Ep. 542 A Crypto Conversation with Scott Melker- The Wolf of All Streets

SPEAKERS

Scott Melker, Bryce Paul

 

Bryce Paul  00:08

All right, everybody. Well, welcome back. We got another great guest with us today I’m joined by Scott Melkor, aka The Wolf of all streets, and the milker project. That’s former life. Thank you for joining us, of course, thank you for having Yeah, dude. I’ve been a big fan follower for a long time. You encouraged me to become an influencer a lot. And so yeah, we’ve been tracking you for a long time. And I really am thankful. I think everybody’s watching has probably heard of you as well. So thanks for making the time.

 

Scott Melker  00:35

Awesome, man. I appreciate it. I’m glad we ran into each other literally, randomly at a bar.

 

Bryce Paul  00:40

Exactly. So do tell me a little bit about your story. You know, who are you? And how did you become, you know, arguably one of the largest influencers in the crypto space,

 

Scott Melker  00:48

I would love to say that I had a great plan. Like this was always envisioned. And I and I meditated on it in the mornings and secret at it, but now I had to read it. In reality, I think it happened very organically, a lot of luck and good timing. And I think largely just consistency, right, being there early enough and being relentless about it, and sort of never stopping. But the reality is that, you know, I had a music career for 20 years before he kind of alluded to the Melkor project. And so I had built a social following from that curate, and so I came into crypto late 2016, early 2017. As I was transitioning, transitioning out of music, my daughter was born, I had no idea what that was going to be like. And it was sort of this instant aha moment that I needed to not be on the road. DJing traveling all the time. I had always been a trader poorly. And I just coincidentally was serendipitous that I found crypto at the same time. Right? And so if you came into crypto in late 2016, early 2017 You were one of those everyone’s a genius in a bull market situations.

 

Bryce Paul  01:50

That’s what I got radicalized

 

Scott Melker  01:52

I literally was like my DJ friends are like you by bit this Bitcoin thing on on Coinbase. Right, the point and then you send it to the Bitrex Yeah, and everything’s denominated in Bitcoin. So it’d be really confusing, but just by ripples, right? Plural ripples. You put an S on ripples a theorems, yeah. And, and so I did. And luckily, I it was literally like 3000 bucks. And I woke up a week later. And it was like, 30 Yeah, you’re like, I was like, I’m taking out 20. And that’s probably it. And I’ve written the other 10 till now. That’s incredible. And by luck, yeah, by luck, right. And so, but what was interesting is, so I had, you know, like, 40,000, Twitter followers for music. And I just alienated them completely. started posting these terrible charts regret the time of, you know, magic internet money. And they were like, what’s wrong with you? Yeah. And that went down to 20,000. But I had a blue check. Yeah. Which was complete luck, right, that I had back in the old days, I had a blue check from 2010. Wow. Oh, my God, even though they had joined 1110 somewhere, but I joined Twitter in 2009. Wow. And like it was my main platform for music. I love to Twitter. So I think the blue check gave me an unfair advantage, like credibility that people didn’t know that I had gotten it from music. And so they assumed I was a financial expert of some sort. When the reality is I just joined crypto Twitter, following all the big accounts there. Learn about crypto myself. Right. And so I think to a large degree, I was just emulating what I learned from them. And so there was a point where I said Twitter, it’s just not enough for me. There was limited characters back then. Yeah. And so I was like, I’m gonna write a news free newsletter. And so I started, right, which I was twice a week. So I started doing that twice a week. And then I realized that while this became a job, yeah, actually, for a while charged $15. For the newsletter, I had the free one, but you get it more often. Yeah. But then I just never felt comfortable sort of with monetizing my audience. And I went back to free, but I said, you know, that’s not enough. I want to do it five days a week. Well, so I started doing five days a week, every morning, I wake up four o’clock in the morning, write a newsletter, you know, but that keeps me ready for everything the rest of the day, right. I know exactly what’s happening in the market by seven, eight o’clock AM when everyone else wakes up. But then I had a company called Block works come to me and say, you start a podcast. Can you curse on the show? Yeah. Literally, my response was what the fuck is a podcast? I have no idea. Yeah, never like 2019. I’m a boomer. And so I started, you know, we started a podcast was horrible. I like wrote down all these questions. And like, no matter what the guest was talking, we’re like, you went missing my like, I went back to my script, my pre predetermined jokes. And so then actually, I had Peter McCormick on the podcast at one point from what Bitcoin did. And he said, you know, the moment that I really cracked the code, I think, is the moment that I threw away all my notes. And I didn’t really prep much. I know these people. I just wanna have a conversation. It resonated with me, so I just did that. Yeah. And that’s failed me many times to be quite frank, because if if a guest is a bit dry or needs more encouragement, sometimes you just on the spot you run out of things to say, but largely, I think it’s That’s what has taken things to another level because I think people want to watch you have an organic conversation among friends rather than like a question and answer interview for a job, which is how I think a lot of podcasts sort of come out. But then that wasn’t enough. So I started so I started my YouTube. Yeah, which was way later. So like, I’m not the biggest YouTuber I most of my audience is still on Spotify and Apple or Twitter. And then I started daily streaming. And now honestly, I’m thinking the push for me is going to be more towards Twitter spaces. Okay. Yeah. Because it’s going back to I think, my core audience where they’re at. And just because like I said, I think I sort of, I enjoy or Excel. I don’t know, it’s what I’ve heard with the kind of group conversation moderating. And that’s the story. And it’s probably much longer than you want. Oh, that’s, but I want more. But honestly, none of it was like, I have this plan to become I don’t even like the term influencer. I’m sure you hate it. Yeah, we hate it. I don’t, I don’t have this plan to become the one of the biggest people in this space. I was just here to learn. And because I became so utterly obsessed with it, I consumed the content all day. And then I thought, well, I can help more people come into this space, because the 12 of us and our cousins alike are not enough for mainstream adoption. And that’s, by the way, who’s back here. Now, it’s like 14 of us, yeah, cousins who hate us. And, you know, and so, to that end, and so there were times when it was actually kind of like a wildly profitable business, in the bull runs to be doing it. But as I tell the story, often at this point, I joke that I’m at like a non for profit, because I continue creating more content with my staff. But I I’m very hesitant about who I’ll allow to sponsor or what sponsors. So for many months, I’ll go now for long stretches, was just me paying my people and we’re putting it out. And we’re cranking it, and there’s literally no business model behind it at all. Wow. Well, that could change, you know, that it will change. Yeah, that, that that’s intentional, it by building the trust, the trustee and the audience, the first history is, that’s right. But it’s much more important than the immediate check, there will be another bull market, and all of that will flood back in. And then I think we’ll be able to have the options to be more discerning about sort of how we how we monetize, I think what you guys do is actually very interesting, because it’s sort of your own products, you know, and I think there’s a no pump is just kind of moving in that direction. And I think that’s sort of the wave of the future. And you guys are largely ahead of that appreciate, I think, I think that’s really interesting. So I would say that I’ve been very good at the like growth model, but in the business model side of it, is I’m still iterating

 

Bryce Paul  07:39

Yeah, when I think of you and we’re here like you know, at crypto events and stuff and you’re a celebrity in our in our small niche of you know, crypto, right, but I’m sure you get lots of people who approach you and say hey, like Scott, you know, I know you’ve got big reach like let me give you a Bitcoin, let me give you some money to like, promote us. How do you typically respond or think about those things?

 

Scott Melker  07:59

I don’t even respond. Yeah, it’s literally an outright No, and we don’t respond to the emails, the emails don’t make it to me anymore. Yeah, like we I’ve put a system in place where I don’t even want to be bothered by it. Yeah, you guys probably know, you’d be shocked. I can say in the bull market. Now. Like I said, I don’t see the emails. And I tell my team not to even tell me because it’s a waste of time, waste of our time. But it would be like 10 a day. That’s crazy. Like, between my DMs which I eventually closed? Yeah, result of that. And emails, like through the website and stuff. Yeah, yeah. I mean, 10 a day and empty projects. I’m like, do you watch my content? You know, I’ll tell you at the beginning, when I have 20,000 30,000 40,000 sponsors. I thought that was super exciting. Followers. Yeah. So when I say I used to have 20,000 sponsor, but don’t take money. Yeah, but yeah, when I had that many followers and stuff. I didn’t really do it then. But I think that at that level, people can do that in a more genuine manner, you get to a certain threshold. I think, for me, I said Twitter became super annoying and unfunded. 100,000. I think that’s kind of the threshold of followers where it becomes a job instead of like, because people expect stuff. But I think that people assume that anything you post is for financial benefit, right? At a certain point. So it used to be, you know, my first the reason people engage with me, other than sort of what we discussed before was I was a trader, right? That was like trading, like crazy. Oh, sharing cards and my calls. And most of it, I wasn’t even trading, whatever. And then literally, people just think that you’re like pumping and dumping things. You don’t even own it. Right, you know, and it’s just, it’s also it’s just that like, there’s a certain percentage of everyone’s audience that are trolls, yes, and are angry. And you get to a certain threshold where you start to notice that totally, if you have 10,000 and 100 of your followers are trolls. It doesn’t matter. I think the majority of people are trolls. But and so then then you start getting blamed for everybody’s like losses in the market and all that. So the bottom line is as you grow, you learn You you scale out of even considering those things to where it becomes just an outright zero and a no. Like I said, like I wouldn’t even take very legitimate sponsorship right now depending on what it is, bro I think about all that certainly not like I have no I do not get paid until yes to market exit. But listen, there’s nothing wrong with that. Yeah, here’s long as you just face it if you tell people I was paid, I believe, especially especially if you believe in it right? Right. Like, people. That’s what it’s what we’re here when Sir marketing is like people don’t get mad at Kim Kardashian for a hair product or something. The problem is that these are financial products. And if people lose their money on them, it’s a real problem, right? Like if your hair dyed doesn’t come out the way you want. It’s different. So it’s not it’s not exactly like a perfect example. But so you just stopped doing it, right? And it’s really annoying, because now I feel like at this level, like I want, there’s some of this stuff I’m super passionate about and like it and I won’t touch it, I won’t. In fact, people will say, Do you want to invest? Right? And there’s a lot of things I invest in. And the first thing I’ll tell them is, as an investor, you are the last person on Earth I’m going to talk about publicly. Yeah, sure. Because now I literally can’t talk about right, right. And so I learned that over the years because I used to talk about the things I invested in and I’ve now written them down 99% and people you know, and so it’s a it’s a very sort of tenuous situation to be in long story short is just to say just you just don’t do it at all. Yeah, and you know, now but now I like post Bitcoin charts. ln boring. No, I was not posting Pepe charts, or whatever is

 

Bryce Paul  11:35

happening. But if you think about like, like you said, like, you might even see people who you deem super legit and be like, Okay, well, we could take sponsorship dollars from them, but think about FTX, right, like everybody pegged them as the most buttoned up, you know, and Kobe and Leger had their up only podcast was sponsored by FTX. And then that blew up, and they and then they started getting so much heat. And they’re like, look, we just, you know, so you, I guess the point is, you can’t even you don’t even know who’s you know,

 

Scott Melker  12:01

my first ever sponsor us.

 

Bryce Paul  12:04

Block phi, Voyager Voyager. That was like, I knew it was one of those yet

 

Scott Melker  12:08

so and so I met them at World crypto con in 2019. They launched that month, I was one of probably their first 100 customers, they did not have a yield product. It was strictly a exchange broker. And I traded there for years. And I talked about them all the time for free. Because it’s where I traded. Yeah, everybody loved it. And they said, I said, I’m starting a podcast. I don’t really know what that means. You guys give me five grand. I can like pay this company to produce it. They’re like, we will totally support you in the beginning. And they were my first sponsor for a couple months. And I’ve never heard the end of it. Dude, forever. Yeah. And it was like, literally a few 1000 bucks here and there. And I was using it forever. And I lost millions. Right? Literally millions. Yeah. Because I believed in them. And I used it. And I trusted the CEO. And I thought he was my friend, Steve. And so like, Yeah, so like, imagine that you’re personally suffering massively. But the worst part is the guilt you feel about other people who may have done it. So So what do you do after that? Like it’s a it’s a strange form of PTSD, I guess, total? And listen, I’m not saying I don’t take any sponsors, or that I wouldn’t. But I dodged FTX Yeah, but the thing about FTX though, is they got a lot of crap. But like they also had Tom Brady and the American Airlines Arena to take crap with them. Exactly. Yeah, I guess I had Mark Cuban and, and, you know, Marshall Faulk and whoever. And for Hardaway, who’s one of the Anfernee Hardaway or something, but yeah, like all these guys, that’s not who it was. That just disparaged him. But yeah. You know, and so, it’s just it’s, it’s, it’s really hard, but it doesn’t like the business side is very sort of secondary to me fleeting. Yeah. I know it comes in waves and I believe in it, but like, I would never stop creating the content. Yeah, because that’s what brought me here. And that’s that’s what I believe in.

 

Bryce Paul  13:58

What um, you’ve interviewed a lot of people and I’m curious, like, who are your favorite kinds of people like I love interviewing hedge fund managers because I just love getting in their mind how they think about markets. Who is like that your your ideal person to interview and do you even have like a favorite person that you’ve interviewed? Sailors the easiest Michael sailor Yeah, he’s

 

Scott Melker  14:17

because you say one thing and then you wait three hours. And that makes your life really easy. Yeah. And he says amazing things and he’s so close to look smart and people share all the things he said on your show. Yeah, you’re a genius. Bala biology is incredible. I got that guy’s amazing. Same. Yeah, right. But biology tests you. So like a sailor put it back? Where sailor is like, just he sailor every time I interview sailor he calls me before. And he says Scott, what are we gonna talk about? We should do this in that. It was a Twitter space, as most recently said, who else is gonna be on the spaces? There’s 10 minutes before I said, Yeah, this person has said Get rid of him. Not showing up. We’ll talk and they can come later. Yeah. And right. And so he has this target boys, but Balaji is like, right, Scott, what do you like, you know, he’s like, Have you listened to everything I thought and are you following me? Right? So, but the way his mind works, I think is unparalleled, right about everything so he can go way beyond crypto Taylor can actually too. But last time I had sailor on on spaces, I said, I asked him a question about the crypto contagion. And he, and we had just spoken and he was like, yeah, we’ll have a talk. Do you want me? You know, and he went through a 23 number bullet point, reasons for the crisis of confidence in crypto, and thank God like number one, and literally listed them. Yeah, come on, man. You didn’t just come up with those 23. But he’s ready, you know? Yeah. So Balaji, I think he’s just incredible, because you can ask him about anything, and he will. And he will say something that will blow your mind that you didn’t think of. So that’s great. I really like digging in with, you know, people who found and Create Layer ones, layer two, sort of the like, the real builders, who some of them are a bit boring, because they’re just all appear, right. But the ones who can really articulate the importance of what they’re building and why they’re building it and why it’s different, I think is important, because I think it’s very hard to differentiate any of them. Yeah, it is 17 layer ones build pretty fine.

 

Bryce Paul  16:28

No fee, and fast throughput and all that stuff. That’s right.

 

Scott Melker  16:32

And then I think just it’s always interesting to get perspectives from people who’ve been around like from the beginning. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think it’s, it’s really always powerful. But to be honest, man, I think I’ve probably I can’t even count I’ve in the podcast, I don’t even know what number because we stopped numbering them. It’s got to be, you know, four or 500. Yeah, I’m interviewing eight or nine people a day on YouTube, a week on YouTube. It’s a lot. spaces can be 15 people I’ve probably recorded, you know, 1000 to 1500 interviews at this point, they’re all great. I just love sitting down and talking to people and the best job in the world. It’s the best job in the world, but not because the reasons maybe people think you were just gonna say it, though. It’s learning learning. For me, it’s the best job in the world has nothing to do with money or any of it because I literally am trying to learn and I love this stuff. And like, who gets to go to college with the best professors in the world? It’s one on one and ask them questions for an hour. And they have to sit there and answer they have to, for some reason, they actually will come do it. Because everybody loves to hear themselves speak exactly. But for whatever reason, they’ve deemed me appropriate to ask them questions. DJ, you know, and, and so for me, it’s like, I’m humbled and flattered every day that they’re willing to do it. And so I wake up super excited. Every day,

 

Bryce Paul  17:47

there’s so many smart people in this space, and kind of going back to what you were saying about Balaji. You know, he was the first person outside of pizza mind, the first person who kind of started tweeting about COVID 19. This was like January of 2020, right? And so I was following him, I’m like, wait, hold on it. This is the CTO of Coinbase. Super smart dude. And now he’s starting to and he like called it like, you know, three or four months, way ahead of time in

 

Scott Melker  18:12

the retweets of late people have really, really captured because now he did every single part of the government respond exactly.

 

Bryce Paul  18:20

And now he put out the million dollar bitcoin price target, by the end of the year, all that stuff, which is like 90 days, or 90 days, sorry, 90 days. And I think it’s more of a provocative like, you know, trying to, you know, get people thinking about the unrealized losses on all these banks balance sheets, and what, that’s the elephant in the room?

 

Scott Melker  18:39

I asked him that question. And I don’t think he’s ever said this anywhere else. He said, I burned a million to tell people that they were printing trillions, bingo, he literally admitted outright is like, I’m just there’s a million dollar marketing campaign out of my pocket against the Fed.

 

Bryce Paul  18:54

Yeah, it makes sense. You got a lot of interest in it. And I think he’s got a lot of money. That goes without saying, but like, I love it, because, you know, he’s, you know, he puts his money where his mouth is, and that’s what I respect. You know, like, guys, like you put your money where your mouth is, and you know, you spend in order to grow this ecosystem and make people aware, right, and with crypto 101, all the stuff that we do is like, you know, we’re just trying to educate people and get people to understand like, not only the basics of, you know, the history of money, and why we need Bitcoin, but like, how to use your ledger, right? How to trade on Metamask like, I just I just for granted

 

Scott Melker  19:30

that it’s so complex, it’s so unconscious over their heads. And

 

Bryce Paul  19:35

these are the barriers to entry. And so I think things will get easier over time as more companies kind of develop, you know, in thinking user first and customer first, but we’re just not there yet. Can

 

Scott Melker  19:46

I tell you a cool story.

 

Bryce Paul  19:47

I’d love to hear from you guys. So

 

Scott Melker  19:48

I when I graduated college at the University of Pennsylvania, circuitous route, I was DJ but I was fancied myself an entrepreneur at the time I had started internet comm company called fairly tonight. But then I wanted to start a physical print magazine. It was 2001 in Philadelphia and the magazine was called 101.

 

Bryce Paul  20:06

Wow. And there’s so many Yeah. He was saying he was wearing this shirt yesterday. So there’s a lot of

 

Scott Melker  20:12

assorted in that shirt at consensus last year’s a lot of sex this city. So it was called 101. Magazine. And it was like a print rag about Nightline, in Philadelphia, and I eventually sold it. And I moved to New York to work for a company called Frank. But so my corporate entity remained 1011, then my wife owns a internet marketing company. And because we already had the corporate entity, it’s called 101. Management. Wow. So it’s also we’ve maintained the one on one name for now. 23 years, I hope we’re not copyright. And for now, I think I was copyright infringing on every university in the planet who I don’t want to. But yeah, so it’s the name. Yeah, I know why you used it, obviously. And it resonates. But I think you just touched on the single most important point. And it’s hard, I think, in our position, especially when you have a guest. They just talk over everyone’s head. And it’s they’re just too smart. Yeah. Right. And so you find that you’re having these conversations about Z. K. snarks and optimistic. Yeah, I

 

Bryce Paul  21:09

asked everybody you ask that,

 

Scott Melker  21:11

like, but our industry has failed. If a year from now we’re talking about those things? Yes. They have to be the underlying tech that people use that they don’t know exists while they’re just Amen. Sending a digital picture to someone. Yeah. Right. Like, and even if the if we’re still using the term NF. T. We’re failing, right? Well, I won’t say we’re failing. I’m saying it means we’re still really early.

 

Bryce Paul  21:35

Yeah, I think about like, when when you log into Netflix, and you like you stream all this shit, right? You don’t think about the WebSockets or the API calls? Or, you know, all that stuff? No, you just want to watch the TV, right? And with crypto, it’s like, you just want to hold your money, right? That’s pretty much it and be able to have access to it anywhere in the world at any time. Be able to send it anywhere, right? That’s like what you want. You don’t care if it’s on Aetherium, or if you’re using certain wallets and stuff. But for some reason, crypto is perverse in that way. Because it’s so technological focus that everybody is so obsessed with that infrastructure, and maybe is just a function of being an early industry, like an a bunch of nerds, my mom watches

 

Scott Melker  22:15

every single show that I do, my mom does the same thing, right? And went to every game I had in my life and every show like she could and she was biggest fan of mom. But every single time she’s like, you know, it’s got I listen, but I have no idea what you know. And

 

Bryce Paul  22:30

it’s like, We’re doing this for moms all over the world.

 

Scott Melker  22:33

Yeah. And so yeah, I think the most important thing that crypto industry can do. And I think that’s what people are focused on is just abstracting away all of the complexity that I think naturally comes with it seed phrases. Oh my god. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I want to be my own bank until I fall on my head. Right? Yeah. What? I spill a glass of water on your left on my desk, because, you know, yes, you hear these horror stories. And,

 

Bryce Paul  22:58

and I think it’s also all this, these buzzwords in this confusion is kind of sometimes, in my opinion, a function of, you know, all this fundraising and all these new coins, that they’re all competing with each other, and they have to come up with these sexy terms. And these really, things that make them almost feel smarter, a little inside baseball, so that they could really raise money. Yeah. And I think that’s why, you know, people started calling them shit coins and all that kind of stuff, because, you know, they have shitty marketing messages, and a lot of the times but do you feel like there is a world where all of these shit coins kind of go away? And it’s just Bitcoin? Oh,

 

Scott Melker  23:35

no, no, no, I don’t think it’s just Bitcoin. But I think that 99% of the show coins go away. So we can have both of those. Yes. I’ve been very outright about my opinion on Bitcoin versus everything else. And that’s how I view it was first Bitcoin digital gold store of value hard money to choose your narrative. Everything else is a derivative of it. No, I would say everything else is a speculative venture capital investment in technology. That’s not a bad thing. I love speculative venture capital, technology, but I hate when Bitcoiners feel they have to defend themselves against Aetherium or anything else, because I view them as completely separate asset classes. I don’t think one is attacking the other. And so I think there’s Bitcoin and everything else. So I think 99% of the everything else goes away. You’re talking about the evolution, how you grow up, and you learn in this industry. I used to believe in so much of this vaporware, and I still get shit about it cuz people are like, you promoted this it’s down. 99% Yeah, well, I’m holding it. Yeah. 99% But that was three years ago. Anything that anyone’s listen, if we talk about things, eventually people are gonna lose money on some of them right? Not because of us. They’ll say it’s because of us. But i anything i talked about that people lost money on generally, unless it was just like a trade where I said this analysis like if it was an investment, I lost money. Yeah, like Voyager right, you know exactly. So I came to learn through. And that’s what people don’t realize, like you start, as I said, I was on Twitter trying to learn from people. I believed the accounts that people shared things with me. This is awesome. This project. So cool. I’m buying it, I start talking about it. I lost my money on it, right. So I’ve come to realize through a cycle, that 99% of the shift is vaporware. Yeah, that just says, and that’s fine, because people love to comment on how bitcoins a bubble or Kryptos a bubble, and it’s like the internet bubble of the 90s. And it’s all going to zero. That’s a favorable comparison. They’re trying to insult us, but they don’t realize that Amazon and Google and Facebook and all the biggest tech companies in the world that literally disrupted everything, were the the few that succeeded and rose from the ashes of the internet bubble. They love to invoke the pets.com, or the net taxi are all these things that were like so highly evaluated and went to zero, but every one of these failures, and when I say vaporware, that doesn’t mean scam. It doesn’t mean mal intent, it just means it’s going nowhere and we don’t need it. It’s like it’s a problem in search of a solution. Right. But every time one of these entrepreneurs rushes into this space, and they iterate and they create something, they’re advancing the ball for the ones that succeed. It’s like, building on the shoulders of success. Right. But you can’t be successful without failing. So better that they’re, they fail for you. Yeah, right. And so I really don’t think there’s plenty of bad actors, plenty outright scams, like plenty of people were just pumping and dumping things, but I think 99 99% of them fail, but we’re at least honest in their attempt to do something real. And I think that the things that we see in the next cycle are inevitably built being built during this winter bear market, whatever you call it, and have learned from those mistakes. I’ve learned from it. Yeah, I I’ve invested in like 100 things in past cycles that 90 of them were completed another wrap in the end that I thought were awesome. Totally. Right. Yeah. That’s just the cycle of music to the blockchain. I’m in. Right, yeah.

 

Bryce Paul  27:03

So I got two follow up questions there in just on the same subject, like, how do you and again, not saying that you’re perfect or not saying that you’re the best financial adviser in the world? Or saying I’m perfect. But, you know, how do you decipher like, when you look at project a verse project B, they do the same thing or whatever? Are you looking at the team? Are you looking at, like tokenomics? Or what’s your kind of strategy?

 

Scott Melker  27:27

So I didn’t understand tokenomics? Well enough, I think in previous cycles, so that’s become a huge part of it. I think team is key teams, everything. So at this point, in this very unpopular opinion, I’m very unlikely to invest or even talk to anyone that’s anonymous. Me too. Same thing, just like I get it. Yeah,

 

Bryce Paul  27:47

I get it. That’s right. For them.

 

Scott Melker  27:48

I don’t blame I didn’t, but in 2023, yeah, whatever. So I want to know who you are, I want to know what you’ve done. I want you to blow my mind with your pitch or your idea. I don’t even end and also honestly, at this point, I have kind of a few trusted people that generally vet things are filtered to me. So I don’t even hear about it unless it has a fighting chance of being somewhat legitimate. I think so. That’s the answer. I think tokenomics are huge. Like I invested, I think in a lot of ideas that I thought were great and didn’t realize that like, necessarily how large the supply was, or, or how they were gonna invest 50% of it up front. Yeah, it’s gonna dump on my head, you know, and I, I sold my like, 5%. And people think I dumped it, I’m holding 95%, right, like on a hardware wallet to die for the rest of time. And so I think you just, it’s a learning process, that Everyone just assumes that like, you’ve been doing this for 30 years. Yeah, that hasn’t even existed that long. Exactly. If you were here in 2014. And you saw mount Gox. Fail, you learned a lot of lessons about exchanges totally right. And no matter how many, it’s like your parents, no matter how many times they tell you a lesson until you experience it and make the mistake yourself. You’re not it’s not going to resonate. Yeah,

 

Bryce Paul  28:58

I was with somebody who, who got hacked, crypto hacked. He was getting sim swapped and all that stuff. And it was a horrible twice. Oh, god. Yeah, it’s horrible, right? I mean, and to see that whole thing go down, is like, it’s traumatizing in a sentence, even though like thank God, it wasn’t my money that I lost. But watching somebody go through that made me realize how important key security is, right? Maintaining private keys on paper offline, and not you know, clicking sketchy links, it just makes you hyper aware. And then when FTX collapsed, you know, able to dodge that bullet, you know, your life flashes before your eyes. Right. And

 

Scott Melker  29:35

yeah, they don’t realize is that if you experience all of that, but also have a public docs presence in the space, all the sort of ancillary stressors that come with that, totally, I’ve people I mean, it doesn’t happen as much. I’m gonna say it. Yeah, Jinx. Yeah. I used to have people try to hack me like once a week. Yeah. So I had to have security experts that like I don’t have access largely to any of my grip. though well, too much of a security risk, totally, I’d have it on my phone, don’t you know, has to be geographically dispersed in multisig. But, you know, I’ve been swapped twice. Well. Now I have a company called Fonny that I literally have to use. Yeah, we know those guys so Hasib, I think I was one of his first investors out of his first 50 customers. Yeah, fine. He’s obviously he watches my sim for me, you know, and so I don’t worry about sim swapping anymore. I’ve been hacked multiple times. extorted she’s had, like, people send me pictures of my children. They shouldn’t have, you know, been like, Chase physically, they does not look crazy, because they because I posted a chart once or twice that was wrong. You know what I mean? Or just because it’s it’s an easy target. Yeah, when I got sim swapped. The second time. I was supposed to be fully protected by T mobile’s like highest level of whatever. And it was like some there was literally some thesis it was Bobo or something like some hacking group, some Mr. Robot type thing like in Holland, and the guy was literally like bragging about how he had swapped Holy Fuck, yeah. Like publicly like he was. He was an anonymous like, yeah. Crazy, dude. I never got anything from me. Thank God. Yeah, dodged another bullet. So thank you. Very base. So the things you learned through those processes is just like, yeah, like, I have no to FA on my phone that’s on a separate device in a safe in a location. That’s not near me up. So like, if I have to? someone’s like, yeah, you’re gonna invest in something. Send us some money. I’m going to give me two weeks. Yeah, I gotta get there. We got on a few flights? Or, you know, I have to be sort of like ridiculous about it. Yeah. And it sucks. But I wouldn’t change it. Because the only way that I can be who I am. I wouldn’t be getting these interviews. If I was a anonymous format. Of course, not. Like I don’t begrudge the people who are for the reasons they are, but I can’t be me and do what I do without being you know, yeah. Transparent. Now.

 

Bryce Paul  32:05

It’s challenging, challenging, for sure. Well, you know, when you kind of look at the overall crypto industry, what what sectors do you like to focus on? I know, you mentioned, you threw some shade at NF t. So I take it, you know,

 

Scott Melker  32:16

I think I throw shade at parts of the NFT. But that’s only because I learned the go through the hard part. altcoin cycles. Yeah, of what the NFT market was, we went through defi summer, you know exactly what the NFT summer a year later. We’re exactly right. And so like, I think board games are awesome, because they built a community. I don’t own one I right, whatever, you’re paying $100,000 for that, but it’s cool, right? But I just think that it’s very hard unless you’re 24/7 365 to discern what’s legitimate and what’s kind of just gonna go to zero, yeah, I can’t even do it. And I do this for a living for a living. So I just like, I can’t talk about it and think that somebody is gonna, I know, they’re not gonna do their own research or be deep enough down the rabbit hole to do it. But I think that the like, the boring applications of NF T’s are way more exciting than the, you know, cartoon names. Yeah. Like, if you could transfer your car title or your mortgage or house, you know, like, the tokenizing assets and eliminating the trust the third party in a trustless transaction. Bitcoin, right. That’s the exciting part of NF T’s for me. So I think, you know, people always asked me sort of it was top of the last cycle, but I would go on, like Fox News or Yahoo, or what I remember. And then they’d be like, so what do you say to investors? I say I don’t. But if I had to, yeah, yeah, my I always kind of at that point was like, just invest in the infrastructure. Like, I can’t tell you if it’s going to be a theory em or Solana or one of them, it’s going to win and FTS, or Metaverse, or defy or if any of those things are going to win in general. But if you own a small piece of that, at least if one of the you won’t find the thing that did 100x But you’ll get the 2x on the infrastructure was built on Yeah, that’s fine. Yeah, I come from a world where like, I was in stocks, and I was like, if I made 10% A year was murder. Now take me don’t take make 10% In a minute, you’re pissed off? You know? And so I think if you’re new to the space and you’re coming in, you started Bitcoin, you buy some Aetherium once you’re done with and then you find one or two, maybe three other things that compel you and you get really deep in the weeds and understand it and you go there and you don’t chase the unicorns. Yeah, you know, and so for me, I’m really like I said, you asked, Who do I like to talk to? I like to talk to people building the infrastructure, building the protocols, because I think that’s where you have the best odds of really capturing

 

Bryce Paul  34:36

I love it couldn’t couldn’t have said it better. And Scott, I appreciate your time. Thank you for coming and, man. Well, let’s do it again sometime soon. Gotta

 

Scott Melker  34:43

come on my channel.

 

Bryce Paul  34:44

I would love to man. That’d be great. Well, literally

 

Scott Melker  34:46

welcome anytime. I would love to. I would love to now ask you all to send me the transcript.

 

Bryce Paul  34:52

Everybody’s watching at home. I hope you guys enjoyed. Follow Scott on Twitter.

 

Scott Melker  34:56

What’s your Twitter at Scott Melkor SEO dot? BLK Yeah,

 

Bryce Paul  34:59

all right. Well, Everybody take care we’ll be back with some more guests guests later on.