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SHARAFI_ETH: good morning everyone, welcome to NFT underground, I’m Ali Sharafi, host of the show. Today we have a super special guest in the show, G Mani. If you do not know G Mani, G Mani has onboarded many huge brands to NFTs, Adidas, and many more, founder of one of the greatest NFT drops, and the one that I had the honor to be on the watch’s comedy as well. Today, we are going to talk about G Mani himself, his achievements, and his latest drops, hey man, how are you?
GMoney: Great, thanks for having me on.
SHARAFI_ETH: it’s a great honor to have you on the show. Most of our listeners come from Web 2 and they do not know who G Mani is, can you enlighten them, please?
GMoney: I guess the best way to describe me right now is that I am a futurist, I’m a disrupter and I am one of the directors of 90CC (project name) which is a brand for the luxury fashion house that I have launched recently. I think crypto technology is going to change the world and change the future of digital asset ownership. I think the technology is revolutionary so I am here to increase the disruption and adoption to have the best.
SHARAFI_ETH: every time I talk to you I get super high. and today I got my 90CC as well, and I’m high about that much. Let’s not go directly to 90CC. Let’s talk about your Admit 1, that’s one of the favorite communities in NFTs. Should we start with that please?
GMoney: yeah, let’s go there. What do you wanna know about it?
SHARAFI_ETH: first of all, in my personal opinion, admit 1 started as a free claim, the creation part that you did, how did you come up with the free part, how did you go forward with that? I love to know about that one?
GMoney: yeah, you know when I was thinking about the distribution and what I wanted to do with the project, there were a couple of things that I wanted to solve. One was I wanted to get as wide as distribution as possible I think I have about 900,000 (mini holders) for a 1,000 really good NFT community and 2 is that I do not want to get negative of this so that I would not be necessarily mandating people on how much running they had. It was much of their time they had given time, how they had gone out of their way to becoming part of the community. What are the 2 determining factors that I had initially distributed the token?
SHARAFI_ETH: that is perfect. But some outsiders see Admit 1 as an alpha server. how do you describe Admit 1?
GMoney: I don’t see it as an alpha server, I think there is nothing of alpha happening within the community, like community members like yourself. To me, as I said since the beginning, it is access to other things that I’m doing and my potential collaborations and things that I am working on, Obviously, I was working on 90CC a lot. By the time, it came out, I knew that it was a part of the plan and I also know that there are some cool and exciting things in the pipeline. You know, I know the legacy takes time and does not easily move as the Web3 does so, and that is part of the reason why there was no roadmap as I know, from the negotiations I had and conversations that I have it takes a long time, there is a long time as the legacy tries to understand the Web3 in its culture.
SHARAFI_ETH: On my part since I am on the watchers, we shall go to the projects and when they say Admit 1 is an alpha server, I say come on it is much much usual than that, complexity and diversity of people in Admit 1 is for sure one the best communities that you have built and you should be super proud of. I don’t want to give you flowers but I want you to know how much I respect you, I like Admit 1 is another level. It is perfect.
GMoney: one of the things that I am really happy about is that I realize to find the messaging and I try to provoke the messaging and I am still trying to figure this part out. I am in New York now for fashion week and we have a lot of people based in New York and we want to make people happy on the discord and I think there are only 3 or 4 people that are around and say ‘ok I’ll make it and, at the day of the event, I threw out a tweet to say that it is meant to be happier though I didn’t share the location. I had a lot of people that we shall meet on a part of the meeting, some are not active on the discord that can stream my answers. They ended up swinging and we ended up answering them. I had about 35 to 40 people come through on very very short notice which I think goes cool. It provided networking opportunities so people meet other like-minded individuals in web3 which to me it is something that I will be proud of. One of my great stories is connecting people when I initially started the collapse scavenger hunt back in June 2021. Two people met there who ended up starting the scavenger fund for 35 to 40 million dollars and also they started a DAO together which I am proud of because the people I met followed me and they go to complete the scavenger hunt and they became friends and business funders. I just feel a part of it, of what I wanna do, I wanna connect many like-minded individuals that stand in the world morally to me as I wanna push the space forward and push the options forward and I hope that businesses that are created out of this, the businesses that change and people end up through it. I am sure you see a lot of people who connect through the discord and relationships they get started and friendships they made because they are all members of one.
SHARAFI_ETH: Exactly! but before touching on that, I have a question because we discussed it in the team chat. How come somebody holds an Admit 1 asset and does join the Discord, because all the value is in the Discord, at least most of it? What is your take on that?
GMoney: I think people are just busy, there are lots of people working on their projects, doing their stuff and not everybody has the time to check all the Discords. So there are numbers of the community that are not necessarily able to spend a lot of time on Discord and I understand because I m one of those people. I had some conversation with somebody asking what communities are active in, and I answered ‘honestly, just mine, I don’t have time to check lots of other Discords, and see what is going on as I am too busy making stuff. So I think that is the function of what happens when you have a good number of high-quality builders and people stay on that not everybody has the time to be checking Discord all the time. We do have people who pup in and pup out and sometimes we talk about a relevant topic to a member and just like the things happening on Discord like answering a question, etc. I understand because I am one of those people, you know sometimes I get tired of talking about it, you know about it you happen to have questions on that. For sure, I am a member of the community I just cannot be that active as all members are not necessarily active on Discord.
SHARAFI_ETH: well, thank you. Among all of us, you are the master of networking and with 90CC you are moving that forward. now let’s go to 90CC. I know you mentioned that a lot of times and any time you talk about it, it is super interesting. First of all, why did you go to the fashion part?
GMoney: Fashion is something that I have always been interested in. Fashion is something that everybody participates in, there is a lot to fashion, and individual like the personal style; even if it is already taken from somebody, it is still too personal because that is how you decide to express yourself and I think fashion drives culture, I think fashion and music and to a larger extent gaming on more generational bases and I think those apply for more interesting things that drive culture, change, and options. It is just something that I am super interested in because I love to do stuff and things that I found compelling and interesting from an end user’s perspective.
SHARAFI_ETH: and the team that you are doing with the CC project are revolutionary combining technology, fashion, and lifestyle. What is your target market with 90CC? Is it Web 2 or Web3?
GMoney: To me it is definitely Web3. It is special to start, this is a Web3 crypto brand. It is made by a crypto native work for a crypto native audience. When I think about it I want to make stuff that I would like to wear, that I can see in the real world, that I am a crypto native, right? So I am sure I can walk by Louie Viton and I can buy a Louie Viton shirt and I can spend hundreds of dollars to buy something. When I wear that I see the custom made is good and it signals high. But it does not signal that I am a crypto native. I want something that has high quality and style and it also signals that I am crypto native in the style that I want. And I just did not see it so I just want to make it. Hopefully, other people are interested in it and want to take part in it. I think the process was good so far. Once we get the product out and delivered to people in the wild, 1 it is where the reopening begins and 2 is worth people seeing the attention to detail and the effort we put into it and understanding that it will be a very special thing that we are building.
SHARAFI_ETH: exactly, before I go to the next question, I have to take what you mentioned right now. I have seen that you are walking your 90CC all the time. What feedback and compliments did you get about this?
GMoney: Yeah, among the people who obviously touched the fabric and see the model and even the people who put on the samples, the best compliment I had was from one of the designers that I am working with, Toby, that it was the nicest T-shirt he has ever worn. That is awesome, that is what exactly wanted to hear. I want people to feel confident in fashion, with questions like why would you buy something, why would you cherish a product because of how it makes you feel, right? Everybody has the power to wear the suit and walk into that important business meeting and say I feel like a million dollars when I put this on so I act more confident, and I’m going to act a little different, act like a person who wears this suit and in almost it acts like some sort of armor and I think the same thing happens just with whatever we wear and, you know, sometimes I wear a cool pair of sneakers and I feel the extra sense of confidence and I kind of want to convey that as well with the products that they put out wearing this. So you put this on and you know you look good. You know that this increase your confidence and whatever this business feel about the relationship between people and all these things because I think that is ultimately what happens when you put something special on. So the feedback I got is that equality is really good, fitness is a high-quality thing and you can tell it is a high-quality product. It is not like a T-shirt you can buy from a discount retailer that we just slap a logo on.
SHARAFI_ETH: exactly, the way you put confidence in a crypto native way, I should say, is so awesome. One of the coolest things about 90CC is the name itself. I know it myself I would love it if you share this why did you choose 90CC?
GMoney: Yeah, for sure, I am in love with this because it is what we are initially talking about means to be the brand, this is like my first idea and I said that and people said oh my God that is like the conversation is over. So basically if you send me money right now like we are doing something together and you want my theory address, I will copy and paste my theory address just to you. Then before I send the address, I always check the last four digits of the address to make sure that I copy and paste everything. So you will have the correct address. So when I name my wallet I name them by the last word you see in the wallet address. So my most important wallet address is based on the four ending digits in the address, so you can see I named the brand after the last four digits of the address which is sort of true. So if you want to check the project or something, if it does not read for the 90CC wallet you will see that it is a fake. So it is cool to me and it is like by only putting the last four words or digits of the wallet instead of the entire makes it less intimidating. Whereas if you don’t understand crypto that four digits can stand for anything and if it is the entire wallet address, people may take everything off. So it is intriguing enough and if you do not know anything about it, you are not intimidated and you might want to find out more. But if you know about it you feel better about this.
SHARAFI_ETH: Yeah exactly, I love the ‘you know part’. And how did the irritation part go with coming up with the 90CC, it looks nice because I think it is not a random thing to come up with.
GMoney: We ended up choosing after going through 200 or 300 initial things like we wanted to be static, something that was impossible to say, and something that did not necessarily look or sound like the things already exist. So that was it and I like the symmetry of the logo and all around about 90CC is interesting and I think it is cool. So we went through these addresses and then we come to the one we already chose.
SHARAFI_ETH: It is super cool actually; I have another question. Because some of the listeners do not know the T-shirt has an NFC chip in it, can you please explain the relationship between the NFC chip and the NFT and the physical product itself?
GMoney: Yeah, the T-shirt will come in soon with the NFC chip in it, and that NFC chip access the proof of authenticity for the actual shirt and that travels with the shirt. So to me, it is something that I wanted as a consumer if I am spending a significant amount of money on any product I want to know how much of that is real. So to me, this is just something I want to be solved as a consumer and I just feel like it is immediately done. I hope other people see the need as much as I do but I think it is ultimately an amazing thing that we have the technology to do it.
SHARAFI_ETH: Is there any chance that the chips are faulty, not working, or any of that stuff?
GMoney: Definitely, there will an issue in any hardware technology. That is the issue that we are going to see but the chips themselves are machine washable. They can resist high temperatures but also needs to be handled by someone who cares which is kind of tab insolated, as there are vain covers which make it harder to ban the chip and there is a patrol to show the chip is there to solidify it a little bit, but we also do not want to make it converse to wear.
SHARAFI_ETH: But the buyers are going to be sure that it is going to be safe. And then buy the product.
GMoney: Yeah, exactly.
SHARAFI_ETH: That is super cool. I know you always talk about provenance, that is an interesting part about 90CC as well. Do you want to touch on that please?
GMoney: I think it is super important. I mean it is fixed, right? Even if it is in art markets like creators or with my favorite fans, we all know that there is a big market that is there for this product. So what is the better way than to have this proof of authenticity product that travels with its actual product itself and so if I am not sure if I am buying it from you in a face-to-face transaction, I do not need to necessarily go and be that? You can have the receipt and you know the receipt is reportable. As we all know, if I have this verified transaction on the blockchain, I can verify that it is here and there without the need to contact the manufacturer.
SHARAFI_ETH: So this is the part that networking comes in?
GMoney: This is the part that the tech comes in, right? I need to see that the network product acts of it, and comes to me as community building. And the thing that I am the most excited about is once the product comes out in the wild how we get the community to interact with each other with the brand on a global base. To me, that is the most exciting part of everything that I am doing. That part that we are in is not discussed yet publically because the product is not out there yet. But I think when the product is out there widely the real fun begins.
SHARAFI_ETH: Oh I am getting excited as well. When can we expect that to happen? To receive the products?
GMoney: Hopefully we are shooting for the first week of October. We will see if it comes out to the supply team working on that at the moment. I am just excited to see that we are on track for that as the supply team is constraint now. So we have the mercy of whatever is just to start.
SHARAFI_ETH: Oh that is so near then, that is too close. Then when the 4K vouchers come in?
GMoney: Yeah, so we have been on NFT as the date of the snapshot that we have not determined yet because we are waiting for the actual product. They will airdrop the NFT which represents the physical product in a 4K wallet. At each point, you can choose to keep the product in a wallet or you can choose to deliver it. And again, as I developed the entire process, I said ok I want people to choose how to participate in the ecosystem. You can keep your wallet in and become a collector over time as it goes up in value over time or you can have the delivery of the physical shirt. If you choose the physical delivery of the shirt, you will participate in the activation that is going to happen in the real world, which again becomes super exciting because you need to decide as an end user about what you prefer to do.
SHARAFI_ETH: Well I want to ask for that as well. That is my actual question, what are the perks of adding a wallet or using it besides the part that it may have the lowest value on the secondary market?
GMoney: I am not making the products for being wallets so there will be more valuable to wear than Wallets. To me, it is just like I want people to wear the product not too wallet it. So it is the decision that you as the end user need to make. You can just seat and decide to wallet it and go upside of wearing it. But I know there is going to be the main condition to you may wear it, stain it or lose it or tear it. that is kind of the risk you may take and you as the end user need to make the decision.
SHARAFI_ETH: I am asking this for me because when I love a t-shirt garment or anything, I usually buy more than one. With this wallet feature, I can get one, use it and buy another one. First, is this wallet process free, and does it have a time limit? Anything like that?
GMoney: Yeah, we have been discussing that with our partners with 4k we work with. I think we will have at least one-year free storage and insurance, and then figure out how much the storage costs after that.
SHARAFI_ETH: So it is not determined yet. It is going to be announced later on.
GMoney: Yeah.
SHARAFI_ETH: How was the feedback from other brands I know that you are in contact with many other huge brands in fashion. What was their take on 90CC, the trend?
GMoney: I think they are just watching what I am doing. I need to tell you something about the influence, the quality, and the experience I am going to another to execute on it. I had a lot of conversations and lots of people to reach out to while launching the brand, but I had my approach to see what is going on, and what I was doing, and once they got a little work priority about what I just was doing, they will be to get more interest and possibility if they want to move forward and do something collaborating in the future.
SHARAFI_ETH: I would love to see G Mani onboarding many huge brands with this 90CC trend with the technology of the NFTs, that is great fun. I would like to see that and can I expect that soon?
GMoney: well I’m not that yet, but I am super excited about a lot of conversations that I am having. I do think that we are in a very opportune time where we have a lot of information and understanding of a world that a lot of legacy brands are trying to learn about and because of that, we have the opportunity to help 1 onboard a lot of brands and 2 do it the right way. So we make sure that we are doing that in a non-wall garden and that is the most exciting thing for me.
SHARAFI_ETH: I love the way you make the anticipation G. Just to say, with this provenance and this authenticity that can be proven by the technology of NFTs. As we believe that the NFT technology will go mainstream, what will happen to companies like StarX or others that are dealing in the secondary market for luxury goods, what will happen to them?
GMoney: I think you are going to probably need to adapt or be above, I need to be interesting, let’s stop that I want to see as consumers. We are going to see what ends are happening. It is obvious that there is a huge resale marketing that already exists, so the easier and less fractioning those transactions to happen, I think it is overall better for all consumers.
SHARAFI_ETH: Very nice point. Thanks for sharing that. I will ask another question. I am asking too many questions from you G, sorry. There are so many things that cross my mind. I want to know after all these, like the ones I pointed out, first of all, another thing that I love to know, are you planning on bringing the 90CC the fashion brand in (IRO) shops, are you close to any of that?
GMoney: No, I have been to lots of different possibilities. I would say that doing an IRO shop that is there permanently is not on the plan any time soon, but I never say it would be a long time so one of my strengths is that I am always open to new ideas, and new points of view that you are thinking. So I wouldn’t say never but it is not on the plan in the foreseen future.
SHARAFI_ETH: As always fair enough. And how do you mention, I want to wear my T-shirt right now. One of the best perks about 90CC as you said is having the authenticity papers read at the same time. How does the transaction work? I want to sell my T-shirt in IRO to the person who loves to have it.
GMoney: I mean it works like if you sell any T-shirt. So if you and IRO meet up, you give me the T-shirt, I give you the money and then I have the T-shirt and whenever I want I can take the NFT from that T-shirt into my wallet because I have the physical possession, just simple like that.
SHARAFI_ETH: but this cannot happen just coming up with this question I have. I am wearing my T-shirt and somebody else comes close to me with a mobile phone. Are they able to put out the NFT from my T-shirt?
GMoney: They could. There is going to be a locking magnetism where you can lock the NFT so nobody can do that for up to 90 days. I think there is an element of gamification that you can utilize with what you want like if somebody wants the put the NFT into their wallet, they have to pay for the transactions so it will not be for free. So it costs something to do it. But if you got home and realized somebody put your NFT into their wallet, you can just put it back when you get home. Because you have physical possession of it. So you can make a game out of it if you want to, whoever does put my NFT into their wallet and you can do this as yourself individually where you can game that as an experience if you want it to. So you all have the option to lock your NFT so that it cannot be put for a certain period. And the reason for the expression on that you might sell it to me and forgot to unlock it. It needs some sort of auto to unlock for the future so that if the transaction happens, I should be able to put that in my wallet at some point in the future.
SHARAFI_ETH: This is so interesting, you have never mentioned that before. At least, I haven’t heard about it. That is so interesting. Thank you for the information on that G. What should we expect from your vision of you for 90CC?
GMoney: I am really happy to put my name on that, that I want to wear the signal that I am crypto native to the real world, which I think is just super cool. I hope other people just see my vision as well. I see the integration of NFC and NFT to the real world and gamifying community building IRO because to me it likes the basic building in the space and we don’t necessarily see that in the physical space. So it is like how do we do that, how do we take the community building to the next level?
SHARAFI_ETH: Very nice. What do you have to tell the new brands coming in, not the big ones, because, with the emergence of social media going mainstream, many native brands are coming in from Web2 not only Web3? What will happen if they want to use the same technology, what is the cost? What are the ways that they should go down? Any advice for them?
GMoney: You should learn as much as you can about the space. I think I am not doing anything necessarily having the priority to share with amusing partners that I think are the best in the class to do and focus on things that I think they can do best. and I focus on things that I can do the best. I am going to build a brand so that people realize that there is a solution in the market already for what you want like there is no need to reinvent the real. Why not go to the best solution provider and build up what they have already built up? And that is one of the things I am most excited about like I am not necessarily building on the protocol layer, I am building on the application layer like I am using lots of different protocols that I think are the best in the class in their brands and using them to stand in my brand. I think that is interesting because of the composability of NFTs, being able to plug in and play without necessarily having to spend years to build up this task. This is my solution own. It will take me years. It will take me three years and 2 million dollars at least of that work. And you just say, oh we can plug in and play your solution into what I am building and build that much faster.
SHARAFI_ETH: Nice point. Can you share some information about the cost maybe, if it is possible?
GMoney: I don’t think I can share the cost because we are at the end of this with my partners. I mean because the nature of the technology, the cost of the chips, and the cost of the technology overall go down over time which is already seen. The processing speed gets doubled and costs cut in half so I think more laws are in layers of all technology in some reshape of form. So I think over time as the technology becomes more terrific and out there on the real role, the cost will be lower.
SHARAFI_ETH: It is reasonable. G, I know you are super busy and this was a huge honor having you on this show. Anything you want to point out and add to it?
GMoney: I just think people are excited about what I am building. I think you can follow me or 90 CC on Twitter. I think what we are going through here is revolutionary but I hope this pushes the space forward and lead to adoption in long term. But I am super excited about that. I am happy that you are a member of the community. You are super valuable, I am happy that I can call you as a member and a friend and be able to move crypto adoption to the next level.
SHARAFI_ETH: I am privileged, Thank you so much G. You hype me every time man. It was a huge honor having you. Thank you so much.
GMoney: thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.
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