NFTs, Social Tokens and Metaverse Are Inevitable | Mario Nawfal, CEO of NFT Technologies (FTC ep 26)

FinTech Chat (FTC) is a series of educational & informative interviews with world professionals in the FinTech / Crypto / Blockchain communities. We aim to provide content that is digestible in multiple mediums such as video, audio (podcast), and written (blog) form!

 

FTC Episode 26 

In this episode, Blockchain Wayne interviews Mario Nawfal, CEO of NFT Technologies. Through his stories about Bitclout and NFT Technologies, Mario Nawfal has expressed his interest and belief in an inevitable future of NFTs, Metaverse and Social Tokens

Note: This transcript was automatically generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and therefore typos and grammatical errors may be present.

 

Intro: Interviews on crypto, blockchain with your host, Blockchain Wayne on FTC. 

 

BLOCKCHAIN WAYNE: Hey welcome everybody, and thanks for watching. Today we’re joined by Mario Nawfal. Now Mario is the CEO of NFT Technologies. Mario, thanks for joining us today! 

 

MARIO NAWFAL: What’s up man! How are you? 

 

BLOCKCHAIN WAYNE: Awesome man, great to connect with you again. As you’ll see, Mario has an extensive background in the space. We’ll touch on that. I’ll give him a chance to share his story most recently, right with NFT technology, so we’ll also touch on what that is, what they’re doing, obviously you can tell it’s in the NFT space which is a… a hot topic, but there’s so much more to it. So Mario, man first and foremost, and tell… tell everybody a little bit about your background and what got you to where you are today? 

 

MARIO NAWFAL: Sure man, so I didn’t start in crypto… I started in ecom many years ago in Australia. So that’s what… you know, I got to eight figures within the first year and a halfm so I had success pretty early, that boots trapping a company called Froothie which still exists today in over 30 countries. I don’t manage it but I am the… the sole shareholder so that’s how I started. But I got into crypto in 2017. I launched the company you mentioned earlier IBC which you know and that’s how we met. I think which is it was a consulting firm still is back during the ICO hype. Now it’s the… it’s the biggest growth hacking firm in crypto behind some of the biggest projects, IDOs, avatar projects, and so that’s how I got into crypto, man. A few years after that, I… a year after that, I became a partner at international blockchain legal which is a… a pretty dope law firm in the crypto space. I help with the blockchain aspects of that company, and I’ve got a growth hacking firm, and I’ve got another two agencies that work with public listed companies taking them public through specs and… and growth hacking them as well. So that’s my story man, and I’m pretty deep in crypto… you know, I’m active on Bitclout every day, one of the most active and biggest names on Bitclout. I’ve got a few investments, one of my favorites is Real Fevr. If anyone’s listening to this in August or September, check out Real Fevr, so “real” as in “I’m real” and a “fevr” f-e-v-r, thank me later. And of course NFT technology. So I’ve stepped up as the CEO of NFT technologies which is a portfolio company expected to go public probably by the time people watch this. I’m not sure when it’s going live. And we’ve got the ticker NFT and we’ve got some of the biggest names in business in crypto as… as advisors or as board members or as investors and again going public not on… on a… a dex or a token platform, we’re not launching tokens, it’s got shares, it’s like a… look at it as an index fund / portfolio company / investment fund, whatever you want to call it, so yeah that’s going public in a few weeks.

 

BLOCKCHAIN WAYNE: Awesome so is that the first of its kind as far as an NFT fund? 

 

MARIO NAWFAL: Yeah so it’s the first NFT portfolio company that’s listing on an exchange and we have the ticker NFT which is pretty cool. 

 

03:15

BLOCKCHAIN WAYNE: Nice, nice! so how did… how did it evolve? What led you guys to… to form this company and put together this… this NFT fund? 

 

MARIO NAWFAL: Yeah so Wayne Lloyd is the person that had that got the ticker NFT, Jason Coles which is one of the smartest people I know and I like working with him, they work together on… on you know, the idea of taking it public, and they brought me in… in the early… early days to… you know, be the person to… to lead the company to where it is today and where it will be by later this year. And so they saw the NFT trend late last year and we were talking, me and Jason like hey there’s this trend, what can we do and then Wayne’s like hey I have a shell company let’s get the ticker NFT. And he’s a… I would call him a regulatory hacker, so if I’m a growth hacker and I have the world’s biggest growth hacking firm, Wayne is a regulatory hacker so he found a way to get us public really quickly under the ticker NFT, and then Jason Coles is one of the biggest networks of investors in North America and he got some of the biggest names I can’t just disclose them out until we go public. But some of the biggest names and celebrities in business and in crypto are coming in as investors, some of the biggest funds, biggest VCs backing us, so a really really stacked cap table. 

 

BLOCKCHAIN WAYNE: And that sounds like some exciting stuff. Yeah definitely people have noticed the NFT craze over the last… especially over the last year. And I don’t think it’s going to slow down. I think it’s going to evolve so you guys are very smart to position in front of that. It’s… it’s kind of… we’ve seen some of the early days of it, but there’s so many things that are going to come from NFTs, and the NFT space you also mentioned I want to touch on, and we’ll come back to NFT technology some more because I have a few more questions there. But you mentioned on in your intro about Bitclout. Can you tell everybody what Bitclout is? 

 

MARIO NAWFAL: Bitclout is pretty cool like I know some people have a bad perception of it and I don’t think anymore but they used to, because they were very aggressive in their marketing. They… they imported all big names in Twitter, put them onto their platform as a way to get attention in the audience. They didn’t expect the hype they got but they got it. I’ll talk about what it is in a second, but I do want to comment that I love their strategy, and I’m a growth hacker myself. This is the I do so I think I like being aggressive as long as the cause is good and their cause is spot on, the team behind it they’re anonymous, but from what I know and obviously I can’t disclose much, but they’re some of the smartest people encrypted some of the most respected people in crypto. And that’s why they have the biggest VCs from social capital, Pantera, Coinbase Ventures, the wink of Austrians I forgot their funds name, the list goes on backing them… Andreessen Horowitz. Now what they’re doing is essentially decentralizing Twitter and adding the option of buying tokens and people, so right now, if you go on there and you search Mario you’ll find me as one of the top accounts on there and you can actually buy my coin. It’s not cheap. It’s five thousand dollars a coin. It started at a few cents a coin so they got the the the bond yield curve every the earlier you are as an investor, the cheaper it is, and it gets expensive really really quickly. So the first coin is a few cents, the second coin is a few bucks, the third coin is tens of dollars, the fourth coin is a hundred, two hundred, the fifth coin is going five six, so it gets more and more expensive very quickly. And that gets a lot of people coming in early to invest in those big names really early before they get expensive and then the more expensive it is, usually it’s more of a stable coin and save coin, but you’re essentially able to invest in people like me. And then you’re like all right what’s the point of investing in you, Mario? Well two reasons: Number one is speculation, will the coin go up or down? Number two is I can bring you value so I bring my top coin holders get personal access to me. They get access to really early deal flow and I talked about Real Fevr earlier. Real Fevr launched they went 33x and they still had an all-time high today as part of the time of recording this. And they’re going up every day. My investors got early… early access, my top investors on Bitclout so there’s that value add. I do weekly or fortnightly calls with them and now there’s NFTs as well. You can launch NFTs on their platform, so Bitclout is a front-end platform but also the blockchain, so they’re like the social token of the internet. You got bitcoin as money, Ethereum for dapps, Bitclout is for social tokens, so they built the blockchain on there. And I can mint NFTs on there. A lot of people are minting NFTs. And when you sell your NFT you can have a percentage of the NFT going to your coin price, increasing the value of your coin price, so there’s more and more ways being added to give value to your investors. So the concept is definitely going to be the future… you know, especially as more… you know, the metaverse takes place, having social tokens, I think will… will become the norm, being able to invest in people. It’s a matter of whether Bitclout will be the one to do it or not, and… and by the looks of it, they’re on track to be one of the ones and to make it happen. And they raised… they got hundreds of millions of dollars to start marketing. They haven’t started even marketing it. They’re starting later this month. 

 

08:26

BLOCKCHAIN WAYNE: Awesome awesome yeah, I definitely want to touch on that because of the NFT aspect, the social… social token which which you mentioned earlier is is something that… that people probably should know more about, but back to… so the tokens on Bitclout, they give value so you… can you determine your own value by what kind of value you give to your token holders? Is that how it works? 

 

MARIO NAWFAL: You just gotta convince people to invest in you just like when you’re investing in convincing people to invest in your token, you’re convincing people to invest in your business, you got to convince people to buy your token. How do you convince them? Well my talk is going to go up. You got to tell them why, so people can speculate on people’s reputation, so if I get voted as president of whatever country, my coin price could go up because now I’m president or if my… so I do audio rooms and I have my own interviews that I do when I have time, if I start interviewing some of the biggest names which I already have, but let’s say my audience goes to the millions, my value will go up. If I start offering… if more and more people see the value the money that my investors made, my coin price will go up, so that’s the strategy with it. 

 

BLOCKCHAIN WAYNE: Awesome awesome, what do you see as the future of social tokens you see that kind of meshing with NFTs throughout the metaverse? 

 

MARIO NAWFAL: So if you look at social NFT is a pretty broad term, but if you look at social tokens what is it exactly, it’s almost like it’s not from a technical aspect, it’s not but conceptually theoretically, it’s a tokenized NFT, so I am the NFT the Mario coin, and then they tokenize it where many people can buy different coins. Now those coins are fungible, one Mario coin is equal to another but you get the point of it that Mario Nawfal as a whole as an NFT if you think of it this way, so conceptually it’s the same. Now what I see as the future of social tokens, it’s insane already where it’s at now. Right now, if I invest in another person, so I help manage over 20 million dollars in the platform, so the biggest amount of capital on the platform I’m helping manage and that allows me to invest in a lot of people. It’s crazy the leverage I could get now. I don’t use that leverage and I don’t spend too much time on Bitclout, but when I do, if I… if I invest in someone and I own… you know 40% of their tokens, if I sell, their token price would collapse suddenly, if I call them they’re going to take my call, if I ask them for a favor I think I’ll probably do this favor. So it’s a pretty interesting yet you say concerning what I’d say interesting path for social tokens is how much influence you’ll have over people. I’ve had people when I was at the… so the money that I invested on behalf of a big VC and he was at the… more than one VC, but there’s one of them who was a meet-up in… in Miami a Bitclout meetup. And he convinced someone to do a tattoo on their ass permanent of I think of their name or something of their handle on bikla in return for them investing in their coin. It’s insane man! (BLOCKCHAIN WAYNE: Yeah) It’s insane. 

 

11:29

BLOCKCHAIN WAYNE: Yeah I think we’re gonna see quite a bit of that. I was talking to someone the other day that’s doing a project they’re gonna call it cryptos forever and kind of people invest in his token to have him tattoo their names… you know, their crypto companies or logos on them, so we’re gonna see… 

 

MARIO NAWFAL: Well that’s a bit… that’s what Bitclout allows you to do. You can buy someone’s token and then put a tattoo there, so it’s like the content is happening, the concept is gonna be… there’s already people doing it since the early days of crypto. You know, how… I forgot the guy’s name, but he tokenized himself and people get a percentage out of the money he makes in his life for the next x number of years, remember that? (BLOCKCHAIN WAYNE: Yeah) And people can decide if he dates a girl, if he has a haircut, like they decide his fate that’s inevitable. It’s a matter of when and who and will Bitclout be the blockchain where this will happen on and based on the investors, they have based on the team behind it and based on the community that have already that they’ve built. It’s definitely looking like there will be the… the social token of crypto. 

 

BLOCKCHAIN WAYNE: Awesome awesome, yeah some cool stuff going on there. All right man let’s get back to NFT technologies and talk some more about that as well. Definitely appreciate the insight into Bitclout. I know it’s something that you and I talked about before. It was passionate, but NFT technologies, what do people need to know about NFT technologies? I said you’re going public, what should people take note of or what would be an interesting point where people would want to reach out to you? 

 

MARIO NAWFAL: Most of the… most of the big money hasn’t even touched crypto even now at a whatever 40-something k Bitcoin price. Even now most of the big people haven’t touched crypto. The big… big money they don’t even understand NFTs and they’re loaded. I’m talking about billionaires not everyone’s like Mark Cuban and Elon musk to understand this, so and most of the… the average Joes don’t understand NFTs that I have access to… to liquidity… you know… liquidity mine and a DeFi mine… DeFi… what’s the term? If I… I had a mind blank about it yesterday and here I am today… Anyway when you stake your liquidity pools and liquidity mining, sorry yeah DeFi mining, so liquidity mining, don’t understand that they don’t have access to the various NFTs. They don’t know how to buy a crypto punk which I’m bullish as hell I don’t know if I can curse you can I? (BLOCKCHAIN WAYNE: Yeah yeah go… go for it!) Bullish as about crypto punks or what a board ape is or how to get land and decentraland or earth 2. They know how to buy top shop moment, they know how to buy real fever moments which is like top shop for soccer but they don’t know how to choose the various NFTs. I don’t know how to mint NFTs or what Autoglyphs are. That’s why NFT tech comes in, NFT tech is just getting equity tokens in the leading projects and platforms and crypto getting exposure to a lot… a lot of on the metaverse, a lot of metaverse land and assets. You know, we have one of the biggest names on in Decentraland as one of our advisors for example. All of it packaged into one company that’s listed on the stock market. So anyone all they need to do to get exposure to DeFi, sorry to get exposure to NFTs, to get exposure to the metaverse and social token is just buy stock in a company called the ticker’s DeFi called DeFi technologies, so we’ve essentially eased the access of the big money to get into the space without understanding the space. Most… most portfolio managers don’t have time to understand all these things, but they… they’re hearing their… their investors tell them hey I want exposure to crypto, I want exposure to NFTs, I want exposure to the metaverse. The guy doesn’t know what the hell to do. The fund manager guy will go but now all I need to do is just buy stocking and DeFi tech and they can tell their investors their lp is hey we have exposure through NFT tech, not DeFi tech, NFT tech, so we’ve just made it much easier for anyone really to get exposure to to NFT’s metaverse and social tokens. 

 

15:42

BLOCKCHAIN WAYNE: Gotcha. I mean that makes so much sense. You’re right so many people they hear the hype, they hear the buzz, they may not understand it but they may feel that it’s the future. And you know, I get that question all the time how do I get involved in this when somebody asks me how to get involved in NFTs if they’re I’m thinking more towards the terms of how… how to create, how to add utility, how to mint, but yeah I mean some people want to be able to invest in that future as well, so that’s I definitely get where you’re coming from now within NFT tech. It definitely is… 

 

MARIO NAWFAL: Yeah you can ask… you can ask someone that works out of… mind… I’m just making up but he kind of works out of mind, that he goes… wakes up, when he goes works all day and comes back home, maybe watches TV and and just goes on Facebook and Instagram that’s as far as they go. Maybe they don’t even have social… you know, and they got… you know, they got 200k saved up, and they want to invest in crypto other than buying Bitcoin and Ethereum. What can they do? Where’s a few crypto companies in the stock market, but what else can they do? What if they want exposure to NFTs, don’t have time to go and understand how to mint on art block? You can’t expect that from them or… or go and buy a punk or know what a punk is or understand how the punk is valuable. (BLOCKCHAIN WAYNE: Exactly) So that’s why like all I need to do now is just go on the stock market and buy DeFi tech which is so easy to do and we’re the first to do it. We’re not going to be the only one but we’re the first and we’re probably going to be the best. 

 

17:06

BLOCKCHAIN WAYNE: Awesome, so yeah definitely positioned to be a leader in that space for sure. That’s… that’s exciting to hear man. I’ve been… I’ve been bullish on NFT since 2018 when I first dove in heavy. And it was funny because the podcasts and episodes I did back then whether it was me talking to somebody else about it or going on someone else’s show and being interviewed about it, nobody really gave a damn about it. They didn’t understand it. I think the world’s starting to wake up and understand and as we’re starting to see, I see I collected cards as a kid, so understanding that the value of collectibles, but man, you’re right so many people don’t understand all the use cases of NFTs as well, because (MARIO NAWFAL: Man, sorry… continuing sorry) oh I’m just gonna say… you know, what we saw recently with v friends with Gary Vee that was a perfect proof of concept that I’ve been talking about for a long time where it’s an access token his NFT, well it may not look that great, I mean it’s hand drawn by him, so yeah that’s pretty cool. But he’s not… he’s not the greatest artist, but people have access to him based on which NFT they have, so people don’t realize just all the implications art itself has value just by demand. But when you start adding utility to NFTs we’re going to see the real boom in the NFT space. What we’ve seen so far has been a lot of hype, a lot of speculation, but I think we’re going to see a real boom when the world starts to grasp really what an NFT is. 

 

MARIO NAWFAL: I agree man, and I like the last thing you said when the world starts to grasp what an NFT really is including crypto people, I think even people deep in the crypto space don’t even understand how game changing, how innovative NFT as a concept is as a technology, the metaverse the future. I think most people in the crypto understand centralize or decentralize or a bit of both a ready player one world is inevitable, it will not exist without the NFTs. NFTs make the metaverse whether you’re buying land, whether you’re buying your sword at a game… you know, it’s going basics each sword will probably have different features, different upgrades, different history of what people are killed, I don’t know or a gun that makes it into an NFT, it’s unique, not one sword is the same as another. Your… your avatar on there, whatever you use on there it’s an NFT, because you look at the real world man, if I give you this watch, there is no way you can give me a watch that’s identical to it, give me the same brand, the same everything, the same model, but it’s not my watch, it doesn’t have the same messages in mind, it doesn’t have the same scratches. Online that’s an NFT that’s a watch there’s no 100% equal to any other close like similar to two punks that look the same but I have like one small difference close but never the same. This is same important so everything here, so this is what makes this world things being unique. No two things are the same. They’re similar the same will exist in the metaverse because all the metaverse is and will be not is, but will be… is an extension of this world plus more things that you could do there that you can’t do here. But it will work the same way here there needs to be uniqueness whether you… your life, your things, you buy the things, you do everything is that uniqueness is what makes an NFT. 

 

20:20

BLOCKCHAIN WAYNE: Awesome yeah and that’s… it’s definitely a rabbit hole that people need to jump down and understand but in the meantime… you know, they can they can dig more into NFT technologies and at least get some exposure to the space, and at the same time try to learn to understand it. So Mario, as we wrap up man, tell me where can people find out more information about both you, about NFT technologies if they wanted to dig deeper and learn more about… about everything that’s happening? 

 

MARIO NAWFAL: Sure just go… just google my name, go to my website and the first link there takes you to NFT technology’s website, that’s probably an easy way to remember it. If you’re interested in NFT Technologies just google my name Mario Nawfal n-a-w-f-a-l or even easier just go www.nfttechnologies.ca, that’s the website. The domain is going to change but we’ll probably redirect this one as well www.nfttechnologies.ca. And you can read everything there, chat to us, chat to me about anything else, just google me and find a way to contact me, don’t be lazy, you’ll find a way. 

 

BLOCKCHAIN WAYNE: Awesome so you’re looking for people to contact you if they’re developing NFTs, if they’ve got a proof of concept, anything? 

 

MARIO NAWFAL: Oh why don’t you say we’re interested so we… we do a lot of shifts… we back… so I run the world’s biggest growth hacking agency. And we’ve incorporated that into NFT technology, so any project, any crypto project that would like exposure to NFT technologies or investment or share swaps whatever it is or just wants to be growth hack, wants to be blown up, any crypto project DM us for sure, like again we’re behind some of the biggest crypto projects in crypto in the world, so definitely DM us and… 

 

BLOCKCHAIN WAYNE: Awesome Mario, hey man, thanks for all the information dropped today. Definitely this is something I’m sure people are probably going to want to watch more than once just to catch on to everything, and then they’ll go down that rabbit hole of NFTs. If you haven’t already of just learning trying to figure out more about it, definitely looking at NFT technologies. Any final words before we wrap up, Mario? 

 

MARIO NAWFAL: Go… you know, every phase in crypto has hypes, hype cycles. Right now, it’s play to earn games. I think the long term still go through a hype cycle but the most exciting thing for me is the metaverse. I cannot begin to imagine the things that will happen there, and I’m just surprised how not enough attention is being placed in today like the amount of attention and interest there right now is just great if you’re not on metaverse land or some ass in the metaverse, haven’t got access to it, you’re not an early adopter. And it’s a shame because it’s crazy what it will do to the world we live in, if you haven’t watched ready player one, crap movie but the content… would at least watch the trailer ready player one, watch it, thank me. 

 

BLOCKCHAIN WAYNE: Awesome awesome. Thanks again, Mario. Thanks everyone for watching and we will see you on the next episode.

— — — — —

About Mario Nawfal

Mario Nawfal, the Founder of the Athena Group of Companies, a business conglomerate of 15+ companies that operates in more than 40 countries.

Mario started his first business with $300 in the bank selling blenders door to door which led to Froothie Australia.

In 2021, Mario stepped up as CEO of NFT Technologies, one of the first companies focusing on NFTs going public, and has the ticker symbol NFT reserved in North America.

 

Website: https://marionawfal.com/

 

About Blockchain Wayne (Host)

Wayne has been managing, teaching, and coaching high performing teams for over 20 years. He has a passion for helping and teaching people and a passion for cryptocurrency and blockchain projects. He has created various coaching programs and partnerships with select education platforms and cryptocurrency program tools.

You can learn more on his website: https://www.blockchainwayne.com/