How Ovie Faruq Built a $300M "Brand Coin" & Liquid Empire | KBW2025

Um Sorry. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Ovie Farooq, CEO and co-founder of Wrekt Brands Inc. Thank you. Today, I'm going to tell you about how we made the first-ever brand coin and how it's turbocharged Wrekt into becoming one of the fastest-growing drinks companies this year.

Right. So, imagine you find a really cool up-and-coming brand. You simply fall in love with it. You want to support it. How do you do that?

Well, you go out there, you buy its products, you share the link with your mates, tell your friends and family about it. Now, let's say this brand absolutely crushes it in 3 years. It goes mainstream. You, as an early supporter, directly contributed to its growth. But, what do you have to show for it?

Absolutely nothing. You were early. You supported it in its infancy, but instead of you getting rewarded for it, they're out there paying random influencers, people who probably don't even care about the product. This is wrong. And brand coins fix this.

Right. So, what actually is a brand coin? Let me ask you a more relatable question. What is a meme coin? Most people would say it's a token that represents a popular meme.

So, Pepe, Shib, Doge. But you also have coins like Trump, Melania, creator coins, celebrity coins. Are all of these memes? Not really. But they still get classed into the meme coin sector.

What I think actually defines a meme coin is the fact that they have no utility and no direct cash flows. They trade purely based on attention and sentiment. If people like the meme, the price goes up. As it loses popularity, the price goes back down. And brand coins really are no different.

You don't necessarily own equity in the company. You don't benefit directly from revenues. However, the price of a brand coin will move up or down based on the underlying sentiment of the brand. The reason why meme coins get to insane levels is because there is no model-driven way to value them. It is completely intangible.

You cannot apply a numerical formula to human sentiment. And it's similar for brands, right? Think about the idea of brand sentiment. The idea of brand loyalty. You may buy a product just because you like the way it looks or tastes or how it makes you feel.

You might just like what a brand stands for. It's the reason why consumers will consistently pay more for a can of Red Bull versus a generic energy drink. Or why a Nike hoodie will cost triple the amount of an unbranded equivalent. It's the reason why people will pay millions of dollars for a piece of art. You cannot put a price on human sentiment.

And because there is no financial model to value it, it means there is no price ceiling. Things can go up at insanely high levels. The funny thing is, this concept actually exists in traditional corporate finance. A company's brand is often its most valuable intangible asset. Now, many companies will have a line item on their balance sheet called goodwill.

This occurs when a company gets acquired. And it equals the premium paid above its fair value. So, for example, Coca-Cola has an $18 goodwill goodwill line item on its balance sheet, which reflects all its past and prior acquisitions. In traditional accounting terms, goodwill is often equated to the intangible value of a company's brand. So, let's put all these pieces together.

You have goodwill, a traditional accounting concept that's been around for literally over a century. Accountants equate that to the intangible value of a company's brand. And where have we heard that term before? Brand coins. And this is exactly what a brand coin represents.

The thing about goodwill is it's not really visible to the public. You have to troll through accounts to find out this number. Whereas in brand coins, there's an active tradable market. You can literally go on Deck Screener and look at the price of something any second. Goodwill is owned just by the company.

Brand coins can be owned by the community, usually through airdrops or rewards. You can actually own a stake in your own brand sentiment. But here's the most important distinction between the two. Brand coins are liquid. You cannot trade goodwill.

It's a number that occurred in a historical moment in time governed by just two parties and the value is usually fixed or it gets impaired by an accountant over time. With brand coins, there's millions of dollars of volume trading in this stuff every single day. You can buy, you can sell, you can go long, go short. There is an active market which determines their value. It's funny cuz I have a background in traditional finance.

I traded high yield and distressed companies on one of the most profitable desks on Wall Street for about 10 years. So, when I tell my former clients and colleagues about Rex, they're like, "Ah, this thing's worth zero. No intrinsic value. It's literally going to be worth zero." And I tell them, "Okay, cool.

Right. If you believe that, you can literally go onto the market right now, like right now, and short it immediately. But this random goodwill number you're telling me about that occurred because of a transaction that happened 7 years ago, there is nothing, literally nothing I can do to trade that or express a view on that." And that's the thing about crypto. It allows for there to be an active, liquid market on the intangible value of a company's brand.

Just going to take a sip cuz I've made myself really angry here. All right. Let's talk about Rex. So, it all started with guy NFT collection. I was bored at my old job, doodled a random character um on my notepad and thought it looked cool, so I decided to turn it into an NFT collection.

I literally had no plans to do anything with it. So, I made it a free mint. It was free for anyone to claim. It had no road map. But what happened was in 2022, markets crashed.

And suddenly, people could relate to this rekt guy character. People could identify with this concept of getting rekt. So, over the next 2 years, we built an insanely strong community. Actually, our community was born and forged in the bear market, which is one of the reasons why it's so strong. And I realized there was more potential for rekt beyond just a Discord server, beyond just a Twitter handle.

So, we created a company, Rekt Brands Inc. And we actually gifted equity in that company to our NFT holders. I believe we're probably one of the first crypto projects to do this, if not the first, and that was done compliantly in the US through an SEC exemption. So, you have people out there who minted a rekt guy for free, ended up owning a valuable NFT, ended up claiming actual equity in the company, and getting a rekt coin airdrop, which, you know, the market cap's about $300 million, so it's worth something, right? What is the best way to create loyalty?

You make someone money. Actually, maybe the best way is you save someone's life, but this is a I would say it's a close second. And this is the exact reason why our community is so strong and so powerful. I mean, I'd go as far as saying rekt is a cult. Now, I know every single crypto project and coin will say that, but all of our community literally have rekt guy and rekt tattoos on them.

Like, I even I've got a rekt tattoo on me, and there aren't really that many other communities that I think can claim the same. The thing is, everyone gets rekt. Whether it's in crypto trading, in your professional life, in your personal life, getting rekt is normal. It's relatable, and people identify with it. All right, rekt drinks.

Why drinks? So, our goal was how do we get the Rec brand in as many places as possible? With drinks, they're cheap to manufacture. You can mass-produce them. And they serve as a unique Trojan horse for brand visibility.

There are tons of crypto events throughout the year across the world. This gives us an organic way to get our brand out there because people need to stay hydrated and they need to stay refreshed. As of last week, we have sold over 1 million cans in the space of 11 months. That's 1 million times someone is going to pick up this can with a massive Rec logo on it, see it, touch it, taste it. You can only imagine what wonders that will do for our brand visibility.

We've achieved approximately $3 million in revenue from drink sales alone. And we expect to have a 400% growth in our revenues in 2025 compared to 2024. And here's the interesting thing, right? All of our sales are direct-to-consumer from our website, recs.com, in over 50 different countries.

We spent nothing on traditional marketing. We don't even have traditional distribution. Not even Amazon. But when we flick that switch on, these numbers, they're going a lot, lot higher. So far, our drinks have been sold as limited edition drops with some of the biggest crypto projects out there.

We've collaborated with Binance US, Jupiter, Abstract, OpenSea, Base, MoonPay. And the way these drops work is we see hundreds of thousands of cans sell out in just minutes. We have even bigger collaborations coming up within the web 3 space, but also some big ones outside of crypto as well. Nothing I can reveal quite yet, but trust me, there's some pretty big coming up. How does this all work?

When you purchase a Rekt drink, you get to claim some Rekt coin. For people who purchased our first-ever drop almost a year ago, and if they'd held onto that token, they've probably made something like 20 times their money on that. And this is the Rekt flywheel. The drinks sell out. A large amount of cans sell out in a very short amount of time.

It creates attention. As we know, attention makes the price go up. As the price of Rekt goes up, the dollar value of the reward pool goes higher, and people perceive that to be a juicier pie, and they want to be a part of it. It creates higher demand for our drinks, which then creates another sellout. And then the cycle resets, rinse, and repeat.

In the last 6 months, we've had six different sellouts, and the price of Rekt coin is up something like 1,500% in that same time frame. So, about the drink itself, it's pretty simple. It's just a flavored sparkling water, no alcohol, no caffeine, no artificial ingredients, and just 5 g of natural sugars. We use agave nectar in our drink. The idea is if you want a product that's healthy, but actually looks cool, Rekt is your option.

Everyone wants to be healthy these days, right? But, if you're at a party or a rave or a festival, and you have one of these drinks over here, I mean, no disrespect, these are great products, but you're not going to look or feel cool drinking something like that, right? Let's be honest. People want to be healthy, but there is absolutely no reason why you can't look cool while doing it, and that is the market gap that I think Rekt fits into. The thing about Rekt is so far it's just a simple carbonated beverage.

But there is a clear shift in consumer trends towards the functional space. What do I mean by functional? Well, simply they're drinks that give you a function. So, focus, energy, hydration are some examples. But the thing about functional is it's much higher growth right now.

The The compound annual growth rate for the functional space is expected to be almost 10% over the next 10 years compared to close to 6% for just simple carbonated beverages. Functional has become such a big term in the beverage industry that in the last 12 months alone there have been four major multi-billion dollar acquisitions or capital raises. You have Ghost Energy valued at $1.7 billion acquired by Dr. Pepper.

Poppi valued at $2 billion acquired by Pepsi. Olipop valued at $1.9 billion raised $50 million in a Series C. Alani Nutrition valued at $1.8 billion acquired by Celsius.

These are all things that have happened in just the last 12 months alone. And the amazing thing about this is these are not old companies. All of these companies are less than 10 years old. Some of them are just 7 years old. That shows you how exponential and explosive the growth in this space is right now.

And with that, I'm delighted to announce Rekt's entry into the functional category starting with energy. In the last few months we've been in development for an energy powder and a ready-to-drink carbonated energy beverage. These products will have caffeine from natural sources, 0 g of sugar, and a couple of other functions which will be yet to be revealed in due course. We expect to launch the first batch of products by the end of the year with more coming in the first quarter of 2026. So, in addition to expanding our product range, what's next for Rekt?

It's distribution. In August this year, we announced a strategic partnership with GameSquare, a Nasdaq-listed company. GameSquare made headlines earlier in the year for adopting an ETH treasury strategy, but it also owns one of the largest esports brands out there, FaZe Esports, which has an audience of almost 300 million. As part of the agreement, GameSquare will hold Rekt coin on their balance sheet. They will be an agency of record for Rekt, helping us bridge the gap between Web2 and Web3, and we will be a shirt sponsor for FaZe Esports.

But, here's the biggest part of the deal. We will be doing a FaZe Esports Rekt collaboration product. And just to give you an idea of how big that's going to be, the last collaboration product that FaZe did, an energy product, was the highest-selling energy product in 7-Eleven stores across the US in 2023. FaZe licensed products have netted almost $75 million of revenue in just a 2-year period. This will be our biggest collaboration yet, and it's our first meaningful step outside of Web3 and into the wider world.

And what's next for traditional distribution? Well, we're currently in talks with supermarkets, stores, distributors, advanced discussions with these guys, which will see Rekt be placed across hundreds of stores in the US across multiple states. Trust me when I tell you we are going to be working with some of the biggest names in that space. And we expect to start the roll out at the end of this year with further expansion into 2026. Rekt has become one of the fastest-growing beverage startups in 2025.

The crypto nativeness of our brand allows us to have a unique edge in an exciting industry with a massive target addressable market. We made headlines in 2025, but 2026 is going to be our biggest year yet. If you want to find out more about Rekt, my DMs are open @OSF_Rekt on X. Shoot me an email osf@rekt.com.

If you liked what you heard today and you want to be part of Rektcoin, you can buy us on Gate, KuCoin, Kraken, Binance.US, and of course on chain using Uniswap. Thank you everyone for listening. I'm OSF and this is Rekt. Thank you very much.

Thank you. It was so fascinating and detailed keynote about Rekt.