Mar 31, 2021 · 1h 18m · my-first-million
MFM #165: How Jack Butcher is Selling his Art for $76m & How to Research Wealthy People
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of My First Million, hosts Sam Parr and Shaan Puri analyze high-traffic digital utilities and the speculative mechanics of BitClout before bringing on Visualize Value founder Jack Butcher to discuss his audacious $76 million NFT strategy and web3 economics.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 88% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 6.3 Guest teaching 1.0 Guest disagreement 0.3 The hosts pushing back 1.2
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:02:52 Jack expresses skepticism about BitClout
Jack gently distances himself from Shaan's enthusiasm, highlighting BitClout's pre-mining issues and the significant reputational risks involved.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 32:07 Sam confronts Shaan on audience scam backlashSam bluntly challenges Shaan by relaying listener complaints about him promoting what many perceive as a Ponzi scheme.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 47:58 Jack clarifies FAME as conceptual art commentaryJack explains that the $77M listing was not expected to transact but was rather an intentional artistic and media commentary on Beeple's record auction.
The host holds their own ▶ 24:46 Sam breaks down NYT subscription unit economicsSam demonstrates financial command by converting subscriber counts and monthly rates into a $67M annual revenue breakdown for NYT Games.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Episode Overview and Jack Butcher's Visualize Value Origins | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Sam and Shaan introduce the episode by recounting Jack Butcher's background and his rapid rise with Visualize Value. Since Jack has not joined yet, the dynamic is an amicable co-host breakdown without guest conflict. | |
| Jack Butcher's NFT Drops and the $76M Listing Strategy | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Shaan and Sam analyze the economics behind Jack listing his 'FAME' NFT for $76M-$77M and the logic of high-stakes asymmetric marketing stunts in the crypto hype cycle. The hosts share high mutual enthusiasm. | |
| Researching Wealthy People and the Dictionary.com Goldmine | 7 | 0 | 0 | 1 | Sam shares his methodology for researching wealthy individuals via public real estate purchases and uncovers the founder of Dictionary.com. Shaan listens and adds related business buyout anecdotes. | |
| High-Traffic Digital Utilities and the Chess.com Business Model | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | The hosts break down unsexy but highly lucrative digital utilities like Chess.com, analyzing traffic numbers, subscription models, and zero-IP-cost domains. High collaborative business acumen on display. | |
| The New York Times Games Playbook and Lifestyle Architecture | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Shaan and Sam calculate the New York Times crossword puzzle subscription numbers and pivot into discussing lifestyle design and personal optimization. The hosts build directly off each other's ideas. | |
| Understanding BitClout and the Advantage of Early Tech Adoption | 6 | 0 | 0 | 3 | Shaan explains the mechanics of BitClout while Sam pushes back on user perceptions and claims that listeners think it resembles a Ponzi scheme. Shaan defends early adoption with historical tech examples. | |
| Shaan's $100k BitClout Strategy, Tokenomics, and Growth Hacks | 7 | 0 | 0 | 4 | Shaan articulates his $100k risk thesis and the viral creator incentives of BitClout, while Sam humorously questions whether Shaan has found his ultimate calling or is caught up in hype. | |
| Jack Butcher Joins: The $77M 'FAME' NFT and Levels of Luck | 6 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Jack Butcher joins the call and calmly explains his thesis behind listing 'FAME' for $77M as conceptual art and viral marketing. Shaan frames Jack's success through Naval's four levels of luck. | |
| Analyzing BitClout Mechanics and Creator Incentives with Jack | 6 | 4 | 2 | 2 | Jack explains his cautious perspective regarding BitClout's pre-mining controversies and reputational risks, while Shaan details secondary liquidity and whale mechanics. |
Statements from this episode (21)
Jack Butcher's Visualize Value generates over $1M in annual revenue
“And he, he's, it does, he does north of a million dollars a year in revenue. And the only expenses are like small software stuff and then him and his wife.”
Jack Butcher sold 12 blind mystery NFT packs for $10K-$15K each
“He had 12 packs. All it said was pack one, pack two, pack three. It looked like, imagine like a baseball card, but with a Jack Butcher cover on it was just black, and it said visualize value pack one. Right. And you would buy these packs having no idea what th…”
Jack Butcher listed a new digital NFT artwork for $76 million
“Jack Butcher has listed a new piece of art for seventy six million dollars.”
Jack Butcher sold an NFT of his own tweet for roughly $150,000
“Last, last week, what he did was he wrote he did an NFT and it says, here's the difference between a J, a JPEG and an NFT. And it just had a verified, it, he basically made a tweet And then he sold that tweet for like, a 150,000 dollars.”
Brian Kariger bootstrapped Dictionary.com and sold it to IAC for $100M
“So in the 19 nineties, this guy started in 1995, he started a This is called Lexico Publishing. And Lexico Publishing owned Thesaurus.com and Dictionary.com. And he bootstrapped it, and he grew it, and he sold it in 2005 to IAC for a hundred million dollars.”
Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com generate $20M in revenue from 40M unique visitors
“Dictionary.com and the source.com gets around forty million uniques a month and does about twenty million in revenue. And they have barely any employees. I believe dozens of employees.”
Sam Parr estimates Chess.com is worth $250 million
“And so, if you go to chess.com, they have 200 employees. I bet you it's worth, if you told me, I heard a rumor they're thinking about selling, and I would bet it'd be worth a quarter of a billion dollars.”
Chess.com receives 200 million monthly unique visitors
“Two hundred million monthly uniques according to SimilarWeb, most of which is direct.”
Religion is an ideal unowned intellectual property for tech businesses
“And this is one of the reasons why we talked about religion as a really interesting fun you know, fundamental or like base layer for any business because nobody owns religion, but it's a highly recognized brand with super high affinity. So I love businesses th…”
The New York Times had 600,000 standalone crossword subscribers in 2020
“In 2020, New York Times said they had 600,000 people paying for the Crosswood puzzle only, just Crosswood puzzle.”
Shaan Puri invested $100,000 into BitClout within 48 hours
“So the first 24 hours I was hooked by the second 24 hours I put a 100,000 dollars into the platform.”
Shaan Puri estimates a less than 2% chance BitClout succeeds
“I would say in the long run, this working in the long run, I think there's like a less than two percent chance this works in the long run. If it does work, my 100,000 dollars is going to be worth tens of millions of dollars, but that's the long run.”
Shaan Puri predicts his crypto holdings will surpass his startup exit
“If you project forward five years, I would almost certainly, my crypto holdings will be worth more than what I sold the company for, what I got out of the sale.”
Shaan Puri's cryptocurrency holdings account for almost 50% of his net worth
“My holdings now are like, I don't know, almost 50% of my net worth just because crypto has appreciated.”
$170 million deposited into BitClout, mostly from Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia
“About a hundred seventy million dollars has been deposited onto this. Most of that is from their institutional backers like Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia and those other guys.”
Jack Butcher priced an NFT at $77M to mock Beeple's record sale
“The thesis behind the 77,000,077 million dollar NFT, which the thesis is it's rounded up from the highest bid on that Beeple collage. So that was 69.3 and obviously tracks to the price of Ethereum, but anybody who would bid on this would be You know, the owner…”
BitClout pre-allocated $55,000 to Shaan Puri's unclaimed profile
“And so when I went to the website without ever having used the damn thing, my account had 55,000 dollars sitting in it.”
Jack Butcher's unclaimed BitClout profile accumulated roughly $150,000 in creator coin
“About one 50, I think, last time I looked at it.”
Jack Butcher predicts his 2021 NFT income will exceed his $1M business
“Jack, are you going to make more income from NFTs in 2021 than you think you will from your real job? Or your normal business rather? Probably.”
NBA Top Shot secondary market volume is dropping 30% month-over-month
“Top Shot's getting slaughtered. It's going down like 30% month over month because all the whales are like, hey, cool, we've made millions of dollars. Let's just do a coordinated sell-off and like, you know, like let's sell this baby now. Let's take something o…”
Metakovan turned a $5,000 early Bitcoin investment into over $1 billion
“The guy who bought the Beeple artwork for whatever, sixty nine million dollars, something like that. I might be mixing it up, but you know, meet Kovan, that's his handle. ... He invested 5000 dollars into Bitcoin and is worth over a billion dollars based on wh…”