James Putra Of TradeStation Crypto: 5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly Successful Career In The NFT Industry
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Get started immediately — Not this week or tomorrow. Start right now. There’s no better time to get started than now. If you want to be successful, then you need to put in the work. I can guarantee you that there’s someone out there putting in the effort to get better right now. Each second you delay getting started is a second that someone else has been using to gain an advantage and grow.
Many have observed that we are at the cusp of an NFT boom. The thing is, it’s so cutting edge, that many people don’t know what it is. What exactly is an NFT and how can one create a lucrative career out of selling them? To address this, as a part of our interview series called “5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly Successful Career In The NFT Industry”, we had the pleasure of interviewing James Putra.
James Putra is a cryptocurrency specialist and blockchain thought leader focused on helping people find innovative ways to participate in this space. James is actively involved in cryptocurrency investing as well as an industry advocate for the launch of blockchain products. At TradeStation Crypto, Inc., James serves as the Vice President of Product Strategy and leads many strategic projects for the firm. James has over 15 years of experience in fintech and innovation through several startups and corporate roles. He’s focused on solving challenging problems wrapped in extreme uncertainty.
James frequently speaks at crypto conferences, sharing his expertise in the space including Bitcoin Miami 2021, LA Blockchain Summit, The Trading Show Chicago, and Benzinga Crypto Festival. In November, he was also named “Most Impactful Fintech Executive” at the 2021 Benzinga Global Fintech Awards.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you grew up?
I’m an 80’s kid that grew up with a Discman, neon head to toe, endless gaming on Nintendo, and even sported a mullet at one point. I’m originally from England, though I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago.
My family is from all over the world, and I was super lucky as a kid to have four sets of grandparents to learn from. I could go into my family tree, but it would take a while as I have two brothers, one sister, two dads, and an awesome extended family loaded with stepparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles that spread across the US, UK, and Malaysia. I was and still am very lucky to be surrounded by such a great family.
I loved my childhood; we used to play outside for hours and only came home when someone’s mother yelled for us. I grew up with a Jim, Jimmy, Jimbo, and I was James. The only way our mothers could get us home was to call one of our names.
Growing up, I was always into business. The first one I can remember was an air guitar band that we created and used to hold concerts in our basement. We would buy a bunch of candy, round up all the kids in the neighborhood for the show, sell them candy before the show and rock out to Def Leopard or some other big hair rock band.
I’ve probably worked every cool job that you could imagine like summer lifeguard, video store rental clerk, bartender, and many more. I’ve always been drawn to opportunities that connect some form of fun and learning with getting paid.
One thing’s for sure, I outgrew my small suburban city and right after high school moved to Chicago for school. During my first year, we took a trip to Florida for spring break and got to experience what Miami had to offer. I was sold, finished up the semester, and transferred down to south Florida for school. It was shocking at first that you had to do work, but the reality of living and working in a tropical paradise is hard to beat.
My father worked in Tech, and I was always surrounded by computers growing up. They just fascinated me, and I was really into writing code and solving problems. In University, I was studying to be a computer engineer before switching to the business program. I started to notice that there was a clear divide between people that understood computers and those that didn’t. Often, these two groups were unwilling or unable to communicate effectively with each other. There was a clear need for someone that could work between these two groups by speaking business solutions to business folks and speaking technical solutions with technical folks. As a highly social person myself, this was a natural fit for me.
After school, I did what you are expected to do, and I took a job working for a tech company. The only downside is it was with a spam mail company. It was a great learning experience, but I only lasted about 3 months with the firm before leaving for another opportunity. After that, I joined a team of 3 people and built a fintech company that helped people trade like professionals by simply following algorithmic trading signals. We were building fintech before it was a common word. We were able to exit this startup after about four years of building the company. It was amazing to catch lightning in a bottle right out of school, but it also showed me how hard it is to build a successful company.
Since then, I’ve built a career by launching new business lines in the financial services industry. At E*Trade we built the FX Trading business, then at TradeStation, we built the Japanese Equity Trading business, then I launched the innovation lab, and later I launched the end-to-end crypto business. Launching a new business is very hard work. I often think I must not be smart enough to say no to crazy ideas. But then again, I love the thrill of jumping into an uncertain path and solving complex problems to build something amazing.
Along this amazing journey, I was bitten by the crypto bug and ran down the rabbit hole of learning. I have the perfect seat at the intersection of crypto finance and traditional finance in this quickly growing space. I feel very fortunate to be working in a space that I love and having the opportunity daily to tackle some of the most interesting problems.
I was originally exposed to Bitcoin in January 2014 at the MIT media lab. It took a solid year for me to wrap my head around the space enough to put some risk on the table and start trading. In my style of learning, I need to jump into the deep end and start swimming. So I started trading and built a bitcoin mining operation to learn while under fire. Just getting started with real risk was the best and fastest way to develop my knowledge base.
Having been in the space since 2015, I’ve been able to see firsthand several bull markets and crypto winters. This last bull cycle was very exciting as we got to see the proliferation of use cases Defi, NFTs, and Web3. While it’s always sad to see the end of a bull market, it’s also a bit refreshing, as the crypto winters are when we can get the real work done.
Being based in Miami for years, it’s been incredible to watch this tropical paradise become a fintech and cryptocurrency hub. I’ve also had the opportunity to give back to this community that I love. Over the summer, I was part of launching the Miami Bull, which is a monument for the Miami community that symbolizes wealth, and prosperity, and encapsulates all of the amazing talent and innovation locally. In addition, I’ve joined Miami Dade College’s Student-Led Investment Fund’s advisory board to help provide crypto expertise to the students.
I’ve had an incredible journey, made so many wonderful relationships, and have been able to make a small impact on those around me. While today I have a lot more wisdom, I’m still truly that 80s kid decked out in neon with a mullet at heart and willing to go on just about any crazy adventure.
Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
Raoul Pal from Realvision has produced some amazing content around how crypto and Web3 fit into the macro trends. He’s simply an amazing thought leader and it’s been incredible to witness a tradfi expert publicly learn about this new industry. On top of this, translate the complexities into normal investing themes and concepts. I’ve been fortunate to have several conversations with Raoul and am always blown away by how in-depth he’s thought about these concepts. His work is woven into my personal and professional views on the world.
Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in this new industry? We’d love to hear it.
When I was 16 years old, my stepdad was trying to convince me to trade stocks. If dad thought it was cool, then there’s no way it was cool to a teenager. Turns out he was right. I took a trade in BestBuy and was hooked!
Similarly in crypto, I resisted for two years until I relented and took a trade-in ETH. Again, I was hooked. Having been an avid FX trader, this allowed me to deploy my trading skills in a new market. I started a crypto mining company with a college friend, and started trading, learning, and talking to anyone who would listen about bitcoin.
I bugged our CEO so much, that he let my team start to develop a crypto business at TradeStation.
Before diving into NFTs and Web3, I listened to several close friends tell me why they are going to be amazing. I owe it to Gianni Dalerta who planted the seed in my mind, and then later introduced me to the JPEG Morgan group where I saw the power of where this space can go. Never before could brands have such a connection to their customers as they can with NFTs. It also flips the relationship between customer and brand on its head. Usually, a brand must sell something to a customer. Sure, the customer may enjoy it, but that’s about where it ends until the customer buys something else. With NFTs, brands are incentivized to continue to bring value to the customers that own the brands’ NFTs. This helps to increase the value of the NFT by making the customer feel much more closely connected to the brand through various airdrops, events, special insider access, and more.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this fascinating career?
The launch of the Miami Bull is the first time I’ve ever gone viral. Our team was looking to do something meaningful as a give back to the Miami community where TradeStation was founded. Miami hit its growth stride in 2020 when Mayor Francis Suarez sent his infamous tweet “how can I help.” This became a viral moment for Miami and the mayor that helped seed an influx of FinTech and crypto companies. Seemingly overnight, we became an important city for crypto in the US and arguably the world.
While the tweet was the catalyst, it had been born over many years from the efforts of the community, the local government, the businesses, and the universities all working to lay the foundation for Miami to become a global fintech hub. People are drawn to the beaches and weather but are captured by the Miami magic making it difficult to leave. Anyone who visits quickly sees our magic is not about sorcery, it’s our attitudes and the relentless hustle that make us great.
This is exactly the essence that we wanted to honor with our project to give back to Miami. After looking around, it became clear that Miami didn’t have its monument to cement its place on the global crypto stage. We commissioned a giant robotic bull with laser eyes that represented the excitement and the future of finance right in the heart of Miami.
The Miami Bull is a cool idea, but a massive undertaking to pull off. Not to mention that we wanted to honor the city and all the hard work from its community. The pressure was on, and it took us about seven months to pull it together. To design this concept, the team engaged Furio Tedeschi, the designer for Transformers: The Last Knight, and many other amazing works. His team was able to understand the vision and delivered something incredible. Our team worked with many incredible teams including the City of Miami’s Mayor’s Office and Miami Dade Community College to ensure that the Miami Bull would have a home in the city.
All of the hard work paid off, the Miami Bull was unveiled by Mayor Francis Suarez, me, and our CEO John Bartleman at Bitcoin 2022 and it was an instant viral moment. There’s a photo of the three of us capturing this moment that exploded around the world. The bull was covered by over 180 major media outlets and had over six billion impressions in the first 48 hours. The world was witness to Miami marking its place in the future of finance with the Miami Bull.
The unveiling event was exciting, however, moving the bull to Miami Dade College to become part of the community was incredibly rewarding. The bull now sits prominently at the college outside of the school’s BITS Center for innovation and technology in the heart of Miami surrounded by the community it honors.
This is by far one of the most memorable moments of my career in FinTech and crypto.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
When I get engaged in a topic, I become an evangelist and I enjoy educating and sharing my excitement about what I’ve learned in these new areas. With NFTs, I had lots of colleagues and friends that talked about wanting to get involved but never do. Usually, I try to get them to take the first step and create a Metamask wallet and connect it to open sea. That typically works but getting them to buy an NFT is a different story. I found Board Booties, a small collection of pixelated male and female butts. There were about eight in the collection, and none had ever sold before. So, I started buying them, about four, and suddenly, the creator got excited that there was a run on his collection!
It turns out that I was the market, and we both had a good laugh. He’s since expanded the collection to around 38 booties. Now, I’m forever known as the bootie guy and several of my friends have gone on to expand their collection beyond their first board bootie.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
My wife is the hero in this story. She’s the one supporting and encouraging me to push the envelope and continue to grow for us. I’m eternally grateful for so many amazing things she does and continues to do for me. Without her support, I would not be where I am today.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
I’m working on two very interesting projects right now. The first is unlocking access for IRA’s and qualified money to participate in cryptocurrency. We’ve all been taught that we need to save for retirement, most people have a 401K or IRA that they are saving into. Since 2008, the savings in these accounts have been excluded from participating in this growing market. I would love to evolve this to allow people to hold NFTs and their other Web3 assets under a tax-advantaged IRA.
The second most exciting project has to do with charitable giving. There are tens of thousands of charities globally that accept cash and appreciated securities as donations. Many of them are being approached by a new wave of potential donors asking if they can donate Bitcoin, NFTs, or other crypto assets. At the same time, the charity has a lot of challenges in physically accepting and managing crypto assets. We meet with CFOs that are trying to figure out how to meet the business demands of crypto donations. We’ve worked with charities like United Way of Broward County and Frost Museum of Science to help them solve these challenges. This is one of the most exciting areas that I’m working on now. This new donation path connects charities to a new pool of donors that are typically younger and often donate more regularly throughout the year than traditional donors that donate once a year.
Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. I’m sure you get this question all the time. But for the benefit of our readers, can you explain in your own words what an NFT is, and why people are spending so much money on them?
NFT is a membership into a community, it’s your ability to truly own a piece of your community and its culture. Yes, it’s a digital asset, and yes, it’s most likely unique. This simple invention is turning the model of brand and customer interaction on its head.
I believe people are investing a large amount of time and money into this space simply because they feel it’s the key to the future of online interactions. Using your Web3 wallet, you will be able to engage in digital communities, earn rewards digitally, and conduct business. It’s important to remember that nearly two billion people on the planet log onto a gaming world daily. In these worlds, owning a digital tool, artwork, car, land, or home can be more valuable than actually owning a physical thing.
Imagine that you own the famous Banksy painting and it’s hung on the wall of your home. Yes, you get to enjoy it, and maybe you even take a picture of it. But how do you prove you own it? Imagine that there’s an exclusive event you can meet Banksy and he will create for everyone at the event a unique piece of artwork. What are you going to do? Take the picture from your wall? Get a Sotheby’s certificate of authenticity? How will anyone know if you just made up the certificate at home? These are precisely some of the things that NFTs can solve. As with any new technology, there are significant legal and technical issues that will need to be solved, such as how to transfer property rights with an NFT.
What are the 3 things that concern you about the industry? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?
- Too many people think they can get rich quickly — this is about education. When markets are hot and moving fast, people hear a lot of stories of friends getting rich and think they can get a piece of the action also. As an industry, we need to continue to provide more and better education.
- Rug Pulls — in any hot new space there will be charlatans and snake oil salesmen. With NFTs, these are often people that create a project with the promise of something amazing, only to sell NFTs and keep the money without following through with the promised delivery. NFTs also are often sold without ownership rights in the thing that people think they are buying.
- Digital Wallets is a winner that takes most business. Today we are seeing a proliferation of wallet solutions from service providers across banks, crypto, payments, exchanges, and brokers. These are not very interoperable but are rapidly growing to become a key part of your online identity. For example, Metamask serves as your login credentials for opensea and many other applications. Over time, customers from both traditional and crypto finance will likely start to gravitate to the most accessible solution. This will drive consolidation in the space as providers could be forced to adopt more common standards.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about NFTs? Can you explain what you mean?
It’s not just a JPEG. There are so many people that see an image and immediately discount the asset as it’s just a digital image. Yes, the easiest-to-understand use case likely is art. However, there is so much more utility and potential value in these assets. I believe that the number one most interesting thing is the incredible communities that are built around various projects and the industry as a whole. I have found that this industry is way more diversified than any other finance or technology industry I’ve been a part of. I also think the most welcoming industry willing to help people get started and learn.
NFTs are really about tokenizing culture and community. They create amazing opportunities for brands and customers to engage directly. They create amazing subcultures that collaborate and work together to solve real-world problems.
NFT’s also provide a way to earn rewards by doing things you like. I’m not talking about HODLing with your Diamond hands. I’m specifically talking about getting involved in communities that are driving more value to the members which in turn makes having access to that community more desirable and more valuable. For example, I’m a member of Steve Aoki’s Aokivese. As a member, I have access directly to Steve, the projects he’s working on, and even free tickets to his performances.
What are the most common mistakes you have seen people make when they enter the NFT industry? What can be done to avoid that?
This is not a get-rich-quick plan. These are not investment products. A significant amount of NFT projects will be worthless in the future. The ones that have focused on intentionally developing community interaction and value will likely be the ones that have success in my opinion.
How do you think NFTs have the potential to help society in the future?
There’s a big issue today where people want to belong to a community. Community acceptance is a major factor in our mental health. Too often today, teens are affected by social media and the unrealistic expectations they place on themselves. With NFTs, we are creating tens of thousands of communities around all kinds of different interests. Since these communities are digitally native, anyone with a phone has the potential to participate in the community. I think that we can do a lot to improve the mental health of people feeling left out of their physical communities by enabling them to connect with communities globally that they may find a better fit.
Ok, fantastic. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly Successful Career In The NFT Industry?”
My keys to success are fungible across anything I approach in life. They are fundamentals for me that enable me to be successful in most things I put my mind to.
- Learn how to learn and think — this is the most important thing anyone can do. If you skip the rest and only do this step, you will have considerable success. Learning how your mind works and how you learn will allow you to supercharge your brain. Understanding how your mind works allows you to harness your processes and hack them. In quantum physics, there is a concept that says you can either be the master or the slave. In other words, are you the master of your mind or are you a slave to your thoughts?
- Have an infectiously positive attitude — your attitude is the primary thing you will need to get through the difficult times. It’s so powerful that it can propel you forward or take you out of the game. Being positive and infectiously positive will draw people to you. These will be the people that you will motivate and inspire to do incredible feats alongside you. They will also be the people who will support you and lift you when you wavier in your positivity.
- Embrace failure — fear of failure is one of the most common reasons people never reach their full potential. Fear is more powerful than pleasure. You must learn how to embrace and welcome failure instead of fear it. I love to snowboard, there’s a saying that if you are not falling you are not trying. Failure is the best teacher you will find. I’ve learned so much more through my failures than my success. While I hate to fail at anything, I cherish the lessons that come with every failure. I’ve learned that failing does not mean you are a failure. You only truly fail when you give up.
- Get started immediately — Not this week or tomorrow. Start right now. There’s no better time to get started than now. If you want to be successful, then you need to put in the work. I can guarantee you that there’s someone out there putting in the effort to get better right now. Each second you delay getting started is a second that someone else has been using to gain an advantage and grow.
- Give back — you are on a journey here that will take you to some amazing places. It’s so important that you take what you have learned and figure out how to give back. That might be sharing the knowledge, creating a charitable project, mentoring someone who’s getting started, or building something amazing for the good of the community. This is the most important part of being successful, only through the act of giving back will you truly find what success is. The Miami Bull and the Student-led Investment fund are two great examples of how you can share in your success with the community that makes it possible.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Improving financial literacy. As a society, finance and money are such an integral part of our daily lives. Those that have developed financial literacy have a clear advantage over those that have not. I would like to inspire a movement that prepares our youth with the knowledge and financial literacy needed to succeed in life. It’s so important that we start instilling this in our children, our adults, and our leaders.
We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
Joe Rogan. He is one of the most interesting and intellectually fair-minded people I’ve ever had a chance to listen to. I would love the opportunity to thank him for the work he does on his podcast to share conversations with arguably some of the most interesting people on the planet. He has learned an incredible amount from these conversations and incorporated the learnings into his daily life.
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
James Putra Of TradeStation Crypto: 5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly Successful Career… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
