadeth has their own coin, Portugal. The Man has their own coin. And I will say like the thing that's really neat about it is it's not the idea of just another source of passive income. For me, the reason I love it, is that the more people that we empower in the community to the hold the coin, the more value it increases. It doesn't just increase mine as the creator. And so like for the first time, I actually feel that I can create an environment where it truly is, the rising tide lifts all ships that are in the community. And so like that's really where it fits into my world. And you can check it out at adhdcoin.com, will kind of redirect you there. You don't have to, there's nothing at the bio on that site. But if you're, you're curious, just kind of like the the nuances there, that will redirect anybody that is interested.

Holly Shannon  10:31

So you're kind of building out brand evangelists around ADHD coin or NFT 365. Whatever it is you're producing. 

Holly Shannon  10:46

I'm often asked, Does my business need a podcast? My answer is yes. That nothing else is the fast track into thought leadership and being established and seen as the expert in your industry, as podcasting. What's increasingly evident is that it's a branding machine. It kicks doors open for you to have conversations with leaders, creates a pathway to partnerships and connections on a deeper level. You will not be your industry's best kept secret. Your ideas and business will have global reach. So step into your power. Go to hollyshannon.com to launch your podcast now. And now back to our interview. 

Holly Shannon  11:27

So let me just jump back a smidge. So you said you're doing this through rally.io is where you started your creator coin process. How did you create the initial value from the, for the very first ones? And you said it was backed on three price points to give it less volatility? Can you tell me what those three are? And then the last part of that question is, is rally based on its own smart contract? So you didn't have to build that when you started your creator coin economy?

Brian Fanzo  12:02

Oh, I love all those questions. I don't think I've had anyone asked me those questions, which are the right questions to ask. So I appreciate that. So rally was actually developed or launched in 2016. And the idea of this creator coins on is referred to on the side chain, because it's bonded on the those coins and I explained the coins it's bonded to, it actually started in 2016, because the process always was there, but the there was no user interface or way to manage it. And rally is actually funded by Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capitalist that happens to fund Clubhouse and happens to be the fund for Coinbase, which is a large exchange that happens to be a fund for opensea which of course is the NFT market. And so they're, they funded both series A and Series B of rally, which is the is this the company that mine is on. And it is on, it's on a side chain of Etherium. So the way it's bonded is it's bonded to the the price of Etherium or Ether, and then it's bonded to the rally coin which is available to be traded on Coinbase or any exchange, so it's a it's a public coin, and then the third bond is actually the ADHD coin itself like my community. So when I talk to my community what we, the only thing we ultimately control is the total coins in circulation on, of ADHD coin. And those other two price point, or those other two bonding points will kind of fluctuate with the public market. Now, the question about like how it was funded to begin, with now Andreessen Horowitz because the funder, that, the money they put into it, the way it works is that as a creator, I was awarded a certain amount of coin myself and then there are the people that are funding the company also have a certain amount of coin. And I will say like the way that it started off for me was there was 50,000 coins in circulation. I owned about 60% of them, others owned 40% because they're part of the backing group. And right now in this moment, we have 142,000 coins in circulation and so the funding of it now is almost it kind of has shifted. And I now own less than 50% of my total coins in circulation. And interesting enough, the beauty of this is I don't have to be, I might be the creator of the coin, but if someone came in today and and purchased a large amount of coin, we did, we have someone that's interested in doing this right now, they could ultimately have just as much if not more benefit than me if they buy and own more of a percentage of coin than I individually hold. But I will say like the incentive for me, or like what how I look at it from like a you know, the more people that are holding the coins, the more value my coin gains in the ADHD coin side of the house. And then also the more layers of things that I can add on, right so like on my community if you, I even have on the on the landing page, if you want to use if you want to gain coin by being active in our community, you can actually use that to, to buy a one on one phone call with me for, you know, to do consulting, without having to use any normal cash or purchasing on the outside. So like those other utilities live there. And so the there has been a couple other coin side chains that have launched. Two of them launched and failed pretty miserably. A lot of it because, you know, I will say the the learning curve for us as creators and developers, is not easy. And the last part of that is yes, rally as a company is actually operates as a DAO, which a DAO just referred is a decentralized autonomous organization, which really means all of us that are creators, we have voting power on how the company spends money, and how we, how they allocate the funds. And what is nice about that is we are using ultimately, the DAO of rally, which is one of those bonding curves, to you know, grow and decide what we're marketing and educating. And I was one of the first 100 coins, I believe I was the 66th coin that was launched on rally, there is now almost 300 coins at the time of recording now. And their goal is to hit the 5000 coins by the end of 2022. And so it is without question were the early adopters right now. But it was something become a little bit more mainstream, as kind of the education and the concepts behind it emerge. There is one one competitor right now that I'm aware of they've, I've had conversations with them as they wanted me to launch a coin on their on their network as well. But you know, I think the the beauty of it is I'm really ultimately creating my own economy. And I'm in, I'm rewarding my superfans. I'm giving them an opportunity to grow with me. And how cool is it that if you like, I'm a big Dave Matthews Band fan. And I joined the Dave Matthews Band warehouse in 2003. And Dave Matthews Band at the time, no one really knew of them as artists, as musicians. And as they grew, I didn't get any benefit for being an early adopter and supporting them from the early days. But for people in my community, if you're buying my coin today, and you're a part of this growth that we're having in the, and the podcasting merging, your as my, the audience grows, and more people are getting ADHD coin, and right now we're averaging like eight to 10 people are buying coin a day based on my podcast, that all of those that are supporting me right now are coming along and benefiting with me. Because the coin, they hold, the value keeps going up and up. And so it is really this like really neat way of rewarding. And you know, the rising tide lifts all ships and those that are are part of your community.

Holly Shannon  17:36

I appreciate you dissecting that for me, because, and for everybody. It's it's so great. You're so articulate. And I'm wondering, you said there's no competitors to rally right now. But maybe it is interesting for there to be other sources so it almost doesn't become, even if their goal is good, but you don't want it to be almost like a monopoly, like they're the only people providing it because then maybe it changes do you think?

Brian Fanzo  18:11

I am, the reason I'm taking phone calls from the other coin places is I believe they need, that competition is a great thing in this space. And I will say the beauty of blockchain is that everything is is public record, right. So like every person, every time that I move coin in and out or you know, as a holder, if I sell a portion of my coin, someone can look at the the wallet address that is behind my coin, and they can see all of my transactions, it's very public. Now that can be can be intimidating or scary for people. But the beauty of that is, you know, when we think about like, you know, insider trading, or these, you know, these big, you know, schemes, these networking schemes that have happened over the years, we had no access to know, what the CEOs were doing with the funding on the money or the things we were giving them. What is nice with rally and the blockchain is that, that barrier is is almost completely removed. And so I can log in right now. And I can tell you what, what rally has done with every aspect of their funding, because it's all through this the blockchain. But I do believe there needs to be competition. I also believe, you know, I'm such a, I'm very bullish. And I really think that the the Web3 world is going to empower all of us to take new ownership and have access to people that just, that share our purpose and our passions, no matter what they are. But to get there, it requires a lot of education, a lot of different entry points. And I believe we are still a ways away from that. Like, I believe it's two or three years before even some of these mass adoption schemes become more like second nature. But you know, there was a time when someone said like, I would never send payment online like with something like PayPal like I need to physically touch my my money. I can't send this to someone. And now we send money and transfer money online as if it was like our normal nature, right? So there, a lot of it might sound like it seems really ridiculously foreign. But we've also, you know, the speed of change and things that we've adopted over the last 20 years, is really proof that we can make that happen. But there is a lot of education, there's a lot of adoption. And if this is overwhelming, I, actually, I'm not going to say that. I know this is overwhelming for people that are listening. And I'm not saying that from a place of, of expertise, more of, I'm also overwhelmed, right. I'm also, you know, each day when I learned a nuance of the cryptocurrency market and the fact that like, how the SEC is trying to regulate it also impacts that that cryptocurrency, which now impacts the price of my coin, which is how I sell my NFTs, all of a sudden my head wants to pop off. And so I would just I would just ask people that, you know, when I said there's four entry points, that's really where I would say, like, think of the four entry points, and its cryptocurrency, NFTs, creator coins and the Metaverse. And look at one of those four, and kind of be like, Okay, I want to understand one of them better. And it doesn't mean you have to fix or start start using it today. But what I would, what I would ask people to do, and this is kinda like my own little soapbox, or call to action, is start thinking about your, your business your day to day life. And think about it from the standpoint of, What could I do today to prepare myself for maybe integrating or launching something like this in the future. And if you're willing to take that step, you're gonna be an early adopter. You're going to be one that is going to be able to take advantage of this. And I will say, I think it's going to change the concept of entrepreneurship, it's going to change every creator, like when I look at my daughter's, and we don't have to ask them what they want to do for live what job they want to have, right? They, we can really ultimately say like, what is the impact you want to make around the world? And now let's find ways that we can actually create an economy around that, that doesn't require a job title or a resume, and we can do it in really some dynamic ways. And I'm an optimist and extremely positive outlook on things are there lots of downside as well, like, uh, you know, we don't know, you know, some of the long term things that are in play here. But I believe in good people, and I think this is the beauty of this space, is that it's powered by good people. And if that continues to be the trend, then I really think we're going to look back and recognize that Web3 is empowering all of the good people in the world, to really reimagine how they work and how they live, and coming out of a pandemic, I think that's probably something we could all we could all embrace.

Holly Shannon  18:17

That's beautifully sad. You know, I always say I collect good people. So I think I'm going to be collecting good people in Web3 with you. 

Brian Fanzo  22:41

Love it. 

Holly Shannon  22:42

You might be there with me. 

Brian Fanzo  22:44

Sounds good. I'm in.

Holly Shannon  22:45

You know, it, all of the collaboration part is so interesting to me. I know we're nearing the end here, And I appreciate all the time that you've given. So maybe I will take a conversation about collaboration offline with you. And then if it if it grows into something bigger, maybe you would consider coming back on the show. And we could talk about what that looks like. 

Brian Fanzo  23:09

Without question. Yeah, I'll make it public now, I will be happy to come back on. And we can, we can find some ways, and I'm also happy, we can talk about it, you know, I'm happy to you know, if there's, you know, a you know, people that want to kind of do like a pop up Facebook group or walk through something from a video perspective. You know, I I'm in this for the long run, and I really want people, I don't want to force people to change but I want you, those that are willing to have that open mindset to what's possible, I would love to kind of you know, spark that curiosity and help people kind of see the different opportunities that we have in front of us.

Holly Shannon  23:43

I love that. Thank you. So just a side note, you mentioned Justin Guarini bought your creator coin right? So here's a fun fact. I just saw him on stage here in DC in Once Upon A One More Time where he plas the lead as Prince Charming.

Brian Fanzo  24:02

I was supposed to go that. I had bought tickets. Justin and I had become friends thanks to Clubhouse, and I actually bought tickets to go and unfortunately, I, my, one daughter was sick and I we didn't couldn't move things around. So funny enough. I live right by Dulles airport here in Northern Virginia. So I was planning on going there to see Justin. So was it a good show? Was it good?

Holly Shannon  24:21

At was an amazing show. I actually was really fortunate and I got to go on opening night. A friend of mine is one of the swing actors, Felicia Thomas, and she was not in it that night but I was invited and then I went again Wednesday night with a friend I bought tickets to go. And it's such an amazing show. I highly recommend it. I think the last night is coming up, like I want to say the last night is like the ninth or something so if you can get in it is so great. And the nuances of all of the music, like, granted you kind of need to like some of the Britney Spears songs, but how they're delivered, like who is delivering that song changes, like your whole perspective of it. It's really, it's really well done and funny, and it's, it's great, I highly recommend it.

Brian Fanzo  25:15

I can say Justin is one of the most beautiful, amazing humans I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. Amazing dad, amazing person, his, his coin is actually the trust coin over on rally, which I think just also embodies like, what he's all about. So I love hearing that

Holly Shannon  25:30

Very cool. Well, maybe I need a coin, maybe for Culture Factor or something. We'll see. So maybe those are some of those collaborations we can chat about. So, this is so cool. I, just before we part is there, you know, obviously, I'm gonna have all the links in the show notes to find you, but is there anything that I haven't asked you that you wanted to share with my little world?

Brian Fanzo  25:53

I would just say, you know, I think the beauty of this space is this idea of reimagining. It's not about pivoting. It's not about having to change everything in your life. And it's not because we've done things wrong previously, it's the idea that we have, you know, new opportunity and new things in front of us. And, you know, I would just take that, you know, challenge, that approach. And if, you know, NFTs can really be overwhelming. So if there's people in your community or people that are, you know, friends of friends that are trying to figure it out, like I'm 100%, open to suggestions on NFT podcast episodes. It's partially what I'm doing daily. So yeah, that's all I have, you know, NFT 365, and any of your favorite podcasting apps, we're just about everywhere there is and yeah, thanks so much for having me and I will definitely be back for sure.

Holly Shannon  26:39

This is excellent. Thank you, Brian. Thanks for coming on Culture Factor.

Brian Fanzo  26:42

Thank you.