Mario Nawfal on the power and pressure of his massive social media platform

[00:00:08] Jonathan DeYoung: Welcome to Decentralize with Cointelegraph. My name is Jonathan DeYoung, and I'm your host for today's episode. Today, we are joined by Mario Nawfal, who is an omnipresent figure on Crypto Twitter, who hosts the biggest Web3-focused Space and some of the biggest Spaces just in general, regularly bringing in thousands and thousands of listeners. He's also the founder and CEO of International Blockchain Consulting, which helps Web3 projects grow through investment, incubation, acceleration and marketing. And I'm sure there are other things you do. So, did I miss anything there? 

[00:00:43] Mario Nawfal: No, I think that's a fair summary. I appreciate it.

[00:00:46] Jonathan DeYoung: All right. So before we kind of dive into some of the topics I've prepared here, I want to just get your quick temperature check today. The day we're recording is June 21st, 2024. Where is your head at today when it comes to crypto? When it comes to Web3? Are you bullish? Are you bearish? Is there a recent event that's on your mind? Kind of what's like floating through that brain?

[00:01:07] Mario Nawfal: It's hard to be bearish, like it's anyone that's been in the space for a while, it's very difficult to be bearish. I remember I was on a show with, the show that I do with Scott Melker and Ran, Crypto Banter. And I was chatting to Ran, and he told me about how he was criticizing how a lot of people on Crypto Twitter were very bearish. And I was surprised. I'm like, what do you mean bearish? Like we're sitting at whatever Bitcoin's price is now, not far off all-time highs, and the bull market started much earlier than expected. We've got the ETF approval, both Bitcoin and ETH. We've got U-turn, the complete flip by the Biden administration. We’ve got Trump doubling down on his crypto-positive stance. I just don't see any good argument other than the whole black swan event-type argument that indicates any sort of bearishness. So we're all in. We're investing in about…. Just funny enough, the reason I was late on this call is, on this interview, is I was chatting to my team, and I asked my team member, I was like, hey, how many projects do we speak to a week, and how many do we invest in? I asked because I'm about to do a tweet. You're going to see it come out right after the interview where it says, hey, be aware, whenever a project says they're working with us, it doesn't mean they're working with us unless we publicly post about it.

And just because there's a lot of people saying they work with us. So, and I wanted to mention some numbers in that tweet, like, hey, how many projects do we speak with? How many do we invest in? And she's like, Mario, we speak with about 50 to 70 projects a week and we invest in or work with, so one or the other, or mix or both, about three a day or so. If you do the math there, about 20 to 30. So three days, 3 to 4, I'd say. So 20 to 30 a week. Now that, these are numbers that give you a perfect indication of my position on Web3, which is extreme bullishness, very risk-oriented VC investment, even deep in the memecoin world and expanding our media footprint. So, obviously, you know about my Twitter account, but we have more than one Twitter account. We have assets on other platforms other than Twitter. Some of them are public. We've invested and acquired other assets and acquiring more now. I’m flying to LA tomorrow in 36 hours. I'm flying to LA to film season two of Killer Whales. So you know, the reality TV show, the Shark Tank show. So there's a lot that we do beyond just a bunch of Spaces and video shows and Twitter and bunch of marketing and incubation. We market. We incubate by doing that. Since 2017, we invest very heavily, and we're extremely aggressive and bullish.

[00:03:27] Jonathan DeYoung: You mentioned that your, part of why you're bullish is because of the Biden U-turn. Apparent U-turn. Trump being all in on crypto, seemingly. Obviously, we've got RFK, who is very bullish on crypto. Maybe he won't win, but he's bullish on crypto, perhaps helping to change the narrative among the candidates. You could make that argument. But come 2025, do you think that if we get another Biden presidency that he will continue this apparent U-turn and kind of be forced to be more pro-crypto?

[00:03:57] Mario Nawfal: It's tough to reverse a reverse. So he's taking such a stark reversal in his stances. The ETF has been approved. The SEC has dropped its lawsuit against Ethereum 2.0, as we saw yesterday. You know, I can't imagine how these steps could be reversed that they're going to continue for the next few months. So, I think by the end of the election season, it'd be too late to reverse that stance. So crypto will be big enough where we don't really care. I think institutions have come in, and the more institutional adoption we see and what we see happening through the ETFs. But we have to remember the ETF hasn't even listed yet. So we're going to have institutional adoption to Ethereum as well. So, the more institutional adoption there is, the harder it is for Gensler and his crew to crack down on the industry.

[00:04:40] Jonathan DeYoung: So you were just mentioning all the various things that you and your projects and companies do, not just the Spaces, also the incubation, the TV show, the investing, all the various things. So when you talk to projects, when you observe projects, protocols, whoever, what are some of the mistakes that you see people making coming into the Web3 space in terms of how they're trying to grow their brand? And what are some of the, without giving away all your secret sauce, some of the best practices that maybe people don't think about when it comes to growing within crypto?

[00:05:15] Mario Nawfal: Okay, so first, I wanted to answer your previous question because I don't think I did. You asked me why am I so bullish and is it because of the U-turn. The U-turn by the Biden administration, the ETH ETF, the Bitcoin ETF, the SEC taking a step back. This is not what makes the bullish. What makes me bullish is history repeating itself. This cycle is exactly like the previous cycles. The same thing, different year. So, as human nature, that's making me bullish and the cycle becoming self-fulfilling prophecy rather than all these different events, micro-events, so that answers your other question. And I kind of if you ask me later, cause a lot of people ask, what do I expect to see? Just look at the previous cycle. Probably expect the same thing to happen again. I just expect the uptick to be not as sharp or maybe even… Actually, I don't know about this one, but I think the correction won't be as sharp in my opinion, just because we've just got, a lot of the space has matured a lot. And I'm talking about Bitcoin, and we start looking at memecoins and NFTs, obviously having they're still dead. But when you talk about memecoins and VC-backed projects, I think those levels will be a lot sharper. And we're seeing that we saw VC-backed projects correct 60%, 70% already from earlier this year.

We're not even into a bear market yet. We're not even into the real bull market. Let's go to the next point. What are some mistakes that projects are doing? I'll say this mistake happens to everybody in this space, and that's getting too greedy. We're seeing people make a lot of money and start feeling invincible. Start feeling like anything they touch should become bull, will turn into gold, and then they also become too reliant on crypto. So we're obviously big in crypto, but we're also big on the political side, where we've raised capital at $100 million valuation. We're looking at going public next year, and we're doing a lot outside of crypto as well on the political side and on the AI side because we're hedging for when the market corrects very heavily. Now I’ve been in crypto since 2017. I know that bull market is where you make a lot of money, and bear markets is where you have to survive and build out your following. But the reason I am is where I am is because of what we did during the bear market. You know, you saw me really rise and get that popularity post-FTX, which is post the market crash. So I think a lot of people just depend too much on kind of the money they make on a regular basis during a bull market.

That kind of catches them by surprise when the music stops. So that's mistake number one. Mistake number two is, I feel they're all related, I just see too much greed in crypto. I think it's good if you're greedy to raise a lot of capital, great if you're greedy to make a lot of money, great. But as long as you hold that money. Let's talk about projects, for projects, now obviously doing it ethically, but let's talk about projects, for projects that are raising a lot of capital. Be very protective of that capital because a lot of them start spending it like crazy during a bull market. And they're obsessed too much about their token price. So token price is very important, unfortunately, because it's kind of an indicator of the project's health and adoption. But if you start relying on the token price through superficial ways to pump it, whether it's through doing a lot of marketing or through try keeping that hype going on with press release after press release — it's important. You don't want your token to crash. But it's not as important as, you know, kind of focusing on that organic demand. You want to get users to use your solution, and you want the users to be the main driver of demand for your token because that's what will sustain a bear market.

So I think projects obsessing too much about their token price. I think there's a healthy level of obsession. Adoption would play a role in that. Like, remember, I'm saying this as someone that, you know, we work with projects together on the media channels to talk about their project, to keep a healthy token price, keep a healthy chat. So, we play a part in maintaining a healthy token price because we understand its importance. But at the same time, I think project founders can become too dependent on it and make that their priority over the project they're building. So, I'd say greed and obsession over token price will be the main two drivers. And number three, I'd say complacency. Just understand anyone that's new to this site, people that will add to the industry that will enter the space in the next few months, just understand that times like these are very short-lived, and in a year’s time, the main feeling in the space will not be celebration and shopping by all the people that printed money in the bull market; there will be a sense of depression and survival that happens in every bear market.

[00:09:18] Jonathan DeYoung: Such is the cycle of crypto life. So, speaking of people being greedy, what are your thoughts on the celebrities who get involved into crypto during bear markets? Like now we're seeing, I think the clip that I saw that went viral was Iggy Azalea getting mad at Vitalik for stealing gas fees or whatever her conspiracy theory is. I don't know if you saw that clip or not. But it seems like every… The point being is that every bull cycle, there's a group of celebrities that come in, get involved, clearly don't really know anything about crypto or the space, possibly just want money, and then when the bear market happens, inevitably, either they regret their decision, they publicly denounce having ever done a commercial for FTX or whatever the case may be. So what do you think about all this? Or maybe another way to phrase the question would be if you took on a client who was a celebrity, who wanted to get involved in crypto, what advice would you give them?

[00:10:14] Mario Nawfal: All right, so that’s a good question, because obviously we're in this space. We work with a lot of memecoins as well. I think two things. First, to answer your question. Anyone in crypto’s not going to be surprised every cycle. In the first cycle, celebrities backing ICOs and the last cycle, celebrities launching NFT projects. In this cycle, celebrities are launching memecoins, so it's not a surprise. I think when the market is bullish, everyone wants to make money, and there's nothing wrong with that. Celebrities do concerts; celebrities sell merch; celebrities promote different products, different websites to make money. So there's nothing wrong with that. I think the only thing that I recommend every single player in this space is transparency. If you're working with a celebrity, launching their memecoin, say, hey, we're getting paid by the celebrity to launch the memecoin. If the goal is to build nothing and launch a memecoin and create hype, then hey, we're not building anything. Our goal is to get that memecoin to as big of a price as possible. You know, if we can get it to become a, you know, the next SHIB or BRETT or whatever you want to — everyone likes to say we're building the next BRETT, which is the biggest memecoin on Base.

And so if you're building the biggest BRETT or whatever, that's fine, like aim to achieve that. It's very difficult to get there. And there's a whole different discussion on how to build a long-lasting memecoin and where memecoin it grows from, like a… I don’t want to call it a pump and dump, but more of a pump-focused or price-focused token to more of a community-focused token. The maturity to get there. But also understand the risks involved and be very transparent to your audience. If you're just going to pop this, and you know it's only going to last a few months, and it's just a casino token. When you do a casino token make sure you speak to a lawyer, be transparent to the community. I think as long as transparency is there and you don't rug your damn project, I'm very chill. And I try not to be too judgmental. I would try to kind of lead by example. So whenever we work with a project, we're very always open, hey, we're invested, or hey, this is a sponsored tweet or a sponsored show or sponsored whatever, or we're marketing for them, or we're incubating them. So I think that level of transparency is really important.

[00:12:07] Jonathan DeYoung: Yeah. So, you may have just answered this question, but without naming specific names, there have definitely been influencers that have been exposed, perhaps, for not disclosing that they are invested in a token or they're paid by somebody to promote this specific token. So, do you think that anybody in the crypto space who's promoting a token or a project has an obligation to disclose any financial ties they have? Or is it on a case-by-case basis, or what are your thoughts on that?

[00:12:36] Mario Nawfal: No, I think from a legal perspective, you have to, from an ethical perspective, you have to, and I don't know why you wouldn't. Like it just never clicked in my mind. I think the benefit versus risk involved of not disclosing your’re being paid for a certain… Like you could just say, look, I've been paid to promote this project, but I still believe in them. Sure, I still accepted them because I believe in them, but I've been also compensated for it because I don't do my work for free. And we're very transparent. Again, I'm always going back to us because I try to lead by example, so we're very transparent about it. So if we work with a project, say, hey, they paid us, but we also accepted their money. We accepted to have them on the show. So we understand the responsibility. We believed that we'd be paid either in their token or in cash. And if anyone asks us, we're also open about how much, whether all the tokens are unlocked or whether they're locked over a certain period of time. All our investments or most of our investments. So, in the memecoin world, it's a different ball game because, obviously, most of them are not projects that won't be here in five years' time.

VC-backed projects, almost all of them, I'd say literally almost all of them are locked for a certain period of time. So, I just don't see the benefit of not disclosing that information. It doesn't harm you in any way. It only does the opposite. So I think you asked me earlier, what are the mistakes that some people are doing? One of them is just being very short-sighted. Again, I believe since 2017, most of the influencers in 2017, I don't know how long you've been in this space, Jonathan, most of the influencers in 2017 are nowhere to be seen right now. Most of the influencers of the last cycle are being ignored right now. No one trusts them anymore. It's going to happen again. So I think any influencer that just doesn't offer that transparency or just kind of focuses on short-term gain at the risk of reputation and goes too far down that path, and the cost will be their reputation at the next cycle.

[00:14:15] Jonathan DeYoung: Yeah, you’ve mentioned a few times, and obviously, I mentioned it in the intro, the Spaces that you host that some of these projects come on talk about their projects, and it helps get the word out, helps keep their token price afloat, whatever the case may be. So I just checked you have 1.5 million followers on Twitter. Your Spaces regularly get. I mean, we're talking live that can get thousands of listeners, which is pretty rare for a Space. I'm sure the the shelf life with them is quite long to where it could rack up to astronomically high numbers, people who listen to your Spaces even after the fact. Do you ever, like, sit and think about or reflect on just how large of a platform you built, like from when you were starting to where you are now? Have you had to think differently in terms of, like, the projects you work with or the type of content you post, or are you still just whatever you feel like posting, you'll post it?

[00:15:07] Mario Nawfal: Not at all. No. You know, we post over 120 tweets a day, and most of them are news-focused or political-based. I post maybe five a week personally, so we have a whole team that takes care of the tweeting that I train, you know? I monitor what they tweet. I give them feedback, and there's a person that heads it. Her name is Jess. She's a beast. I've trained her for a while, and she's become like an AI version of me. She knows my voice really well, and she knows what to tweet, what the stories are, the political side. We try to be as objective as possible. So, my opinion doesn't really matter as long as objectivity is there. Everything is sourced on the crypto side. We have a team that helps me post about any sponsors or any partners, any investments that we make, and we do those on a daily basis. Now, to answer your question, though, do I ever sit back and reflect? Yes. And it's even outside of crypto. Like I'll give you two examples. We had a project yesterday come on the show as a last-minute project. I wasn't on that. I jumped on a bit because one of the hosts were having technical issues, and I jumped off. So I don't personally host 90% of our shows, 90%, 95%. I'm not personally there, but I jumped on it. And then the project gets rugged by their KOLs. So we got paid in tokens and we didn't sell, so we lost. We didn't make any money either, but they got rugged live on the Space and then the Space kind of turned into an investigation.

We had Bubblemaps there. We had a Uniswap, then we had a few other snipers and onchain analysts that also do an investigation live on the Space, and the project stays with them. Now they're trying to revive the project. Happens a lot in the memecoin world. So yesterday and the day before, I'm giving you two examples in crypto. The day before, there was the Martin Shkreli Space. I did it last minute. There was a token called DJT, only found out about a few hours ago. I’m not too deep in the memecoin world. So, we did a Space that was not sponsored. It was news-focused because it's gaining a lot of traction. And then it ended up being a 7.5-hour investigation. And what as I was talking about the token, I was getting information, was Baron Trump involved or not. So I get a call; Martin Shkreli tells me, hey Mario, you can go into my Instagram, he sends me the password, I decide not to. You can go to my Instagram and look at the DMs I had with Barron Trump, the son of Donald Trump, President Trump, and I almost went in there then I changed my mind. But I didn't know that till afterward, The team told me on the Space that the token popped by like 100%. Just because everyone's like, Mario's gonna verify that Trump is involved, and the token [inaudable] millions invested. And then afterward, I get a call like three hours in.

By then, I was looking at the chart, and I get a call by someone saying, um, hey, Mario, like we spoke to the Trump family, and they're denying any sort of involvement. And I say that on the Space without disclosing identities and all that, the token drops by whatever percentage points. Again, I have no financial incentive in this, but it's it's like a reminder. It's not the first time it happens. It's a reminder of the impact these Spaces have and your responsibility when you have a big audience. What if I share a piece of information that turns out to be untrue that leads to the token price dropping significantly or even rising significantly based on false information? I'm responsible for it. Two risks. Number one is of impact of the price of a token and investors with false information. They trusted me. And number two is obviously there's all the allegations of hey, Mario is part of it, he invested in it, all that which I have to always deal with whenever we do a Space. So I'm always thinking of this, always concerns me. But I’ll take it a step further. Like this is just crypto, and I'll give you many other examples of projects that we sponsored or not sponsored that we brought on the show, SatoshiVM being another one. They come on, the show was not sponsored. It was based on the news, a lot of FUD around them. That was in the early days of the ICO hype earlier this year was what triggered the idea or idea or hype this year.

And they came on the Space, and they were being questioned by Jago about the technology. They didn't do a good job in responding. I don't know what happened to the project now, but they didn't do a good job in their response. Their token dropped live on the Space, I was watching the chart, 70%, 75% during the Space because they were doing a bad job explaining their technology. But this is not what worries me the most. Like this is in crypto world. I deal with it. It is what it is. It impacts, it's important to me because the business, most of our business is crypto followed by AI. So, I have to always be careful and maintain credibility and reputation. What I sit back and kind of look at what we've built and the risks involved, is when, after I interviewed President or even before I interviewed President Bolsonaro of Brazil. Brazil launches an investigation into Elon. You probably know the back and forth between Elon and Brazil for censorship. And they include me in the investigation because I had some of the people that Elon did not accept, that were banned. I platformed them, I brought them on to my Space. And I've also been very critical of Brazil, along with Elon and Elon retweeting my stuff. They kind of dragged me into it and all. When I did the interview with Imran Khan of Pakistan, Prime Minister Imran Khan, there might not be anyone in the US.

For anyone in Pakistan, which is one of the biggest countries in the world, one of the biggest militaries in the world, that's massive news. He was arrested. He was in jail a few weeks later, and right after I tweeted Imran Khan, we were covering the mutiny, the Russian mutiny by Wagner. The whole world was listening. We were the main source of information globally. Happened with the Gaza war. But during the mutiny, everybody, every journalist, every single person in the world, was listening to our Space to try to find out what happens next. So if I share anything wrong, people in Russia, people in Ukraine, or when it comes to the war in Gaza, I get people from Israel or from Palestine saying, Mario, we've been listening to your Space — mainly in Israel, because in Gaza they didn't have internet. But in Israel or the West Bank, that's it. Mario, I’m in Israel, I would be listening to your Space to know when to go to our bunkers. We’re expecting an attack. So when these things happen, I sit back and be like, wow. We're talking to one of the most powerful leaders in the world right now to come on the show. I won’t say who their name is. One of the top five most powerful leaders to come on the show. Been in discussions for a few weeks. If that happens, them and one other world leaders. So, tune in. That Spaces, like this will have an impact on global policy, that will be kind of the pinnacle. If I achieve that, that's very stressful.

It's very, very difficult to have that sort of responsibility. And that's really not what we expected to be. Even, I've been in politics. I've been passionate about politics for all my life. Since I was a kid. I never thought I'd have a platform that would be listened to by people from Brazil. Brazil is one of the three countries that listen to me the most, that follow my tweets the most, because I covered the censorship there. Pakistan. Because I covered the whole Imran Khan and their elections, um, India, because I've been critical of a few things that India and obviously Ukraine war, Gaza war, etc. So it's not only the U.S., obviously, it's not only crypto, but it's not only the US. So it is a very, um, stressful position to be in. And then you add on to it, you know, I got the hit pieces, my round of hit pieces, about exactly a year ago. It was June last year that I got my first hit piece by NBC. So I kind of experienced, when you blow up, you have like one period of very heavy attacks, especially if you're anti-media. I'm very anti-mainstream media. So I had a few anti-Elon journalists kind of go after me with a few hit pieces. So that kind of even adds to the stress as well. So yeah, it's a life I didn't sign up to. I'm not saying I'm not enjoying it. The responsibility is pretty overwhelming, but it's one that is unexpected. That goes well beyond crypto.

[00:21:50] Jonathan DeYoung: I want to come back to some of the things you said, but first, I want to ask you, I follow a lot of content podcasts, YouTubers, etc., that talk about the process of creating content, growing a channel. And one of the things that people always talk about is when you're kind of a one-man show at the beginning, you're in control of everything. It's the difficulty of letting go of some of the creative decisions, letting go of being the one to post, to write the tweet, whatever. So, was that ever difficult for you in growing your platform to kind of have to pass off your baby to other people?

[00:22:26] Mario Nawfal: No. So I've been in business for more than ten years now, about 12 years, and I'm pretty good at many things. But I've got a very small number of strengths. One of the main ones is delegating. So, I'm very comfortable delegating. So, for example, I use the example of Jess being my voice through the tweets, even opinion pieces she writes up. She understands my voice. She has me check them. Now on Spaces, moderators that I've trained, etc. So, we have multiple hosts now. They use my account to host the, my account, one of the other accounts, but no, it hasn't been too difficult for me. Actually, it didn't take me too long, but it was difficult for sure. Like in the early days of giving someone else the ability to tweet on my behalf was pretty scary. But now we have a team of about over 15 people, 10 to 15, I'd say that just take care of tweets. That's not all the shows, we do about what, five, six, seven shows a day just on Twitter, and we have that. We help out Scott Melker, we're partners with Scott Melker on The Wolf of Wall Street. We have people helping on that front, launching new shows. We have the other Twitter account. We have the JV with Ran and Scott. So, just on the content creation side, we’ve become more of a media company. We started off as a consulting firm in 2017, became a marketing firm in the last cycle, and now became more of a media company. And throughout last cycle and this cycle also heavy investors. We invest in 2 to 3 projects a day, but kind of moving away. So back to your question, I don't want to digress. It was difficult, but it didn't take me too long. It's necessary. Like if I want to keep growing, I have to keep delegating. And because I have obviously a very ambitious goal.

[00:23:50] Jonathan DeYoung: So I was prepping for this interview. I was talking to a coworker, and it kind of dawned on me that I feel like the Twitter Space, especially the way that you do it, where you will have a moderator sometimes yourself for the bigger events, and you'll bring on these expert guests to talk about whatever, is kind of like the 2024 version of the cable news show. Like cable news is kind of dying out, as I think we probably both would agree. And the fact that you can get on the Prime Minister of Pakistan onto a Twitter Space would have been unheard of ten years ago. But today is like awesome. But it's also not that surprising at the same time. So would you agree with my assessment that the social media Twitter Spaces, podcasts, YouTube shows, etc., are kind of the new version of maybe, perhaps, the cable news talk show? And then what do you think the implications are of that if you agree?

[00:24:46] Mario Nawfal: Yeah. So I've got different assessment to this. So, the first one is Twitter Spaces or Twitter, X, YouTube, etc. They're just mediums to be able to communicate to your audience, and those will continue evolving. I think what really changed is trust. I was talking to an executive at one of the big media companies, now it’s been a couple of months ago. You know, we talked about talking about our company and what we do, and he's asking me about how mainstream media — I'm using that term very loosely — could rebuild the trust they've lost. And I said to him, you know, we're in crypto. For me, crypto is probably the most valuable asset right now, asset class. The second one is trust. I think especially with AI now, you know, advancing as fast as it is, platforms like Cointelegraph, you guys and others as well. At Cointelegraph and crypto, for example, I've seen you guys grow from the early days. You’re from Cointelegraph, correct, Jon? So, you understand the importance of that asset of the trust of your audience. And I saw the guys the way you handled the false ETF news that came in. And that's one thing.

[00:25:52] Jonathan DeYoung: No comment.

[00:25:53] Mario Nawfal: Yeah. But it is very difficult. I've been there; I've been there like it was; it was funny enough I was part of that whole news. I don't know if you know that your editor-in-chief was interviewing me that day. Yeah. I didn't even know about it. I woke up, went to do a panel for a friend. Gaurav, as a favor. I didn't know anything about the ETF news. The tweet. I just woke up, and I go to the panel, and she started speaking like, what is she speaking about? What happened? And then I realized that the whole ETF story and what Cointelegraph had to deal with. But you saw that one piece of information had such an impact on it. Just because people are very wary right now, now, I don't think it will impact your business long term. I think you probably know that by now. People understand that mistakes happen. I've been through that as well. It's very difficult to build it, but it's very easy to destroy. And I think what we're seeing right now is that erosion of trust from media companies, from mainstream media, that trust is looking for people and places to go. And I'm trying to be one of those voices. So, I try whenever I cover the Gaza war; it's part of my personality as well.

I try to have both sides. We put out stories by The Jerusalem Post. We put our stories by Palestine three, four, two, six, five, whatever it's called, but I forgot the other's names or Al-Manar. Al-Manar is supported by Hezbollah. The Palestine News, whatever it's called, is also supported by Hamas. The Jerusalem Post, obviously a Hebrew [inaudible]. So we use all these different sources. Israelis will not be happy when we use the Palestinian sources. Palestinians and other Pro-Palestinians will not be happy when we use the IDF as a source. And that applies to everything. So the reason I do this is, I think as far as both sides hate me, does not hate me, but are not completely pleased with the content we put. But they still listen to us. If one side is really happy with that content, one side is really annoyed. It means we're doing something wrong. Both sides should be somewhere in the middle, like I don't like this, why do you use that source? Okay, at least you use one of my sources, the ones I like: confirmation bias. So, I obsess over being as objective as possible and making sure we don't disseminate false information. That's why if you look at our tweets, every single tweet has a source.

I'm not going to go and be the arbiter of truth. I'll report it if I think it's true or not. It doesn't matter. I'm there to report what others on the ground are seeing or what they claim to see, and then you guys can believe whatever you like. So, I think the platforms matter less. Trust, where trust is heading matters more. And again, this is something that you guys understand really well. And last thing I'd say is I think Spaces is very underrated and not just for crypto. Crypto Twitter is also using it, like they see the value of Spaces. Most of our Spaces are crypto-focused, and the biggest Spaces are crypto-focused, ours and others. But the biggest value of Spaces is the way it's structured. So when we do a Space on a story, like when we did the coverage of the Silicon Valley bank collapse, Bill Ackman requested to speak. We didn't invite him. He just came on. He follows me, and he came, requested to speak, and we had a chat with him. Mark Cuban requested. He spoke and came up. Jason Calacanis came up, and others. Elon Musk: the first time Elon came in, I didn't invite him.

The second time I didn't invite him on. Then afterward, I started inviting him to Spaces I thought he'd find valuable. But out of the whatever six seven times he's been on the show, he just jumped on. Whenever he finds a topic interesting, and that applies to a lot of other people. So the fascinating thing about Spaces is it's like cable news. But imagine every listener could actually press a button on their TV and request to speak, and you'll see all their bio, all their details. As a producer, you'll vet everyone that's speaking or DMing you to speak and just invite, invite and the panel organically builds, and I've seen that with breaking news spaces. These are the spaces I enjoy hosting. The ones like the FTX one, like the Silicon Valley Bank, like the Gaza War, like the Wagner mutiny, or any other, Chinese balloon, the submersible, the submarine that got stuck, that was going to see the Titanic. So these are the stories that are based on breaking news that I enjoy the most because the audience becomes the source of news to an extent, because a lot of people on the ground sending us information and become the anchors that you see on cable news. I'm just a facilitator.

[00:29:53] Jonathan DeYoung: Yeah. It's just interesting how you're talking about trust, how it seems like nobody is happy with the media right now. And it's been especially exposed with the Israel-Gaza war, where even like the left, who typically loves The New York Times, hates The New York Times now because they think that their reporting on the war is biased. So it's like nobody's happy, and everyone's looking for alternative media sources. And I've heard theories that that's why the U.S. wants to ban TikTok is because it is this democratic, well, it's a seemingly democratic platform where anybody can post whatever from anywhere in the world and get seen by anybody. And the powers that be see that as a bit of a bit of a threat. 

[00:30:35] Mario Nawfal: Yeah. I think the biggest threats when it comes to censorship are X and Rumble. And I think we're seeing that with the crackdown and the attacks that Elon has been facing now, Elon on a much bigger scale because Rumble is still small, but Rumble has been shut down in a few countries because, including France, because they've rejected some requests to censor. Elon has been, you know, almost shut down. And when I did my space in Brazil, our space was blocked in Brazil. Even the former president Bolsonaro, who was the president prior to the current president, and he couldn't join the space because his internet was being blocked. That's the level of censorship that we see. He had to use Starlink to access our space. Yes. Use Elon’s Starlink to access the space on Elon's Twitter platform. Imagine that. How much the Brazilian government hates Elon when they see their opponent, their main opponent, leverage Elon's satellites and social media platform. So yeah, Elon's being heavily targeted. Perfect indicator of the powers that be just want to have their finger on the pulse. And you know, there's an argument to be made against misinformation and disinformation.

I think there needs to be a solution. And Elon came up with that solution. It's a decentralized, democratized solution that's Community Notes, where the readers manage to vet different tweets. And who copied Community Notes now? The King of Censorship, YouTube. They just copied community notes a few days ago last week. And they've done this, you know, Instagram copied the Elon's aspects of Elon's verification badge. And, you know, I had Marc Andreessen on the show. It's one of the highlights of the show when I interviewed him with Elon, and he said that one of the... he's on the board of X, and he's on the board of Meta, and he said that Meta is watching. He couldn't give too much information, but they're watching Elon's experiment with X, and they've copied certain aspects of it. And we're going to see them copy more things. So yeah, you know, Elon is a threat to that censorship and that centralization of power that we're seeing, and that that's going to become even a bigger problem now with AI and slowly taking over the world.

[00:32:28] Jonathan DeYoung: So we've got a few minutes left here. So, I want to switch topics just a little bit here. So you are a dancer, bachata, correct?

[00:32:36] Mario Nawfal: Correct. Yeah.

[00:32:36] Jonathan DeYoung: Okay. So this is obviously public. I know you have dedicated pages specifically for your dancing. You can look you up on YouTube and see you dancing. That said, I feel like I don't hear it talked about too often in sort of the crypto space that we both intersect in. So I'm curious if there's anything, any lessons that you've learned from dancing that you've been able to take into your business or into crypto or marketing, etc., things that you learned from dancing.

[00:33:07] Mario Nawfal: Business? Yeah, it's not much I learned from dancing that can help with marketing, but I can tell you that at two things that apply from dancing to business, there's an overlap. So the first one is in 2018, IBC got scammed, my company got scammed, almost went to zero. It was a really tough year. In that same year, I was facing a personal crisis, and in that same year, in that same two three-month period, I was diagnosed with a tumor, a pituitary adenoma or something. It's fine now, but at the time, I didn't know it was bleeding, and I had to go. They were recommending surgery, and my company, my empire was kind of crumbling. And I have another company. I've had it for 12 years. It was struggling as well. They also got screwed by one of our suppliers. It's a health and wellness brand around the world. It does really well. That's what made me my money before crypto. It still exists today. I'm not involved in it, but I own the company 100%, and that was struggling as well. So it was like my business life was just taking a massive hit and crypto’s midst of a bear market, and a more brutal bear market than what we saw in the last one because many people didn't know if we're going to come back to a new bull market. Now, we know that we're all stuck and everyone's expecting it.

But back then, people thought was the end of the crypto bull market, end of crypto to an extent, and IBC was obviously struggling. I was struggling on a personal level. My exit from all this was dancing. So my answer is, especially if you're in crypto, have an exit. Because when a bear market hits or when you make that one wrong trade, if the cost is difficult to handle, it's very, very, very tough. So, like the first lesson, like having an exit away from that crypto life. And the second thing I learned is that I was an artist. So I would go to events, I would go to festivals, and I kind of enjoyed that, that life of, you know, people coming to take a photo to dance with me or to get an autograph, which was nice so that I got a taste of it, which is kind of a lot of attention, but a destruction of privacy and very small security risk. So kind of prepped me for going through now, obviously, because that was on a much bigger scale.

So, like countries I can't go to for security purposes, security reasons, you know, I have security with me at all times, even in, I live in Dubai. And recently I started getting security in Dubai as well. You know, when you go down that political path and mix it with crypto, now everyone likes to target people with crypto that have money because, you know, they have their private key. They want to... I don't have any of my private keys. So anyone kidnaps me, they can't take shit. I’ve already put precautions in place for the company to be safe, but people don't know that. So, especially as I went deeper in the political world, I'm kind of getting a, you know, that kind of whatever. I had been dancing on a much bigger scale, so it kind of prepped me for what I'm going through from a security perspective but from an attention perspective. And I'm a very, very private person. So that's why you don't see me a lot of events. I don't go out much, and I have my little life and I'm always just online, but very rarely do I go to an event. And again, yeah, there's a lot of countries I would love to visit that I cannot visit anymore.

[00:35:47] Jonathan DeYoung: So which is the bigger high? Like pulling off an incredible dance routine in front of all the people in the dance community that love and care about you, or pulling off an incredible space with some of the biggest people in the world?

[00:36:04] Mario Nawfal: It's a good question. That's a tough one. Okay, I'd go with none of the two. I'd go with a Space on a major breaking news story like the mutiny or the war. Those ones exhaust me, and they can be exhausting because I just can't delegate it to someone else. Like I remember for the mutiny, I stayed up almost 24 hours. I stayed up 20 hours. Even more. More than 24 hours because I had Imran Khan interviewed beforehand. And before Imran Khan, I had the submersible, the submarine [inaudible]. But those give me a massive high. But it's not as enjoyable as the dancing because it's just very stressful. And I know every time I do a big Space, it's going to be a... on the based on breaking news, there's going to be a lot of attention, good and bad because I've covered something very sensitive. So, there's always going to be people unhappy in the coverage. Okay. You gave, you were two pro-Ukrainian or too pro-Russian or whatever. So I have to always deal with that. So I'd say if it’s a positive high, it would be the dancing. If it's a positive and negative high, it’d definitely be the breaking news spaces.

[00:37:00] Jonathan DeYoung: Yeah, I mean, some of the biggest positive highs end up resulting in the biggest, the worst negative crashes afterward. So I can totally understand that.

[00:37:09] Mario Nawfal: Tell me about it.

[00:37:09] Jonathan DeYoung: I guess sticking on the dancing. There's an expression in crypto. I'm sure you've heard Bitcoin fixes this, blockchain fixes everything, etc., this idea that like for every problem out there, there's a solution in blockchain. Obviously, I think most people say this a bit facetiously. Some people, I think, seriously believe it, but is there anything in the dancing world that you think blockchain or crypto could help improve in some way?

[00:37:37] Mario Nawfal: No. Leave dancing alone. Leave us alone. Don't tokenize anything. Don't decentralize anything. And let us just dance in peace. Dancing is meant to be my exit from the whole decentralization, political world. I don't want to someone to come and pitch me some new platform where you tokenize dancing. You can tip dancers or something. Leave us out of it. So I hope that that never happens.

[00:37:59] Jonathan DeYoung: Has that happened? I mean, is there any crossover between the two worlds where you may have somebody who knows you from your social media personality come and try to pitch you something at a dancing event?

[00:38:09] Mario Nawfal: Yeah. Oh, well, all the time. All the time. I stopped going to dancing festivals. I used to go to them all. Every, you know, twice a month. Three times a month. I haven't gone to a dancing festival in a year or a year and a bit, mainly for security purposes. But yeah, like, I go sometimes randomly to dancing parties just to kind of get it out of my system and, you know, no promotion, nothing. Just randomly rock up, have a bit of fun. But yeah, it happens all the time. Like I'm sitting there wanting to chill, and I get someone saying, yeah, I love your Spaces, and start wanting to pitch me an idea, which sucks. But you know, I'm sure people are dealing with bigger problems. I've got bigger problems than that. It's not something I'm going to complain about.

[00:38:43] Jonathan DeYoung: Yeah, yeah, maybe you got to incorporate it into your dancing personality. Like, wear a big Bitcoin outfit with the B on it or something like that.

[00:38:51] Mario Nawfal: Oh f*ck that, no way. There's no way. I did a dancing again for a favor. For again Gaurav, the same friend. I danced in one of the crypto events, I forgot what it's called. It was a big one here in Dubai. It was a year ago now, probably. So I did a panel or keynote, I can't remember. And then, right after I did a surprise dance, I put the music. I did a couple of dances with my dancing partner at the time, so that's probably the closest the two overlap, but that's probably it.

[00:39:17] Jonathan DeYoung: Well, Mario, thank you so much for joining me. Anything you want to plug real quick here at the end? Social media, website, anything like that?

[00:39:24] Mario Nawfal: No, just a massive shout-out to Cointelegraph. Like I've been following you guys since 2017. I love what you guys do. You guys are one of the credible sources in crypto. I think the reputation that you built is extremely valuable, and I urge you, I don't think you need me to urge you, but kind of applaud you for kind of sticking to that and making sure that you don't risk losing that for some quick bucks. And in return, you've built one of the biggest media empires in crypto. So, congratulations to you guys. And that's why I did this interview.

[00:39:47] Jonathan DeYoung: Thank you. I’ll pass it up the food chain. You've been listening to Decentralize with Cointelegraph, and I've been your host for today's episode, Jonathan DeYoung. If you enjoyed this conversation, we'd love it if you give us a five-star rating and leave us a review. 

Follow Cointelegraph on X at @Cointelegraph to stay up to date and make sure you never miss the latest podcast release. You can also follow me at @maddopemadic. That's M-A-D-D-O-P-E-M-A-D-I-C. And if you liked my voice, you can hear more of me by following The Agenda podcast on your favorite streaming platforms or at Cointelegraph.com slash podcasts, where you can also check out the entire lineup of Cointelegraph's exciting podcast productions.

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