Alright, let's get this started up some success, but realizing that it was really gonna take a lot to
achieve anything else with a similar level and or anything else at all really because you know
I was releasing independent singles. I was trying to work with the label
I was trying to do all this stuff and just nothing was really working. So that is what really led me into crypto
Yeah, no, I mean your story is
Very similar to mine in many ways. I also got into crypto in 2016
I had read about Bitcoin back in like 2011 early on but it was so early was like, you know hard to figure out
How do you even get this, you know and back then it was like you couldn't buy it really
I mean you could it was like physical exchanges that were starting to pop up but not you know
It was like all OTC was very difficult and I didn't really understand like from a tech aspect
You know how to run a note and all that
So I'm just calling oh, this is a cool idea, but you know, I don't know how to get into it
So, okay, whatever and then 2013 my friends like oh man, you gotta start buying Bitcoin
So I signed up for my first exchange and in 2013
But still didn't really understand what I was doing and didn't really have much to invest anyway
So I'm like, whatever, you know, and then 2016 he comes back the same frame
Okay, you told me about this multiple times I
got to figure it out. So yeah, that's that's when I started researching and
Finally bought and saying it was funny because my that was my first buy too as a theory
And around that same price
You know somewhere between seven to ten dollars on average. So I basically bought my first thousand
Hundred I wish a thousand my first hundred Ethereum for a thousand bucks. So I miss those days. I gotta say
But uh, yeah, so then you know, okay, you got into crypto
You're struggling, you know with this whole concept of you know
dealing with the music industry wanting to do your own thing, but then also
Discovering this new thing, you know with crypto and you have a you know finance background as well
So I think that probably all played into it
So like when when would you say was like this kind of light bulb moment for you where you're like, okay
Maybe I can you know somehow integrate this idea of cryptocurrency
With music and like, you know sell my music for crypto. Like when did that start?
Yeah, well first I I really just
Make an entrance back to music and I was like, all right
Well, what am I gonna make music about and that's where the idea for crypto rich came from so
really the idea for crypto rich to make an album that told my story and it's really my story and
It's not just about crypto or all about the blockchain
The whole album is my story and I really just wanted to make an album that told my story but also
Told the story of what I see is the future of financial and creative freedom, which is crypto, right?
I wanted to choose a title that was, you know, catchy and bold and
Interesting and people were gonna want to listen to and and uh something that was gonna stand out
so that's why I chose crypto rich and so
Before I had the idea to sell it for crypto, you know
Like selling it for crypto was not really part of the initial
Plan so much like if I would have thought it was a good idea
But I would have been like, I don't know how i'm gonna sell this for crypto
I'm not worried about that right now
Like I just want to get out an album that tells my story so I can make an entrance back
Into music right like selling it for crypto was an afterthought and like
Obviously, I wanted it to be appealing to the crypto community
success at first for sure like
I put it out and I didn't feel like anyone in the crypto community
Connected with it in a big way or anything. I was on twitter here
I had at that time. I think I had like 10 to 15k followers where I was at that range for like years
There was just no community
There wasn't enough of a crossover community that I at least that I could reach
That was interested in the music and the crypto stuff
That I really started to find people who could connect with what I was doing on a regular basis
Before that it was tough because I was trying to make the transition from like
Just tweeting about crypto and being like a crypto guy on twitter
And like obviously like in other ways I would post about music maybe on instagram and stuff
But I had been out of the music industry for like two or three years
Not posting about music for a couple years. Literally. I didn't post on instagram for over two years
And on twitter, I was just tweeting like
D gen stuff about trading and like not tweeting about music and like not even really
Talking about my music like it wasn't just it wasn't even integrated as a part of the identity
I was putting forward on twitter. Like I was at the time
Crypto and I was tweeting about cryptos all day
Like I obviously wasn't hiding that I was a musician, but like I wasn't telling everyone. Hey
I'm a musician that trades crypto like it just wasn't that integrated with what I was doing. So
Yeah, when I released crypto rich, like obviously that's when I realized like, okay. I'm gonna like
Change back to just being dill and like be dill
Now i'm a musician who released the crypto rich album and all this stuff
So I even have a tweet like there's a really old tweet that you can find here
That's me revealing that like i'm releasing the album and like i'm dill
And like because at this time I had probably built up like a few thousand followers that like really had no idea that I was
A multi-platinum artist like it wasn't even really in my bio like
I wasn't hiding it per se you could have gone
Used and gone to my instagram and easily found out who I was like it was by no means hidden
But there was not even enough people who cared about what I was doing
Or like cared about anything other than like seeing some crypto stuff
I was you know, and also you got to understand there was no twitter spaces
So you didn't talk to people like this. You just tweeted crypto stuff and people would see it in the pie
But nobody really cared what who I was or that I made this song
And the other thing is the song was probably a lot less accomplished than maybe
Maybe had just recently gone platinum and a lot less people even knew the song to begin with so
Yeah, that that's kind of uh where I was for a couple years before coming back to crypto and releasing crypto rich, but
Crypto rich came out that I started to be like, okay, maybe there's a way that I could sell this for crypto
Even when they started to come around
It didn't seem like a super viable path to sell my music like
Who's gonna buy my picture of my album for money and why?
And other than that it was like, all right
Maybe you could do like royalty splitting on chain
But that has like some issues with it that that we could go into about that
But there's some issues with royalty splitting on chain
So that was obvious to me at the time, you know, that's been kind of obvious
I I think it's funny because you see
When people aren't really first getting into crypto blockchain and nfts and music nfts
They have a lot everybody has like this light bulb moment where they're like, oh my god
You could like split all of the royalties on chain the whole music industry all of publishing like you can revolutionize everything
But then i've also realized over time that it's like so logistically complicated
And there's so many people that are heavily invested in doing it the old way
That it's really complicated to ever see this kind of revolution, which is theoretically possible
um, so anyway, everyone has this light bulb moment, but
What was less obvious for me is the direction we've taken now where the nft is like a collectible
Vip pass to a whole digital world. So
This path that we've taken with utility with music nfts
It was not obvious to me back in 2016 2017 or
even 2019 when crypto rich first came out in 2019
I thought maybe you could do something with nfts and splitting your royalties on chain
But other than that nothing else seemed really viable for selling music
Like I couldn't see the value of anything other than that
Really at the time people would talk about social tokens, which is still a thing that people talk about, right?
But at that time everyone was like, oh you should make like a dill token and like people can use it to get access to your stuff
but it wasn't as convincing as nfts and
The whole nft concept with the artwork and everything that comes with it now. It just it surprised me
Well and you and you you were
Doing these stuff really early as well, right?
So I mean 2019 you made the album and then when did you actually launch it as an nft like what year?
2021 march 2021 were actually coming up on two years since my mint date. I actually you know what?
planned my new mint party one day after my two-year anniversary and I needed to move it up
I didn't even think about that
But my two-year anniversary is on
2023 I believe so it wasn't until 2021 that I first minted as an nft
So album dropped in 2019. I worked on just traditional music industry promotion
I did some like basic stuff
Like you can come on my website and like donate crypto to me and then I would like give you an album download
But there was no no bigger plan to it and no one really did it
I just set it up to see if it could work
And yeah, a couple people did it like friends, but nothing major, right?
It wasn't even like a checkout process or anything like that
It was literally just like send crypto to this address and and then get the download
That was how it was and then and then in 2020
I started to see crypto punks and I started to see
Um nfts becoming popular. This is before board apes even existed
Everyone was getting into clubhouse. So I started on clubhouse in 2020
You know everything you see today with nfts and web3 and that community became board apes and that community became
Everything in those early days of clubhouse. So
It was when I started to see crypto punks
And and some of the other nfts that I started to realize, okay
There's real volume and real trading activity behind these nfts. So like this is going to be the path to
Yeah, definitely, I mean that and
Back then weren't really on clubhouse. I remember there was like this
kind of battle at the time between clubhouse and
As far as just attention, but you know
Then when twitter launched twitter spaces, it was just like, you know, everybody went back to twitter. It seemed like
So it kind of killed that clubhouse vibe largely. Um, obviously they still have people over there and
People love it, especially for the audio. I shout out mitch down there. He loves
clubhouse, but yeah, I mean
You know, so so who so I mean this this was obviously even for
You know web3 music standards like 2021 was was super early. I mean that's like ancient in web3 times
So who who was around back then like who once you actually launched it
on the blockchain like who was around
doing similar things at the time like
You know during that time frame
That's a good question very few of the people that you see around today, um
Let's see feroc was around feroc was there early
Let's see alexander massey was this guy. That was awesome. He's the man. He was around heavily
He helped to run these communities. Uh, shout out to eric spivak
He's another one who's in the music industry that's been around forever
And since those early days, I mean we used to run it on clubhouse. I'm trying to think of
Who else has really been around for a long time glassy?
This glassy he's in the music nfts. He's been around for a really really long time
And there was no one talking about music nfts. You got to understand at that time the people
That had opinions on the music
It was tough to talk about music nfts because I was trying to talk to a bunch of people that did not know
Anything about the music industry. So I would be arguing with people about stuff
That shouldn't have even been an argument because they just didn't know anything about the music industry. So
But I I was ultimately just trying to be there and tell people like look this can work for music
Like there's a way to do music with nfts like you know
And um at the time there were there were very few people that were there building. Um, you know
There's eddie gangland. He was one of the og artists back then
Was around back then like, you know, this is when some of the og's were were becoming made and uh
Yeah, I mean in those early days we were on clubhouse
And that's where most of the activity was and I remember the board apes would come into our rooms and
They would all just start going. Whoa
And they would come into the space and and start doing that and I was like, what the hell is this stuff?
And I was like, ah, these guys are so stupid
What's with these dumb apes and then the next thing you know, they're worth like