DJ Dyl - Influencers Making Millions with NFTs

JohnPaul: [00:00:00] Hey everyone, welcome to the podcast. I’m your host JohnPaul and this is Digital Gold. Known to many as the Bitcoin Kid, I started mining cryptocurrency out of my parents’ basement back in 2013. The goal of this show is to simplify the crypto world and explore how it changes the way the world thinks about money through conversations with thought leaders [00:00:16] in this space.

[00:00:17] JohnPaul is the founder and CEO of Orm Capital Ventures. All opinions expressed by JP and podcast guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Orm Capital Ventures. This podcast is intended for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for investment decisions.

JohnPaul: [00:00:35] Welcome to the Digital Gold Podcast. Today I’m joined by Dylan Rhodes, known as DJDil, is a recording artist, investor, marketing professional and entrepreneur from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dilgaine recognition in 2015 with the early success of Platinum Hit Singul, Jordan Belfort, [00:00:56] and accompanying Tori performing 50 plus shows across the US. Dil continues to elevate his music career with several independent singles and recently released debut album Crypto Rich. Dylan independently distributes his music as a CEO and owner of a record label, It’s Lit.org.

JohnPaul: [00:01:10] Welcome to the show, my man. Yo, how’s it going JP? Good to connect to you. You’ve got to be able to connect bro. It’s been a crazy time. Let’s talk about that. How did we meet and then let’s go into the story of your journey into crypto. [00:01:23] Yeah, man, of course. So it’s been a few years. It’s great to finally connect. It’s crazy to think how we met. It was back in like 2017, I believe the summer of 2017. Crypto is really just getting started. I think Ethereum had just hit $400 for the first time. I think we had just hit some kind of big peak right around there. And I was on

JohnPaul: [00:01:46] a trip with some of my buddies who were also invested in crypto and JP was the same. So we were on a trip, a sailing trip in Greece. I remember, I think it was just like real casual. Everyone was getting settled in. We were meeting everybody from the different boats and everything like that. And we were just talking about crypto one night and it [00:02:05] makes sense in hindsight, right? Like crypto markets were having some of the best times ever. We were taking like this big you trip, having a great time. It was like the first night there and everybody was talking about what we do and lo and behold, it comes out that these guys do crypto. And so we immediately just start talking about Ethereum and crypto

JohnPaul: [00:02:24] and all types of different altcoins and shitcoins and Bitcoin. I think that’s how we met. We met out in Greece while we were taking a sailing trip. And we immediately connected because you guys were like the only other dudes who knew anything about crypto at the time. And that was before it was really that popular. Obviously in 2017, it was growing, but it [00:02:42] was still a new concept. Ethereum and Bitcoin was that your first time into the crypto journey? 2017? Can you talk a little bit more how you got into the space? Maybe your mining operation and now that anything you’re working on today in crypto? Yeah. So that in hindsight, that really was my journey into the crypto space. But at the time, I had definitely already

JohnPaul: [00:02:59] been in for a while, in some sense, because I got in Ethereum under $10 was when I first started getting in Ethereum. And so by this summer, I believe we had already experienced like a huge major run up to like $200 or $400 at that point when we met. So I had been in it, but it was only like a year or so that I had been in. And so when we met, I had just [00:03:22] started my consulting company. I wasn’t doing any of the stuff that I do now in real estate. I hadn’t figured out how I was going to connect my music career to crypto. I think when we met, I was way more focused on crypto. I probably led with crypto. And I don’t even know if I talked that much about my song Jordan Belford. Like when we initially met, I know that throughout

JohnPaul: [00:03:43] the trip, we got to know each other a little bit and obviously big part of what I do is music. That was before crypto. Before all this, I was doing music, making songs, everything like that. I had to hit record. That’s originally what got me into crypto was that my buddy went online and searched how to get rich on Google. My buddy, Cuss Pack, he’s in my on [00:04:03] fire music video and stuff. I’ve since made a ton of music with him and we’ve done crypto together, but he searched how to get rich and found out about Ethereum. He started learning about smart contracts and some of these awesome applications of Ethereum. And so that’s when he really figured out that buying Ethereum was the move. And so he called me, we were 19 at the

JohnPaul: [00:04:23] time. So I was his only buddy who had any money because I was making money from Jordan Belford’s song. And I had just gotten a record deal. So he called me up and told me about Ethereum. I ended up buying in and just holding man. And from there, I started trading altcoins. Obviously, I saw the appeal of Bitcoin got into all different types of crypto. And that’s what brought us to [00:04:45] that summer. And a lot of stuff has happened since then I’ve continued to build out my consulting company. I’ve figured out how to integrate my interest in music and crypto together with my album Crypto Rich. I bought miners from you. I tried to hold mining operation here in Philly. We got it going for a little bit, set it up and ultimately it failed. So we’ve liquidated it.

JohnPaul: [00:05:06] He didn’t fail. It just wasn’t something that we were prepared to scale. So we ended up liquidating it. I’ve dabbled in everything in crypto, right? Like at this point, now I’ve been in it for four or five years or whatever. I’ve experienced the ups and downs. I’ve tried mining. I’ve made crypto art now. That’s pretty much what I’m focused on. I work in real estate security tokens as well.

DJDyl: [00:05:29] I work for Vertello, one of the top competitors in security tokens. They compete with securitize and some of the other big players in that space. And so we’re doing exciting stuff here out of Philly through Vertello real estate. So that’s something I’ve been doing in the past year. And of course, with the crypto market going crazy, I’m trading, I’m investing in all coins, [00:05:51] I’m getting involved in all types of different things right now. We have a crypto fund through my company advantage blockchain here in Philly. And at this point, I’ve dabbled in a lot of different forms of cryptocurrency. But I know that the same is true for you, my friend. Yeah, it sounds like you have gone from music now taking this full crypto red pill on those

DJDyl: [00:06:12] where it’s every little portion you tried out the mining, you’re working on the fund, you’re doing the securitization, the tokenization. Are you doing anything with the NFTs and NFT art when you mentioned crypto? Is that what you’re referring to? I knew we’d get into that, man. Right now, it’s hot right now. Honestly, I pictured this podcast and I was like, [00:06:30] it’s probably going to end up going out with NFTs in the title. Because honestly, it’s just like right now NFTs are hot. And yeah, man, I mean, I’m into it. Like, I’m definitely exploring what the best way to go forward is with it. It’s like the hot shit right now. Everybody’s talking about NFTs. They’re making tons of money. Ultimately, what I was referring to is I’ve been

DJDyl: [00:06:49] doing crypto art since I released my album Crypto Rich. And NFTs have always been a thing. But at the same time, I was fully devoted to crypto art before this recent NFT wave. That being said, that when I say crypto art, I’m really referring to like my music about crypto. But at the same time, I’m super into this NFTs idea. I’ve been going on Clubhouse a lot where NFTs are really popular [00:07:13] to talk about on there. I’ve been looking into the various platforms. I’m thinking about issuing an NFT of like my album cover that will have some kind of special benefits for my fans, as well as some kind of custom NFT art, which is going to be related to my music. So think like different NFTs inspired by different songs on my album and stuff like that. I think it’s cool, man.

DJDyl: [00:07:35] And I would love to hear your take on some of the NFT stuff because I think it’s interesting. And there’s a lot to be said about it. Yeah, I think for the NFT world, I’ve been in that space, the year to seven 21 tokens, which is the specific NFT Ethereum contract. I think that at the end of the day, we’re seeing it might be a bubble of NFTs where we are. There’s a lot of people creating [00:07:56] them. There’s a lot of value being transferred. And the price of these assets are rising dramatically with Bitcoin pulling back. We’ll see if that affects the space at all. But at the end of the day, I think where NFTs really can shine is when it comes to asset streams, bringing in those revenue streams from either music from creators, maybe other business lines, clothing, merch,

DJDyl: [00:08:15] into an NFT product for the group to be able in the community to be able to not only gain on the upside and have advantages to promote the product. So I think that’s at least my perspective on NFTs. I think they have a long way to come. I don’t think they’re going to disappear. I think they will evolve fractionalized NFTs are huge. I know some guys in the music industry [00:08:34] introduce you after the call, after the podcast on which do NFTs for tokenized music rights and are working through that. Some pretty big music guys. And I wanted to talk about your music production process. Has COVID affected that has crypto going up affected that? Are you still putting as much

JohnPaul: [00:08:50] time into writing and recording? Can you talk a little bit more about why you decided on the

DJDyl: [00:08:55] name Crypto Rich and the Crypto Rich Deluxe album? So COVID has definitely affected it. Of course, it’s been tough for music artists just dealing with not being able to do live shows. For me, personally, I was getting a lot of momentum for live shows right before COVID hit. But other than that, I’ve been getting in studios a lot. I record a lot of stuff right here. I’m actually recording [00:09:16] from my studio right now in my bedroom. I record a lot of stuff. And so my whole album is recorded mixed and mastered right here by me. So I’ve still been staying on top of music production stuff. But you also asked about Crypto Rich and the inspiration. Really, I was having this point in my life where I was getting so big into crypto and I was trying to decide if this is what I wanted

DJDyl: [00:09:39] to do. Did I want to switch back completely to being a business person and just be done with music? I was a finance major in college. Business is something I always thought I would do. The success of my song, Jordan Belfer, going platinum and everything like that was a bit unexpected. But it really allowed me to reassess my life and just say like, all right, you know what? Now that I see [00:09:59] that this music shit is really possible, this is what I want to do with my life. So it was this period where I took a step back from crypto. And this was during the bear market. Honestly, during the bear market is when you have those tough nights where it’s like, oh shit, I was so rich six months ago. And now tomorrow night, I’m going to eat ramen for dinner. So it’s during

DJDyl: [00:10:18] that time when I just realized I really want to focus on music. Like crypto is awesome. I like investing. I want this to be a part of my life forever. But I want to focus on my passion. Because at the end of the day, whatever you put time into is going to work out. It might take a year, it might take five years, it might take 10 years. But if you spend so much time putting all that energy into [00:10:38] something that you’re not passionate about, then you might get off track a little bit. So I was like, all right, I got to take a step back. So anyway, crypto rich was just inspired by my story, man. Like really, just everything that’s happened to me, I wanted to combine crypto, I wanted to connect what I was doing with my music. And of course, Jordan Belfort is already a song that’s about

DJDyl: [00:10:59] investing. So it was like a natural thing for me to then make a whole album about crypto. And it’s a great story. Like, I think it’s a story that people still haven’t fully realized yet. Like, I made pretty much the top song about investing. Maybe of all time, it’s definitely one generation’s favorite song about investing. Like for our generation, if you mentioned like top songs about [00:11:20] investing, everybody’s going to say Jordan Belfort is one. So of course, crypto rich had to come next. And then shout out to chief Keith, you know, finally rich, that was a banger. I used to listen to finally rich. So that’s what inspired it as well. I was just like, you know what, I’m crypto rich.

[00:11:35] Orm provides a bridge to the digital currency mining world for individual investors, financial

DJDyl: [00:11:41] institutions and energy companies. By combining over 70 years of mining experience, 24 seven management and directly aligned incentives, Orm’s managed mining program is the simplest way to enter the digital currency mining market. To learn more, please visit OrmCapitalFentures.com. I actually just made a tweet about this. When I first put out crypto rich, Bitcoin was at [00:12:02] $10,000 approximately. This is August of 2019. And then I put out crypto rich deluxe, which was recently December 18th, 2020. So that was just in December. But Bitcoin was only at 20k when that came out. So it looks like I started the bull market, man, because now since crypto rich drops, we’re already up to like almost 60k or whatever. It is very crazy how fast that went up and

DJDyl: [00:12:29] in the timing with the market and the having and the album drop. You mentioned that you were on the original Jordan Belfort podcast, I believe it’s called the Wolf Den. How was that experience? And do you learn anything from hammer? Do you teach me anything about crypto? I wish I got to teach him about crypto. That’s actually a great question. He’s super anti crypto. [00:12:46] So great story behind that. It took five to six years before I ended up meeting Jordan. Obviously from the moment I was writing the song, I was literally sitting there in West’s house, writing the song West is my buddy who I made Jordan Belfort with. We were sitting in his basement or whatever, writing out the song. And I was thinking, wouldn’t it be crazy if one day I ended up meeting

DJDyl: [00:13:04] this guy Jordan Belfort? Years go by, he obviously knew the song. I’ve seen him dancing to it on TikTok and shit. But then finally, when my family moved out to LA, just through some good old-fashioned networking, we got in touch with someone who worked for him. And so I went to his apartment when I was out in LA one time, and I sat down with him. And I just told him about my story and everything. [00:13:25] And how Jordan Belfort came to be. Because he had no idea. The song was inspired by the movie. We put it on SoundCloud. It blew up organically. So he had no idea who made the song or anything about it. And so when he found out that it was just like two dudes who just made it on their laptops and put it on SoundCloud and blew up organically, he was like, oh, obviously, it’s like a dope

DJDyl: [00:13:44] entrepreneur story. So he had a song to talk about it. And we got to shoot the shit a little bit, exchange stories about Jordan Belfort. I didn’t get to teach him about crypto though, man. I did not get that opportunity. But it was cool to finally meet him and talk about how the song had affected both of our lives. That’s a great conversation. I think I want to jump into that [00:14:03] organic growth part. You’ve mentioned a couple of things that you’ve done and you’ve been able to take in your career to help propel your social media influence and reach. Or you’re able to talk about some of those tactics you use to grow the song and maybe a new tactic to using to grow crypto riches, audience and reach. This is something I talk about all the time. A big part of what I

DJDyl: [00:14:22] do is I help independent artists and creators with promotion. I do all types of different services, everything from Spotify to YouTube to different types of things on social media, right? I’m big on rap chat app as well. A big thing for me has always been multi platform, right? So post all of your stuff as many places you can try to stay active on different social medias. A big leap for [00:14:44] me was on rap chat app. It’s an app where you can record and share raps on your phone. I have almost half a million followers on there. And that’s been big as far as building a core fan base for me. And it’s also fun as someone who’s a music artist. It’s a cool place where you can just go and release stuff for fun. So just like TikTok, for example, and you’ve been so successful with

DJDyl: [00:15:05] that. It’s just like another place where you can go and release content for fun and then use it to promote your end game. TikTok is dope, but as you can see, you’re building it into something bigger here with like your podcast and everything that you’re doing with your business and stuff. So it’s all about having that long term vision. So when it comes to Jordan Belfort, well, let’s [00:15:23] talk about the content. Like the content has to be good. So start with good content. Once you have the right content, you’re going to know what audience you want to promote that to. So for Jordan Belfort, it was really like a college audience. We wanted to create a music video that was going to have a big party college scene that was going to appeal to that crowd. And so that really worked well.

DJDyl: [00:15:42] And of course, Spotify play listing is really important. Soundcloud promotion, YouTube promotion, all these different things that really comes down to investing in yourself. And so I think a lot of artists these days, and I speak from like the music industry side, but this can apply to anything from starting your own business to being entrepreneur, artist, any type of artist, [00:16:03] it’s that people are chasing a deal or people are chasing an investment when at the end of the day, it’s really about building assets and investing in yourself. You don’t always want to just chase, and this really applies to the music industry. You don’t always just want to chase a deal, because at the end of the day, you can make a lot of smart moves and invest in yourself and

DJDyl: [00:16:21] maintain 100% ownership of what it is you’re selling of your music. And so that’s been a big thing for me is we took a deal on Jordan Belfort, but now I do everything independently. So with crypto rich, I’ve been doing everything, Spotify, play listing, music videos, YouTube ads, everything like that is what’s been working for me. Now crypto rich is almost that 2 million views on Spotify. [00:16:43] Total is probably at three to four million across all platforms, and it’s growing, man, it takes time. We’re at this day and age where people look at a million views and they think nothing of it, but I’ve seen how this happens. A million views year one, then a couple million the next year, and then it’s even more millions the next year. That’s how it goes, right? Jordan

DJDyl: [00:17:03] Belfort didn’t get to 200 million streams overnight. It seems like that to someone who’s watching from the outside, but to me, I see it growing every single day. And so it took over a year and a half before Jordan Belfort even got to 1 million streams. Like think of that, to other people, it seems like the song came out of nowhere. But to me, the artists, I watched it go from zero to [00:17:24] 1 million. It took over a year. So that’s just how it goes. That’s one of the reasons why I think I’m most excited about NFTs and blockchains with creators. The first effect that you haven’t gone over to a label, you do maintain all that control allows you to do some pretty unique things in the future. Because you mentioned that like anyone who thought this song was a quality song and shared

DJDyl: [00:17:42] it with their friends and for the first million streams, they didn’t get any residual value from that. They didn’t get any upside, but there is an opportunity with a deal coin or deal social currency that they’ll be able to become part of your community or own part of these NFTs. And so that’s one of the things that I’m super excited about seeing about how because you understand the [00:18:00] blockchain technology and you are active in crypto, you can help move the two worlds closer. And I think a lot of artists are on one side or the other or on the crypto side that either have no idea what it is or they’re familiar with it. So it’s interesting to see you merge those two together as you begin to grow the platform and overall music brand that you have and the label. You

DJDyl: [00:18:19] don’t have your own label, do you? Like bring you on other artists? Yeah, so I do have my own label. It’s called it.org. I want other artists or anything right now. It’s just a digital record label focused on distributing and promoting my music. And then we also have label services. So I see my label and what it’s going into as more of like a boutique label that offers services for artists to invest [00:18:40] in themselves. Do I think I’ll ever want to sign and work with artists? Yeah, it’s possible. Like maybe we will bring on artists and invest in them after I’ve advanced what I’m doing for my own career. Right now we’re focused on really enabling artists to invest in themselves. I don’t want to be signing artists to a typical record deal which requires a recoup and everything like that.

DJDyl: [00:19:01] I just don’t think it’s ideal for the artists. At the end of the day, I think people should learn how to generate some income so they can constantly reinvest in their music. That’s what’s going to help them long term. And that’s what I’m focused on now. At the end of the day, as my brand grows and as my influence grows, I’ll be able to do more things. But right now I just need to totally [00:19:21] focus on myself, my own grind. Because I am independent, I do everything myself. So I don’t have a big label behind me where I can focus on all these different things. I need to focus on directing music videos, creating creative personal finance, just managing all my shit so that I don’t go broke. That’s important. So I’m investing in my own career. I’m investing in cryptos and stocks

DJDyl: [00:19:42] and all of that stuff to make sure for my future. But ultimately I do want to turn the record label into something where we are doing a lot more artist development. But what you’re witnessing is just real time, like me growing this on the grind day to day. Like right now it’s just all about selling my music as well as helping artists invest in themselves with boutique services. [00:20:01] I really like it how you’re mentioning investing in yourself. I think that’s really hard for young entrepreneurs and young artists to understand that. There’s a lot of people that are here to help you, but you can run and chase the deals. You can chase the VCs. You can chase these people. But if you’re able to focus on creating something that’s quality that you can build a community

DJDyl: [00:20:18] around and show consistent cash flow, people will start coming to you and insourcing you out. Sorry for cutting you off. What else were you going to say? No, I totally agree with that. It’s all just about can you start from zero and just build yourself up piece by piece little by little. And I think ultimately when you get into the conversation about NFTs and how crypto is going [00:20:38] to revolutionize this, I think there’s so much potential there. And sometimes when I get on Clubhouse, I get into these rooms and everyone’s just so excited about it. But I feel like I have a very deep insight on this. And so sometimes I come with a little bit of an air of caution or just a little bit of an air of, okay, like I love NFTs. I think the idea is dope. But I think

DJDyl: [00:20:58] there’s a lot of confusion in the market about what constitutes a security and what constitutes an NFT. And so me being heavily involved in security tokens as well as now learning a lot about NFTs, I’m seeing a lot of people present ideas that for NFTs where I’m just like, all right, that is a security or that’s going to be like a reg CF. And I just know from a higher level, [00:21:20] it’s funny because like last bull market, I would see all of these ideas. And this is just how crypto is right? Everything’s a security. There’s tons of products that are available right now that when you really think about it, if you implemented this crypto and it wasn’t just a vaporware shit coin, if you implemented it, it would ultimately be a security. That’s one thing that I think about

DJDyl: [00:21:39] with NFTs. But what I have been told and what I’ve learned a lot about is there’s some interesting solutions coming up that are related to like reg CF and adjusting the guidelines that will allow non accredited investors to invest in your NFTs, which have some kind of revenue share and stuff like that. I just hate joining into a clubhouse and starting to say this shit because I feel like [00:22:01] a Debbie downer. There’s some realistic hurdles that NFTs have to get over to be what they promise because the best thing about them, in my opinion, is revenue share, ownership, stuff like that. The whole thing about like unique collectible digital arts is a little bit pumpy bubble to me. But when it’s like using a digital NFT type of product to split ownership or allow for like

DJDyl: [00:22:27] resale of a work that someone’s buying, I like that a lot. Do I think that every artist can release NFTs and get super rich off of it? Like everyone acts like that’s the situation right now? Maybe it is true. Maybe for some amount of time, but eventually it’s going to be like everything else. You know, there’s going to be a lot of NFTs and it’s going to be all about marketing and [00:22:47] investing in yourself and promotion and content. I definitely agree on the security side. I myself have been I think walking that path a lot on trying to improve the revenue stream distribution of different assets and different brands. And so for myself, I’m like, how do I do that with staying in line with security laws in the US as a US citizen? And let’s just say that’s much harder

DJDyl: [00:23:09] than saying, oh, like China and all these other countries that don’t have those type of regulations and laws regarding your time at the security company. What are you guys doing for the cryptocurrency

JohnPaul: [00:23:20] industry? How do you guys view interacting with NFTs versus securities? Can you talk a little bit more

DJDyl: [00:23:25] about specifics on maybe that role as someone who’s looking in securities and tokenized securities? So I’ve been working for Vertello for about a year. What they do is they connect and able the digital asset ecosystem. So we have essentially a dashboard for interacting with security tokens as well as connecting the token ownership to investor data. So a big part of this [00:23:49] has to do with investor management and accreditation. So like essentially collecting all of the investor data and then providing a dashboard to which you can connect the security token to investor data. Because all this is really important when you start to get into regulated markets. Like in unregulated cryptocurrency, it’s all fine and well that we have these sort of pseudo anonymous

DJDyl: [00:24:11] wallets, which are only connected by a file. That’s fine for crypto. But for regulated markets, you can’t do that. Like everything has to be directly connected to investor names. You can’t have an asset which can just disappear or be burned. Like securities, traditional securities markets don’t work like that. You have to work with a transfer agent [00:24:33] and a custodian who’s going to hold your assets. Let me just give you a perspective. With a security token, if there’s fraud, you just undo it pretty much. That’s how it’s supposed to work. That’s how securities are supposed to work. The entire US financial system with securities, it’s more like when there’s fraud, they undo it versus a blockchain. When there’s fraud,

DJDyl: [00:24:56] it’s in the blockchain, it can’t be undone. They don’t want that in traditional securities. So the entire vertalo system is sort of think of it like instance, ERC 20 tokens, which get issued on the Ethereum blockchain. But then we are controlling them and sort of like a layer two solution. But each one is its individual ERC 20 token more like that. So each individual [00:25:20] security token that’s created on Ethereum, but vertalo itself does not have a layer two coin or anything like that. That definitely I think helps me understand a little more on what you guys are working on and definitely see the potential growth there with the community, with NFTs. And as you mentioned, that space has matured a lot over the past two years

DJDyl: [00:25:40] from where it was back in early 2018. If you had a million dollars to spend in the crypto space right now, what would you go do and where would you put that money? That’s such an awesome question, man. It’s tough, right? Because right now we’re in this situation where it’s like a rising tide takes all ships, everything’s going up like there’s not a bad place to put a million [00:26:01] dollars in crypto right now. But I could tell you if I had a million dollars that was all in crypto right now, I would probably sell some of it to cash and hang on to a little bit of it. But at that being said, I think we have a ton of upside. There’s this could be the very beginning of the run like we saw in 2017. So there are people who think like that and have their Ethereum targets

DJDyl: [00:26:22] at 5K or 10K or something like that for this run. And so I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I would be mostly in Bitcoin and Ethereum. I would also be in some of those DeFi projects. I think a lot of that’s exciting. Uniswap, I think is exciting for Ethereum. I think that Maker is a big part of the DeFi ecosystem that’s kind of behind the scenes that most people don’t [00:26:44] realize is a great investment. And then I like Bitcoin. I think finance has been impressive lately. I don’t hold enough of that. I’m in Litecoin right now for a trade. I think Litecoin is going to be a good trade for the next couple months. I hear that they might even be doing something with SushiSwap, which could be interesting. So I’m obviously watching the trends and the trades and stuff and

DJDyl: [00:27:08] everything like that. I don’t know. I’m quite invested in altcoins, mostly Bitcoin and Ethereum. I guess that gives you a little perspective. I would say I’d go something like this. One third Bitcoin, one third Ethereum, one third altcoins, something like that. If I put it simple, you can’t go wrong or something like that. No, I definitely agree with you there. That is a [00:27:25] good allocation and some good upside. So since the release of your song, the Jordan Bell for the new crypto rich album, have you talked to any other famous people? Are they taking interest in Bitcoin? Do you have any stories or interactions you can share about marketing that new album? Right now, it’s still really undiscovered. I feel like a lot of people know my song Jordan

DJDyl: [00:27:45] Belfort. That never led me to the type of interactions you’re talking about. Like other than meeting Jordan Belfort, and I met a couple cool people on tour, but we did everything independent. So it’s just a little bit different than it happens for some artists. So we did like 50 plus shows all around the US. I met some really cool artists. I opened for Fettiwap. I met a little Dickie, [00:28:06] who’s pretty cool. I met Ray Stremmer. Nothing crazy, right? Like I met a select handful of artists that I happened to open for or I happened to do a show with, but it was 50 plus shows all around colleges and universities, which are totally shut down right now. So right COVID has totally killed that which sucks. But yeah, I mean, I’ve gotten the opportunity to go out to LA and work in some

DJDyl: [00:28:28] of the best studios in the world, work with talented songwriters and everything like that. And let me tell you that shit is overrated. After doing all that, I still choose to record here in my home. It was cool to learn all that and to get that foot in the door right out of the gate to be able to like, you thrust into the music industry and see all that shit. But at the end [00:28:47] of the day, it’s like you end up giving up so much to get a record deal and giving up so much of your ownership of your art. And the net cost that you’re paying just to like get in these situations that you could put yourself in, let me give you an example, right? Like a record label will fly you out to LA, put you in an Airbnb, put you in a studio, but then you have to recoup the entire

DJDyl: [00:29:09] cost of everything. So it’s like, why don’t you save up like two or three grand book your own flight to LA? You can get a sick Airbnb. You can go to a sick studio for three days and it’s not going to cost that much. It’s going to cost an average person can save up a few grand in a few months. And I’m getting on here saying that like with truth. At the end of the day, most artists do [00:29:31] take a deal and then they’re signed and they don’t want to say these things. So I’m saying this shit because I’m independent. I release crypto rich independent. I’m not giving that shit up. We’re going to hit 100 mil. We’re going to hit a billion streams, man. Bitcoin’s going to hit a million. It’s funny because when I wrote the song crypto rich and I’m like, we’re going on a run. We’re

DJDyl: [00:29:49] going to hit a hundred K. That was like a joke. That was like, now we’re like actually about to hit a hundred K and it’s so crazy because I literally just put that out a couple months ago. And when it came out, I was like, damn, I’m a fool for saying Bitcoin’s going to a hundred K in this song. Like we’re only at 20 K right now and I don’t even know what’s going to happen. [00:30:07] I don’t anymore though. I think you’re doing well in the predictions, honestly. By the time this song hits a hundred million streams, it could be at a hundred K. Oh, I think that’s a given. Hopefully, yo, at the end of the day, I see this as so similar to the Jordan Belfort song, right? Like when the Jordan Belfort song first came out, I would have showed it to you and you

DJDyl: [00:30:25] had been like, oh, that’s a dope movie. Oh, this song’s kind of catchy. That’s cool. Whatever. Like onto the next thing. And that’s kind of what people are like now with crypto rich, right? They’re like, oh, yeah, crypto. That’s cool. Like I heard of that. It seems like it’ll be a big deal. And they’re like, oh, yeah, your album is pretty cool. I guess the artwork’s cool and the music’s [00:30:45] cool. Like whatever. But then I think that after time, like the whole story about crypto becomes solidified in like the human consciousness sense. Like crypto is a big deal. Just like the Belfort movie, like that movie was a big deal. But it wasn’t a big deal the day it came out. It was like after a year, everyone collectively decided like, all right, this movie is badass.

DJDyl: [00:31:05] I think the same thing with crypto needs to happen. We’re like right now, everybody’s like, I don’t get crypto. I don’t, this guy’s rapping about crypto. I don’t get it. In two or three years, it’ll just be like, oh shit, crypto is cool. That’s rich people and shit. Hopefully we’ll have that natural story and growth and shit like that. And I think like we talked about earlier, [00:31:25] we got to make some sick music videos. We got to get the Lambo pulling up to the Bitcoin facility. All that shit, bro. Like it’s just about creating a story and just executing and just knowing that what you’re doing is worth your time and that ultimately it’s going to pay off. And I think that any entrepreneur can relate to that. There’s always going to be that point in time where you’re like,

DJDyl: [00:31:46] damn, what is all this shit I’m doing? Is it really worth it? I’m sure you can remember back in your day, like being surrounded by all these weird ass computers and Ethereum’s dropping from the state. And you’re like, what the hell did I just invest in? I’m surrounded by computers.

JohnPaul: [00:32:01] Going onto that conversation, keeping with that line of topic, what advice would you give your

DJDyl: [00:32:05] 18 year old self before Jordan Belfort blew up, before you really got into crypto and knowing what you know today? It’s tough because I don’t know if I could have given myself any advice that I definitely would have listened to. But I think at the end of the day, I would say just really focus on working hard and continuing to put out content. I could have put out more content around when [00:32:26] Jordan Belfort came out. And I guess the biggest mistake I made was putting too much of my faith in someone else to help me. And I guess that’s kind of on a deeper level of something to think about. I was constantly thinking like, oh, this record deals great. They’re going to do it for me. Or like, all I need to get is like this one more deal or like this one more thing. And it definitely held

DJDyl: [00:32:47] me back from taking everything in my own hands and doing everything in my own power to grow my own brand. I got the record deal and that was like a big win. And then I was just waiting for them to like do the thing. But there is no thing. Like, you have to do it. And so what I learned through that experience was the importance of just doing everything yourself as an entrepreneur. [00:33:09] And to the maximum level, if you want something done, do it. That goes to all levels. If you want comments on your new YouTube video, send it to people and ask them to comment until you have 100 comments, until you have 1000 comments. Go look at my bad hair video. Almost 500,000 views, like 500 comments. Everybody didn’t just comment because they love me. They comment because I network, I

DJDyl: [00:33:31] message people, I send them the video, I say, yo, drop a comment on this. So I think people underestimate that they look at my shit. And they just think, Oh, wow, it blew up because he’s so viral and everyone loves him. It’s like, no, some of the people hate me. I send him the video and they say, you I think that is the the guerrilla marketing technique that I’ve seen deal throughout [00:33:50] your career and just had you when you shared with me. That is what keeps an artist going, especially one who doesn’t have full time people as a label pushing that you have to do the outreach. You have to build that community with your fans. You have to curate those relationships in order for you to build a successful base that wants to support you. So I think that is huge. Are

DJDyl: [00:34:11] you letting your fans support you directly in any way through merch sales, through patreon, through tokens, anything like that where they can directly support you as an artist? Yeah, I need to increase the amount of ways that they can. But I just launched my merch line, which is really dope. Check out it’s late.org fire emoji merch. We got fire emoji hats. I got one around here. [00:34:32] I got all types of different stuff, but really it’s late.org merch is like all different fire emoji stuff as well as my crypto rich line just dropped. I think it’s like a good blend of just like stylish cool shit that’s just like this fire emoji. And then also like deal merch and stuff like that. Before we hop off the stuff about the label, I wanted to talk about this because this is something

DJDyl: [00:34:52] you can relate to too, which is I feel like the algorithm is the new label. You’ve seen that with TikTok like how once you get the algorithm working, it blows you up. So I feel like as an artist, the thing to really focus on is like, how can you invest in like hitting the algorithm right way? Once you figure out how to hit the algorithm the right way, you don’t need a label anymore. [00:35:16] This becomes a lot easier. So like you said, like I am constantly grinding because I don’t have a team that’s working for me like day in and day out to promote my shit. But I’ve seen what’s happening and slowly over time, I have to do less and less to get the same results. And it gets to this point where eventually I’ll just be big enough where every time I post a song, it’ll blow up on its

DJDyl: [00:35:39] own because it gets enough steam going to hit the algorithm in the right way. I’ll give you an example. NBA Youngboy is a rapper who’s been super successful on YouTube and he did it pretty much independently. What happened was he just started putting out so many YouTube videos. They were all hitting the top charts. He just became a favorite of the YouTube algorithm and became the most [00:36:00] viewed artist on all of YouTube. At the end of the day, it’s the algorithm is the new wave. I like that quote. The algorithm is the new label. It’s definitely changing how people are receiving this content. The biggest thing with TikTok, I’ve seen guys where it’s honestly not that hard at the end of the day. You can figure out what type of content works, figure out on other people’s

DJDyl: [00:36:21] videos what is going viral, and then start building on top of that. A lot of people are doing product review videos recently, reviewing different products because those videos are hitting 10 million views on TikTok. And this is a platform that once it goes viral, it just goes crazy. And as people are commenting, spending more and more time on the video and the end of the day, it doesn’t [00:36:39] matter what the content is, it just matters. Are people interacting and engaging with it? And I think that changes the game with Instagram, with Snapchat before it was paid a play. If you wanted to do well, you either had to growth hack, which was like playing the game on this side, where you had to pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars to promote it through their algorithms.

DJDyl: [00:36:56] Now with TikTok, they changed the game there. Wrapping things up, where do you want to go? Where do you see yourself in two years with the music and crypto world? I want to keep building what I’m doing in music. I just signed another lease here in Philly for the next years. I’m Philly based. I live here. I thought about moving, but I’m definitely going to be staying here for a while. [00:37:13] So making lots of Philly music videos and stuff like that. I just got a connection with a company called Imagine Lifestyles. They’re based near Philly and Cherry Hill. They’re going to be supplying me with all types of dope shit. We’re going to get some Lambo’s, some Rari’s, some G wagons. And we’re going to do the crypto rich album videos right. I already have another album

DJDyl: [00:37:33] planned, but I think the way it’s panning out, I’m just going to take my time and make sure I get the crypto rich videos right. This is something that is going to be cemented in history. I’ve seen it with Jordan Belford. If I hit these videos right and I get the Lambo’s and the full crypto moon boy swag, it’ll be timeless. Looking back, it’ll be like, damn, they’ll really did that right, [00:37:54] or whatever. It’ll just be crazy looking back because I think we’re at the beginning of this. I’m sure you agree with me. We’re at 50,000 right now. I think in 10, 20 years, we’ll probably see Bitcoin at a million at some point. And so to think back how I was doing all this crazy shit when Bitcoin was just getting started, I can’t wait for that long term story.

DJDyl: [00:38:14] I am agreeing with you there. I think the price is going to grow and that’s going to lift all boats as you mentioned, including brands that are working on the crypto platform, even NFTs or the music section. It’s interesting that you mentioned, you’re just focusing on one thing. I think that’s one thing that I think a lot of young people and artists have problems with and I maybe I do [00:38:31] myself. Maybe that’s why I kind of like have that sediment. But if you can just focus on creating a process that’s going to be able to compound results. And you like you mentioned, we don’t do as much work as you started before to get these videos to pop off and go viral. That is huge for person to come out of college and say, wow, I now have this community or I have this product that’s

JohnPaul: [00:38:50] building momentum. So, deal, where can people connect with you on social media and where’s the best

DJDyl: [00:38:55] place to listen to music and help you as a streamer and independent artists grow? Yeah, you can check out all my stuff on it’s lit.org and my Instagram is famous, dill. Just look up DYL, dill or famous underscore dill. You can find all my stuff there. I’m on all platforms, Apple music, Spotify, just look up dill, d y l, check out Jordan Belfort and crypto rich [00:39:20] deluxe. Some bangers on there, man. I’ve got a song called Bitcoin. I got a song called Ethereum. I got a song called blockchain. They’re all bangers, man. Inspired by this crypto stuff, inspired by my journey. You’re looking for some banger music guys to listen to while you’re in the car, working out of the gym, trading crypto. DJ Dil is the place to be it’s lit.org. Thanks

DJDyl: [00:39:41] again, my man for coming on the show. I’m so excited to film those videos in the mine this year and excited to blow them up. That’s going to be dope, man. They got to be watching for that. I think we got to do it with Bitcoin or Ethereum, probably Bitcoin, right? Exactly. Bitcoin mining video song.

[00:39:56] Thanks again, guys, for listening in. This is another episode of digital gold mine on. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode of digital gold. Be sure to subscribe so you’re notified when the new episode drops. Don’t forget to leave us a five star review to support our journey to

DJDyl: [00:40:11] become the number one crypto podcast. Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, mine off.