Why Jack Butcher is Selling an NFT for $80M+
Jack Butcher, NFTs, $77 Million Dollar Listing - April 1, 2021 (about 4 years ago) • 11:13
Transcript:
| Start Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
Shaan Puri |
Let's talk about Jack first. Okay, so we have a friend, Jack Butcher, who is behind this account that's very popular on Twitter called **Visualize Value**. He himself has a designer background, so he's a very artistic guy.
By the way, every time I say "artistic," I think I'm about to say "autistic," and so I have to catch myself each time to make sure I didn't call him autistic.
| |
Sam Parr | so it could be that too who knows I mean | |
Shaan Puri | Well, actually, the thing about Jack is he's very smooth, very low-key, and the nicest guy in the world. Let's see...
| |
Sam Parr | I met Jack a year ago. I contacted him and asked him to do some design work. He was just up-and-coming at the time. My wife, Sarah, and I became friends with Jack and his wife. They spent Thanksgiving with us down here in Austin, where they had just had a baby.
We've been good friends, talking and all that stuff. His story is that he used to live in New York City with his wife. He's British and came here 10 years ago. They shared a studio apartment that was 400 square feet. At that time, they were struggling; they were trying to start an agency business, but it didn't go so well. They were on their last dollar, and this was only about 18 months ago.
| |
Shaan Puri | Right, okay. So, he kind of pivots to basically saying, "Okay, within the agency's work that I do, the part that I like and I'm good at, and other people don't seem to like, are these pitch decks I'm making."
I'm really good at making these slides where it's just a rectangle, and I communicate some information on it. That's where the **Visualized Value** brand came from. He started by putting out a little image, a rectangle, that would take a concept and bring it to life visually.
He got popular by taking a bunch of Naval's popular tweets, you know, sayings, his little one-liners, and he would create a graphic out of it. He has this one graphic style; if you're on Twitter, you've seen it. It's just black and white—always a black background with white text on top and a very simplistic, minimalistic graph, chart, or drawing on top of it.
Okay, so that's **Visualized Value**. He does the normal creator thing, gets a little bit of an audience, his Twitter grows to 100,000 people. He creates a course and a paid community for people who want to learn this thing, and he's doing well for himself. Right? And that's where we met him.
| |
Sam Parr | He does north of $1,000,000 a year in revenue. The only expenses are small software costs and then him and his wife.
| |
Shaan Puri | Exactly. So, he's doing very well for himself, right? But it's all relative. He's doing much better now.
So, what happened? This craze around NFTs came out. If you don't know what NFTs are, just think of them like digital art that people buy. Crypto people really like it because it's virtual art, in the same way that crypto is sort of like virtual money or digital money.
So, anyway, Jack starts doing NFTs. He basically takes the same art that he's posting on Twitter for free and says, "No, now you can own this piece of art. Now you can own this post that I'm putting up."
He just dabbles, you know? Just does an experiment. I don't know what the first one sold for. I think it was like 1 Ether, right? 1... when the 2...
| |
Sam Parr | 2 or $3,000 | |
Shaan Puri | it was | |
Sam Parr | like yeah just close | |
Shaan Puri | To $2, and it was like 1.5 Ether or something like that. So it's like $2,000 or $3,000. Still pretty sweet, right? This is just a, you know, .png file that he otherwise uploads to Twitter for free. Now, somebody wanted to own the .png file because they're fans of his, and this meant something to them. They had a bunch of crypto gains that they could reinvest— their Chuck E. Cheese money, right?
So, okay, now he's like stepping it up. We'll fast forward. He does some more NFTs and releases another NFT. This one gets bid up and gets bought for 33 Ether, which is, I think, something like... what is 33 Ether? 33 Ether times...
| |
Sam Parr | like $70 I think $70 | |
Shaan Puri | so he sells one of his images for $70 okay | |
Sam Parr | Called him right when I saw that. I go, "Jack, is this real? Does someone...?" He goes, "Yeah, it's crazy, mate." That's all he said. | |
Shaan Puri | Right, right, right. Exactly. Because he's not like a schemer in any way, but I think he is smart and he is interesting. He likes to dabble, but he wasn't... he's not trying to pull a quick one. He's putting his art out there, and people are buying it.
So, I actually messaged the buyer and I go, "Why the heck did you buy this thing?" It's some random, you know, random username. And he just goes, "Oh, you know, I love Jack and I think this is gonna appreciate in value. I just really love this. I love the art."
And I was like, "Wow, okay, fantastic!" So that's the guy who bought it for $70.
| |
Sam Parr | Then he did something even crazier, which I'm talking about the packs. Do you know the packs?
| |
Shaan Puri | yeah so to explain that one | |
Sam Parr | So, the part of the story is the craze. There are two crazy parts of the story. The most recent thing that happened, which we'll talk about, but the first crazy thing is he was like, "You know what? If I did... people love Jack. He's got a cult following, probably more than Sean. People love Sean. They used to love me, then they moved to Sean."
| |
Shaan Puri | love jack | |
Sam Parr | They love Jack. What he did was create a website where you could buy a pack. He had 12 packs, and all it said was "Pack 1," "Pack 2," "Pack 3."
Imagine a baseball card, but with a Jack Butcher cover on it. It was just black and it said "Visualize Value Pack 1."
| |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Sam Parr | and you would buy these packs having no idea what the nft art was in it | |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Sam Parr |
He had 12 of them, and people were bidding on them. Each one sold for around $10,000 to $15,000, which I thought was massive... until we get to the final part of the story, or at least the most recent part of the story.
| |
Shaan Puri | Exactly. So, he gets to today. I log on to Twitter, as I do first thing in the morning, to see what's going on in the world today. Holy shit! Jack Butcher has listed a new piece of art for **$76,000,000**—something like that. What is it? What's the exact number? **$72,000,000**? **$76,000,000**?
He basically... and it's called "Fame." What he did was create the highest-priced NFT thus far in the history of mankind. The previous record was held by Beeple, the artist Beeple, who is like Jack but even more popular.
Beeple had done a few drops, and those drops were kind of in the **$1,000,000** to **$5,000,000** range, ish. The most popular NFT of all time was sold for **$69,000,000** recently. There are some rumors that this sale was sort of a manufactured event; like, somebody came in and did it just to create a publicity stunt.
So, anyway, Jack basically says, "Cool, this is an NFT called 'Fame,' and it will be the number one priced piece of digital artwork in the world," right? So, he prices it above the Beeple drop.
| |
Sam Parr | I wasn't I wasn't referring to this I was referring to what he did last | |
Sam Parr | I didn't even see this this is crazy | |
Shaan Puri | this is today | |
Sam Parr | Last week, what he did was he wrote and created an NFT. It said, "Here's the difference between a JPEG and an NFT." It just had a verified mark. He basically made a tweet and then sold that tweet for about $150,000, which I thought was crazy.
| |
Sam Parr | this is way crazier | |
Shaan Puri | yeah | |
Sam Parr | because it's it's crazier because | |
Sam Parr | it might work | |
Shaan Puri | Exactly. So, okay, let's walk through this. If you're Jack, why? I'll tell you why to do this and why it might actually work.
Why do this? Well, if nothing else, this is just a great way to drive attention, press, and do something that's bold, right?
So, pricing a piece of your artwork for **$77,000,000** doesn't even mean... it doesn't even matter if somebody buys it. Just pricing it for **$77,000,000** is already going to put you on the map.
The second thing is, let's say, take the three outcomes:
1. Somebody actually buys it for **$77,000,000**. Right? There's been Cryptopunks now. The number one Cryptopunk sold for... I'm sorry, you looked this up. How much did that top Cryptopunk sell for? I think it was like **$77,000,000**, something like that. Beeple sold for **$69,000,000**.
So, there is a chance—maybe a 5% or 2% chance—that this thing actually sells for **$77,000,000**, which would be incredible.
The second thing is, this might be a "shoot for the stars, you land on the moon" situation.
| |
Sam Parr | yeah the cryptopunks sold for 7 and | |
Shaan Puri | A half a million, and the guy who bought it, by the way, this is kind of cool. I don't know how you pronounce this, but the person who bought it, his handle is Perugia or Perugia or something. I don't know what it is; I'm not in the art world.
But that's the same name of the guy who stole the Mona Lisa, which helped catapult the Mona Lisa to fame. When it was stolen, that was part of what made the Mona Lisa even more remarkable and more valuable. Now, it's the most valuable piece of artwork in the world.
So, okay, by the way...
| |
Sam Parr | great usage of the word homage | |
Shaan Puri |
Yeah, thank you. Good job, we're trying to class it up right here.
So alright, so he might not sell it for $77 million, but even if it sells for $1.7 million, that's $1.7 million that he just... you know, manufactured through his own creativity. And probably, I would bet you, like 4 days of effort.
| |
Sam Parr | I got chills looking at this tweet that he put out. The reason why this is so crazy is that it might work. Someone might be crazy enough to do this, right?
| |
Shaan Puri | He basically has a no-loss situation. Because Jack's brand is authentic, he is not just a quick flash in the pan trying to make a quick dollar. He's literally more of an artist than anything else.
He has been doing this for a while, creating daily content and building up a following. Just like Beeple, who created a new piece of art every day for 10 years, Jack is also an overnight success 10 years in the making. I see Jack having a no-lose situation, and NFTs are a thing that fits his skill set.
There are a lot of reasons people kind of criticize NFTs right now. One is that it's overvalued; it's a bubble. People ask, "What do you really own? I can just screenshot and boom, I own the thing too." There are a bunch of ways you can make fun of this.
However, one of the good things that came out of this is that, in most of these hype cycles, it's the suits on Wall Street that get rich. This time, at least it's starving artists that are getting rich. So, at the very worst, even if the whole thing comes crashing down, at least a few artists got paid. Who could really be too mad at that? I can't.
So, I think this is kind of an amazing thing Jack is doing.
| |
Sam Parr | this boggles my mind should we ask him to come on do you want jack to come on yeah we should be friends | |
Shaan Puri | with him come on | |
Sam Parr | are you friends with him | |
Shaan Puri |
Yeah, alright, great. Not as close as you guys, but yeah, we're close. You should message him. We should see if he hops on. Let's see if he hops on today. Just be like, "You're free to come talk about your fame thing for 5 minutes." Let's just see if he hops on at the end of this.
| |
Sam Parr | alright I just texted him alright we'll we'll we'll come we'll come back to that |