Gary Vaynerchuk, the outspoken CEO of creative agency VaynerMedia, checked in with Cheddar before the weekend to share his views on the biggest stories this week.
On creating jobs in the digital economy post-COVID:
"We've seen this before. When there's huge technology advancements, things evolve," he said.
Rather than focusing on the jobs being lost to technological changes, Vaynerchuk emphasized the "millions" of jobs being created around capturing and producing online content. He pointed to the emergence of “non-fungible tokens” or NFTs, which are digital certificates on the Ethereum blockchain that authenticate ownership of a digital asset and can be bought and sold.
Digital economy evangelists such as Vaynerchuk see NFTs as crucial to monetizing the web.
"It feels like a sea change: the blockchain, the ledgerization [or] digitalization of all goods, the way music is distributed, books, the way art and collectibles are sold, the way season tickets can be sold."
The goal, Vaynerchuk explained, is for the NFT market to set prices for the online economy.
On the possibility of new regulations for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies:
"Regulation is the elephant in the room," he said.
On the one hand, he said bitcoin has gotten "over the hump" of gaining legitimacy with the general public, but that it now presents a challenge to sovereign nations on what steps they will take to regulate the cryptocurrency, and how those actions could impact its long-term success.
"I think it's going to be extremely interesting over the next half-a-decade to a decade to see what happens, and how much momentum will that currency, that community have versus what happens if it gets overregulated," he said.
On the upcoming direct listing of Coinbase, a digital currency exchange:
"You don't see companies doing this level of revenue profitably before an IPO, with a trend that is so macro that they're dominating in," said Vaynerchuk, who disclosed that he invested in the company back in 2014. "So, I'm just very curious what the market is going to do with it, but they have a lot of good math on their side."
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
