From world traveling to NFT trading, Maxnaut is an MVHQ OG who has been around the block once or twice. They are one of the mainstays in voice chat offering thoughts, insights, and alpha. It was a pleasure to sit down and chat with Maxnaut about NFTs, MVHQ, and much more.

 

Now, before we get into it if I remember right you've done quite a bit of traveling this past year. What was that like for you and are you still currently on the move?

 

Yep, I've been on the move for the last few years now. It has been a rollercoaster so far and I've loved every moment. Living as a digital nomad was one of my goals. It was all planned out and I honestly don't see myself stopping this kind of lifestyle anytime soon. Next location will be Egypt!

 

Egypt! That’s pretty amazing and congrats on living out one of your goals. Could you take us back a bit and share how you entered the crypto space?

 

Sure, so my first foray into crypto itself was more out of curiosity. As blockchain tech was gaining more attention, I delved into it a bit as I suspect most did. I traded a negligible amount of BTC just to learn and understand how everything works. I come from an Economics and Marketing background and so found this very interesting. But, I sold what I had and left it for a while. Enter, Gary Vee. I run a marketing agency myself and have been running side hustles since before I went to University - so he's been a great source of information for me. At this time, he was gearing up to release Vee Friends, while relentlessly pumping out content to prime his mostly non-Web3 native audience. I remember a specific night very clearly - I was in Cyprus. I had some free time at my apartment and finally decided to deep dive into NFTs and see what GV was so excited about. I soaked up information, dipped into some ClubHouse rooms, and scrolled through CT. It was hard to find solid information back then, but after several hours I ended up pulling the trigger on a Hashmask, then not long after, I found BAYC. I had missed the mint but I threw out a bunch of WETH offers and went to sleep. When I awoke, I had an email telling me I'd just spent 0.45 ETH (around $2000 back then) on a monkey picture. That's how it started - I was soon completely hooked on the whole crypto space.

 

 

It’s hard not to get hooked if you're on the Gary V. hype train and BAYC was one of your first buys in the space. Spring of '21 Gary did a lot for the space and that early BAYC community was the ultimate FOMO. Your current PFP, the diamond grill BAYC, I see you have listed for a small sum of 1337 ETH. Was this the original 0.45 ETH buy or is there a story to how you ended up with it?

 

 

Ahaha no actually, the 0.45 ETH BAYC I flipped around 3 months later for 75 ETH - my first huge sale in the space. That was also the time I realized how attached we can become to these jpegs. It's extremely powerful. Going back to the BAYC in my PFP though - shortly after buying that original one I went on a little buying spree. I bought around 7 or 8 BAYCs, one of which was the merch diamond grill that you mentioned. For that one, I negotiated with the mighty Pranksy, persuading him to lower the price from 4 ETH down to 3 ETH before acquiring it. It's always good to ask instead of market buying, many traders will be more than happy to cut deals.

 

 

Congrats! That was a HUGE first sale. So, with all this experience and knowledge you were gathering, at what point did you join MVHQ and why?

 

 

Information is king. I knew that every second counts in terms of how fast you get alpha in this space. So, when I came across MVHQ on Twitter, I went straight to OpenSea and bought a token without hesitation. They had just minted out when I got there, I think my original token cost was 0.13 ETH. But it's all about quality and speed of information - something MVHQ absolutely smashed in that first year. 

 

So you joined MVHQ for information, was there anything that surprised you about joining that you weren't anticipating?

 

 

Yes, 169%. Firstly, everyone felt on the same team instantly - such camaraderie. I loved how everyone came from different backgrounds and offered value from different perspectives.

 

 

And the inception of VC was simply next level. I would love to know an ROI on having that VC running 24/7 last year during the bull run. Insanely valuable.

 

 

What a year too! It sounds like we joined for the same reason, but stumbled onto a tight-knit community. One thing that I didn't expect was the support. In fact, I made a huge mistake and was feeling pretty distraught. I was chatting with another member who was helping me, and they shared a tweet that I've gone back to several times over the year:

 

 

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has read this and felt like they weren't alone. Would you be open to sharing more about this tweet?

 

Sure, the origin is from when I fat fingered a dope robot BAYC for 0.75 instead of 75 ETH - $250k L at the time. To give some background. It was 2 AM, I was exhausted with some illness that felt like covid and my brain was in automation mode, mass listing stuff from WGMI. Most of the junk I was listing was priced at 0.1-0.5 and so when I got to the BAYC, I automatically put 0.75 ETH. OpenSea didn't have much of a warning back then to stop me.

 

A bot then insta-sniped it with 8 ETH worth of gas. Bang, $250k gone.

 

I could have been upset, complaining, hiding away for days, maybe even quitting or relentlessly beating myself up. Instead, I chose to re-frame it, to take some positivity from it, and move on.

 

I couldn't change anything about that fat finger, so why let my mind be occupied by negative thoughts about it? I would just be hurting myself again. Not only would I have my mood negatively affected, but I would also be unfocused on trading and may miss more opportunities. And because of this perspective, the very next day I ended up minting Proof Passes and Neo Tokyo S2, as well as making some big flips, which effectively made me back around 30 ETH.

 

I also took the idea that very few people get the opportunity to fuck up this bad and realize the world doesn't implode around them. If you can make it through adversity and realize you'll be just fine, then you can focus on new, difficult tasks without so much fear of failing. It frees the mind - so so much.

 

And then coming to the reason I posted that tweet. The fat finger blew up in the media. It was spreading to a LOT of news sources, SKY, CNN, CNBC, BBC, and any acronym you could imagine. My DMs were also blowing up with other people who had also messed up, asking how I handled it. I saw this as an opportunity to share my philosophy on what happened whilst I had so much attention on my content. Hopefully tweeting that helped some people who were heading down the wrong path after making similar mistakes to me.

 

Thanks so much for sharing this. So many of us have made mistakes, but not many of us have it public for everyone to see as you describe. How you approached it and where you are today says so much about your mindset, character, and courage. Thanks again for your vulnerability in sharing.

 

As we close it out, I thought we could shift gears a little and do a little lightning round:

• Wine or Beer:
• Favorite city you've visited
• Beanie or Artchick
• Last movie you watched
• Fill in the blank: Taylor Swift is __.
• Texting or Talking
• Favorite food
• Ape or Punk

 

Ooh some tough ones;

 

• Wine or Beer: Wine with food, Beer for social drinking
• Favorite city you've visited: Damn so hard, favourite place is probably Koh Samui/ Ang Thong in Thailand
• Beanie or Artchick: Artchick (pure entertainment)
• Last movie you watched: Hmm I think was the new Top Gun, stopped watching halfway in though
• Fill in the blank: Taylor Swift is GOATED
• Texting or Talking: Texting
• Favorite food: A big juicy steak, something fatty like Ribeye, or sushi, I love sushi
• Ape or Punk: Punks

 

Maxnaut, thanks so much for taking the time to share. It's been awesome getting to connect and hear more about your journey as you continue to travel the globe. Any last thoughts you'd like to share?

 

 

Sure! Big respect for everyone still hustling in the bear market. Keep learning and enjoying the process. There are many more cooks to come!