‘People Want to Work Smart, Not Hard’: Introducing ‘New Money’

How do you make money? Most of us still have traditional jobs where we work 9-5 each day. But a growing legion of social media stars, athletes and celebrities are showing that another world is possible. They’re showing you can create wealth with crypto and live independently with it.

“New Money With Spencer and Solo” is a new show devoted to people who’ve taken big risks and got rewarded for it. People like Matt James of “The Bachelor.”

“New Money with Spencer & Solo” premieres Jan. 12 at 1 p.m. ET. Watch on CoinDesk.com, Spotify, YouTube and social media. Learn more.

“I’ve gotten to where I’ve gotten to by doing things that other people wouldn’t do,” he tells co-hosts Spencer Dinwiddie (the National Basketball Association star) and tech entrepreneur Solo Ceesay.

James has bought into crypto the same way he bought into “The Bachelor,” with passion and a sense of adventure.

The new 12-part series, which debuts today, features R&B singer Mario, Foye Oluokun (Atlanta Falcons), Renee Montgomery (Atlanta Dream) and influencers with a cumulative following of 30 million-plus. Each guest has fascinating stories to tell about how they made it to the top investing in non-fungible tokens (NFTs), gaming and monetizing their personal brands.

We caught up with Solo and Spencer to preview “New Money” and get a sense of what we can expect. This interview has been condensed and shortened for brevity.

The lines are open: “New Money” has its own phone number. Send a text to 712-NEW-MNY6 to subscribe to episode updates and send questions to guests and hosts.

CoinDesk: What do you mean by “new money”?

Ceesay: New Money generally refers to a new, cutting-edge way of thinking when it comes to generating personal income and, hopefully, alpha. On the show we primarily focus on how entertainers are monetizing themselves be it through social media, endorsement deals, or investing. We coined the phrase ‘new money’ as a shorthand means to refer to this new way of thinking and ultimately created the show to bring awareness about this way of thinking to both urban and discovery audiences.

Why do we need new money? Isn’t the old money sort of OK?

Dinwiddie: The world we live in today is built on the idea of convenience, and the greatest forms of innovation since the beginning of time have made all of our lives easier. That’s what new money is about. It’s about finding more efficient ways to generate asymmetric yield and beat inflation. In today’s day and age, people want to work smart, not hard. And the spirit of new money as a program is to expose viewers to things they haven’t seen before.

You’ve said you want to help bring crypto mainstream. What are the challenges and opportunities for doing that?

Ceesay: 100%. The biggest challenge when it comes to bringing crypto mainstream is the fact that most of the educational tools out there might as well be written in foreign languages. The most important thing in teaching anyone anything is that it needs to be digestible in a way that can be heard by the target audience. “New Money With Spencer and Solo” did just that by doing away with heavy technical jargon through light-hearted conversations between friends on a couch. How did you get into crypto? What’s your “down the rabbit hole” story?

We coined the phrase ‘new money’ as a shorthand means to refer to this new way of thinking and ultimately created the show to bring awareness about this way of thinking to both urban and discovery audiences.

Solo Ceesay, “New Money” co-host

Dinwiddie: I actually had a friend that worked on Wall Street [not Solo] that told me about it in 2014. At that point in time I was too afraid to really dive in so I missed out on the early positive price action. That same friend mentioned it to me again in 2017 and I took a chance. It was nothing more than [Las] Vegas gambling to start but eventually I found myself reading, listening to podcasts and researching both blockchain and crypto in my time away from the court.

Ceesay: A number of my friends had introduced crypto to me over the years but it wasn’t until Spencer brought it up to me again in 2018 or so that I really dove in. But my story was quite unique in that Spencer wanted to leverage both blockchain technology as well as my expertise in securitization to tokenize his NBA contract. After numerous conversations about the possibilities around tokenization, I quickly saw the merits of the technology and how it was undeniably the future.

Catch the commentary after the show every Wednesday after the episode. Solo Ceesay and Matt James will take your questions: Send a text to 712-NEW-MNY6 and watch them live on YouTube.

Who is your favorite guest from the first series and why?

Dinwiddie: This is tough! But I am going to have to go with my boy Chef Hoppie. He is unapologetically himself and really embodies the idea of “new money.”

Ceesay: I am going to take the conservative approach and say all the show guests on season one were amazing but I must say I am definitely looking forward to episode six that features award-winning R&B artist Mario – that conversation was a blast to record.