JONATHAN LITTLE

“If you truly love a piece, it’s probably worth overpaying 20 or 30% more than you think it is worth today.”

I am a 38-year-old professional poker player. I’ve played poker since I was 18 and now own one of the largest poker training sites, PokerCoaching.com. I also own a poker publishing company D&B Poker that publishes many of the best books in the space. I have a decently large following of people who enjoy my training site, youtube channel, and books, which made me consider ways to logically integrate NFTs as a way to increase engagement and provide value to my fans.

In March 2021 I actively started trading in NFTs, buying my first two CryptoPunks. Shortly after that, I got some Bored Apes, and then many other NFTs. Entering the NFT space was smooth because the NFT space and the poker space are relatively similar. People are trying to make sound financial decisions for the most part, even though they don’t necessarily always make the best decisions in the heat of the moment.

I recently created a project called Deck of Degeneracy. There are 50 decks of 54 playing cards. Every two or three days, I choose a card randomly from a physical deck in a video. If you have one of the copies of the chosen card, you win whatever the prize is. An example of a prize would be 1% of my poker tournament winnings next time I play, so if I cash in that tournament for $100,000, the 54 holders of the winning card will each be airdropped $1,000 in eth, which has happened numerous times so far. We also have the 230-piece Degeneracy Art Collection comprised of editions by many top artists and emerging artists in the NFT space, many of which have become quite valuable. In 2022, we gave back more than $1,000,000 in various forms of utility to holders.

I’m not an artist at all, but I appreciate art very much. I realize the immense talent it takes to make good art and I have been fortunate to have invested in many artists that have become prominent artists in the NFT space. I have learned that you may have to overpay if you especially want to collect a specific piece of art. If you truly love a piece, it’s probably worth overpaying 20 or 30% more than you think it is worth today. I have learned from my work in the poker training space that if you add a lot of value, you will be rewarded on the back end infinitely, and now, I am working hard to add a lot of value to the NFT space.

Jonathan Little lives in Manhattan, New York, and is a professional poker player and owner of @pokercoaching_. He is the ‘Boss’ at @ DegeneracyNFT.