Gary Vaynerchuk on How He Bought 59 CryptoPunks

Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of VaynerMedia, was an early investor in technology giants like Facebook, Venmo and Twitter. Now, the media mogul is bullish on non-fungible tokens (NFTs), owning over a 1,000 of the crypto assets, including 59 CryptoPunks, as of press time.

Vaynerchuk, who spoke at 321 Blast Off: NYC, told attendees that when investing in NFTs people should do more research on the projects they’re interested in, specifically the founders and buildings, instead of having solely “their own financial interests in mind.”

“What I don’t think people understand is that if the founders of the project are unable to continue to build success, people will become bandwagon fans, and they will sell their token and go join another community,” Vaynerchuk said. 

“And I think people are supporting projects where they don’t even know the founders’ names, let alone capable of building a property. So I think there’s an enormous amount of carnage coming and the amount of money that’s going to be lost, it’s going to be scary,” he added.

About those 59 CryptoPunks

Vaynerchuk said prior to buying he “really did a lot of homework” and then “spent the next 72 hours [reading up] on the anti-punk point of view.”

To date, he has invested $32.6 million in those 59 CryptoPunks.

“The biggest thing that helps me, in the beginning, is seeking out the counterpoint to my own point of view,” he said. 

“I would actively search Twitter for the counterpoint of view. Because I think what ends up happening is people buy something they like — and then it almost becomes an echo chamber,” Vaynerchuk said. 

Additionally, he recommended investors diversify their cryptocurrency portfolios, adding that “a lot of people have the majority of their net worth tied up in their tokens [and] that scares the piss out of me.”

“Don’t let your short-term financial arbitrage be the foundation of your point of view,” Vaynerchuk said.