CEO of Telegram Arrested in Paris?! | Biz To Biz Podcast

You are now watching the Biz to Biz podcast with Allen and Justin. Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the Biz to Biz podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the Nick Nolte of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman. And he's fresh off a trip from, uh, good old Dallas, Texas, down there in the, uh, for the strip club convention.

Well, they call it the Exotic Dancer Expo.

Shout out to the exotic dancers out there in Dallas, Texas, and all of the world, to be honest. You guys make the world go round. Shout out to you. Um, yeah, man, how was your trip, bro?

It was a— it was an interesting trip. You know, it's always interesting when you go to expos. You know, people come from all over the US, you know, that are— that have, um, nightclubs, bars, most of them have adult entertainment in them or some sort of adult-style entertainment. So it's pretty interesting. They had good speakers, a lawyer panel, a type of legal panel that was, uh, there was a lot of discussions on their legal panel about age restrictions that some states are passing. So like in Florida, even though 18 is the legal age Oh, you have to be 21 to work in any kind of adult business, including adult bookstores. Makes sense. So you have to be 21.

I mean, it's— you're not technically— well, no, I guess that doesn't make sense. No, the whole 18-year-old and 21-year-old thing does not make sense at all. Like, the separation of it, I don't really understand. I never did. I mean, that's— I always were like, for I didn't. I think I never felt like I was.

I think if 18, you could go to the Army.

Fighting by the law anyway.

No, I'm just saying, 18, if you can go to the Army, you can go to a strip club.

I agree.

Okay. And you can, uh, dance there if you want to. I mean, I get it, you know, they're trying to cut down on youth traffic.

I'm just kidding, I'm a girl dad. Shout out to the dancers. I mean, there's a lot of dancers out there that, you know, are really good women, good moms that are like out there you know, making their way, paying their way through college, doing a lot of stuff.

So yeah, there was a lot of women there also doing like burlesque, you know. I don't know, it's a little different than stripping, but that's like— they were talking about that on the legal panel. The other thing they were talking about on the legal panel, which was— which is pretty interesting because there's been a few lawsuits about this, I know we discussed it on the podcast, is You know, what is an independent contractor? And that's, you know, that's a problem that the clubs are dealing with from a legal standpoint. And, you know, there's a lot of lawsuits because the dancers are all independent contractors. And then you get a disgruntled dancer and they sue the club. And a lot of the clubs, one of the things they were discussing, they put arbitration agreements arbitration in their agreements. And then that's all being tested by the courts. Okay. And we have—

so they basically don't want the girls to be doing—

to be independent contract? Well, the government doesn't want any independent contractors.

I'm talking about the clubs.

The clubs want them to be independent contractors. Now, some of the dancers want to be independent contractors, but then in California, there's this group of women that created a dancer's union and they put like 3 or 4 clubs out of business out there. Okay. Suing them. And one of the—

Well, I mean, I've been into some really grimy strip clubs and I can only imagine how the business operates on the back end.

Well, yeah. Well, they talked about that sexual harassment, what goes on in these clubs.

I'm just talking about money. I'm not talking about all the other nonsense that happens. I'm talking about money. That's why I'm sure, I mean, these girls do, I, you know, whatever, like they make a lot of money, right? Right. And so I'm sure there's a lot of skimming off the top.

Well, no, what I'm saying is, is like, yeah, yeah, it is happening, right? But what I'm saying is, is like they work there, they're independent contractors, they don't give them a uniform, the girls have to supply their own clothing, right? The only, you know, the 6-factor test is opportunity for profit and loss, investments by the parties, clearly the women who work in those jobs, and even other like freelancers and gig workers, right, who are testing this law. There's been some lawsuits in Georgia, Pennsylvania, some other states from freelance writers, gig workers, right? Testing, you know, suing because they want to remain an independent contractor. Like people who write for 5 different magazines, right? They don't want to be, you know, the magazine's not providing them with a computer. Sure, there's a deadline for whatever they have to do, but they're not providing them with a computer. They're not providing them with cell phones, you know. And in a club, if you look at these, permanency of relationship, These girls go all over, you know, they work at multi— they travel usually all around the US, lots of them. Investments by the parties. The clubs don't provide them with costumes or whatever you want to call that, that they wear. You know, nature and degree of control over work. That's a whole nother— that's, you know, that's all, you know, they— I guess they say, oh yeah.

So what are you— what's the point here?

Nothing, just a lot of lawsuits are surrounding— this law is being tested heavily right now by the—

by, by both all over the United States, or specifically all over the US, by—

and not just in the— not just in the club industry, but also like freelance writers, gig workers, people who work for like all these delivery. I never—

when I was doing that, I just went straight for the LLC. I didn't want deal with the independent contractor route, right? I just, you know, I, I don't know the difference. I don't know how much of a difference it makes. I think on taxes, the independent contractor might get a little bit more, but I don't know, like, not really.

If you're an independent contractor and you don't have a corporation, you have to literally make sure you have some sort of business account so that you can deduct whatever you're—

that's what I'm saying, like, you get a little bit more like small business benefit have being an independent contractor locally.

Not really.

Locally, maybe.

I don't think so.

I don't know.

I don't think you get any kind of—

But I don't, like I said, I don't know, I just jumped straight to the LLC.

So now there's been a few successful lawsuits challenging this law, plus there was a lot, plus there was like a thing that the Supreme Court voted on, and that's also be, which is weird because, so the Supreme Court ruled on a case where it said that an agency— so this would be the Department of Labor, right— can't make a rule, and Congress should be making these rules, not the Department of Labor or any kind of like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Like, they make a rule, it's not a form of—

it's not a— it's a— it's not the government, it's just— it's just a business, right? At the end, it's a nonprofit, right?

No, no, but what I'm saying is, is I'm asking you—

no, they're not—

they are the government, they're a government agency.

Agency.

But what they're saying is—

but that's like the FBI and the CIA, it's a government agency, but it's not worth it. Yeah, but they work for the government, right?

But they work in law enforcement. This is not a law enforcement agency.

I get what you're saying.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau can't make a law. The FBI can't make a law. They enforce the law.

That's my point.

So what they were saying was, is that the Supreme Court just ruled on something called the Chevron case. And the Chevron case and another case. And those have to do with this, saying that they ruled that these executive orders and these rules by these agencies are not laws and they can't be enforced. So now everything, you know, back to the drawing board. Like, Congress should just go make a law and be done with it, and then it would be a law. Okay, but they're not, they're not doing that. As usual, kicking the can down the road, just like with marijuana and tons of other stuff, you know.

Right.

What do you got for a news story?

Um, I don't know if it's much of a news story, but, uh, I've been following, uh, OpenAI's ChatGPT. Um, so they're getting ready— well, they, they launched the beta version back in July. I didn't get accepted to to, you know, whatever, to use it, to try it out. Um, I don't think I was fast enough, you know. I mean, millions of people went to that site, right? You know what I'm saying? And a very, very small amount of people got included, I guess. Um, but they just, uh, acquired— well, yeah, acquired a company that's like a news aggregator I guess data. Anyway, they're investing heavily into like companies like that, publishers and stuff like that, partnering with them, um, to, to launch this search engine. And, um, it was funny because I got an email yesterday or this morning, I think it was this morning, um, and, uh Neil Patel, man, that guy is, uh, he's an OG in the SEO world. Shout out to him. You know, I, I tend to, uh, follow some other people, but no, no discredit to him. He knows what he's talking about for sure. Um, but he, uh, he sends these emails and it's like they're so urgent.

Oh yeah, everything's urgent. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, urgent, you must do this right away. Yeah, yeah.

So, um, I haven't heard much about it. So, uh, I'm— besides them buying some companies, like, that's the only real, you know, the other thing I've been— but what I was looking at that was interesting about was, you know, it's like, so is this like the Google killer? And, you know, from what I've been reading about it, it's like it's not because The way that the search results are going to be in, in a SearchGPT, you know, their search engine, their version, it's going to be very like news-based, um, and not like information, you know, I guess information too, but it's not going to be as like, it's not going to be the same results that you get from Google. So, and I mean, 90% of, 91, it's almost 91% of all searches come from Google, right? So I mean, the adaption rate for SearchGPT to, uh, you know, just to like take over, I don't see that happening anytime soon. I do see it very useful, you know, like if you're using SearchGPT— I mean ChatGPT— because it's going to be built into ChatGPT, right? Um, so you know, if you're writing an article or creating some sort of graph or some other, you know, some collected data for some sort of graph or some, something like that. I think that, you know, that'll be very, very useful, um, in, into, uh, you know, you know, your daily work. But I, I just don't see like a, the common person who's using the internet, right, is not even paying attention to AI.

Yeah, but when you go on like the Microsoft Edge and you go do a search on there, there's like, you can open up a bar on the side and then it gives you—

Well, Google does it automatically.

Right, it gives you that generative AI. Yeah, the generative AI response.

And a lot of times it's terrible. Like, it's not, and they, Google's been fixing that too. I read, I was just reading about all of this before, you know, anyway, but Google is only showing that for like a real small percentage, percentage of searches. So it's like they know that— I forget the term that they use, it was like ghosting or something like that. Like it was something, it was this different type of term where it was like it was just making something up.

Oh, okay.

It had no— it, you know what I mean, it had no idea what it was talking about and it was just putting a bunch of information together. So Google realized that they had to limit it until they corrected it. So they fixed that part of it, I guess. But even A lot of the times when I'm reading, I'm like, I don't believe this, you know what I'm saying? Because I don't see it. I just don't like the way it, it's, it's being presented, I guess.

And I read a bunch of articles too talking about like, oh, you got to get your business listed in the AI search, in the AI search. I don't even know how you can do that.

It's already listed if you're listed in Google, right? If you go to your phone and say Siri, pull me up Nationwide Payment Systems.

Yeah, it does it exactly right. But I'm just saying, I see these articles talking about it. Somebody's gonna like start a business, oh, get listed on OpenAI.

My phone tried to give me the directions here, so yeah, so that's, that's crazy. Um, but yeah, so like, I don't know, I don't see that being a big thing, you know what I mean? Um, But it looks cool. I will say that. I'll use it for sure.

I don't know. Well, we'll see. I mean, some of those AI tools already have like some— I've tried a bunch of them out, like Perplexity.

Well, this is different from a tool though.

No, no, but I'm just saying like Perplexity. So if you go on there and you say—

well, they talked about that too because it's similar, right?

So if you go on Perplexity and let's say you go, oh, write me a blog, and you punch in a paragraph, you go Okay, turn this into a blog. It'll give you a bunch, it'll give you a bunch of citations back to different websites or news stories.

And that's exactly how SearchGPT is going to look too. Yeah, that's how it would be. That's so, I don't know how that's going to be. I don't know. It's going to have to, they're going to have to really, it's going to have to be really precise and accurate.

And the other thing, like on my phone, I have this Newsbreak app, right? It gives you news.

Stop sending me that.

Okay, so when you start looking at— listen, there's interesting stories.

I don't have the app, bro.

Okay.

And I'm not about to download it.

Well, I just, I just send you— I'd go to the actual article and send it to you. So when you, when you look at some of the articles on there, it'll say on the bottom, oh, this was generated by AI.

Yeah, you can send me the article. I'm sorry, don't stop. I didn't mean it like that, bro.

Sorry. Although this other story that's crazy that's in the news, if you heard— I mean, I don't know how many people— do you use the app Telegram?

No.

Okay. I mean, I have all these apps on my phone.

I, I— so I'm, I'm speaking of apps, right?

Yeah.

You know, I have an iPhone, the new big whatever, the Pro Max, whatever, right? And I don't utilize it for its capabilities at all.

Okay.

But as far as apps, dude, I do not— I am— if I'm not just downloading, like, just because you say it's encrypted, right, or it's this new secret wave of, you know, in messaging people, I'm not going for that. I'm not going for it. I don't believe you, you know what I'm saying? Like, and look what happens.

Yeah, well, this was pretty crazy. So they said—

I heard about this the other day—

arrested in Paris over allegations that the platform is being used for illicit activity, including drug trafficking and distribution of child sexual abuse.

And what do you think people are doing on encrypted networks, bro?

Well, it was like that guy— what was that guy? Free—

but if it's encrypted, then how do they know that it's on Telegram?

People are reporting it, I guess. It's encrypted. Screenshot? I don't know. You can take a screenshot.

On Telegram?

Yeah, here.

And it's not truly encrypted. You shouldn't be able to take— let's see, you should not be able to take a screenshot of a Telegram message.

Let's see, I'm gonna go on Telegram and try it out right now. Here's Telegram. Boom, I took a picture of it.

That's messed up. Can you do that in WhatsApp?

Um, yeah, you can take a picture in WhatsApp. In here you can't really, and you can forward messages. Yeah, WhatsApp, you can take a picture in there. I mean, I have clients that are like—

I do not like—

that are overseas. What did you—

I don't care. I'm not saying that I'm hiding.

You can take a picture in Snapchat, and that's not supposed to work either, but it tells the person if you took a picture of their Snapchat.

Yeah, I know that.

It tells you that they did it, right?

So yeah, man, that's, that's crazy, dude. That Telegram, uh, this supposedly encrypted But I thought, you know, when I first read it, I was— the headlines made it seem like they were like the owner was doing like—

Yeah, the guy who owns it, Pavel Durov. He had another app that he made when he was living in Russia. And basically, I guess the government just shut it down. Well, they didn't just shut it down. They just took it over.

Right.

I mean, no, they just took it. Whatever you call that.

I mean, do you remember Craigslist?

Yeah.

When it first dropped?

He just went, that guy just got sentenced to 5 years in jail.

I'm asking you a question.

No, not Craigslist, Backpage, the guy that sold—

Do you remember when Craigslist first dropped? Yes. You could literally buy any weapon that you wanted.

Right.

You could get any drug that you wanted. Right. You could—

There was hookers on there.

I was gonna say you could buy prostitutes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right, like, and even to this day, right, you just got to figure out how to search for it. I don't know the— there's like, there's, there's short terms that you gotta—

yeah, there's like initials.

Exactly. Like, I don't even know what RRT— I don't even— I just said RRT. I don't, you know, it's a car, whatever, right?

I don't know.

But yeah, that— so for any technology that the criminal aspect is always going to be there.

Yeah, but they're not going after— like, how come they're not messing with Facebook Messenger? That's supposed to be encrypted. They're not messing with, uh, WhatsApp. You know, that's Mark— you know, those are Mark Zuckerberg. Then there's another app called Signal, right?

And then what about Instagram? Kik. What about Instagram?

I don't know what goes on on Instagram.

That's what I'm saying.

I don't even know how to use it.

So, or what? You do know how to use it.

I know how to use it, but I'm not good.

You're a stalker.

I'm not good at it.

Allen's a stalker.

I go through there and look at stuff.

Yeah, exactly. Stalker.

No, but they said— Weirdo. So Telegram— listen, scroll through any whatever. And his statement, Telegram said it abides by the EU laws and content moderation within industry standards and is constantly improving. And he has nothing to hide. He travels all over the world and in Europe. 950 million users use Telegram. And the French authorities also claimed there was terrorist activity besides all the rest of that.

I mean, come on, man. Like, why is they picking on this guy? What did he do?

There seemed to be like—

Is he Muslim?

No, he's Russian.

So he's—

and now they're coming—

a huge population of Muslims.

And now that— well, he's not living there now. He's supposedly— I guess he's based out of Dubai.

Okay, is he Muslim?

I don't, I don't know. I didn't look it up. Is Pavel Durov Muslim? Ask your phone.

What's his name?

Pavel Durov. Just say Pavel Durov, owner of Telegram. Is he Muslim?

No, no, but it just seems like Europe is cracking down on— on— is the owner of Telegram Muslim?

Let's see.

Doesn't say.

Doesn't say.

Okay. But I don't know. This just seems— I'm just bringing that up because it's just weird.

Well, they have a lot of Muslims living in France right now.

And in Dubai.

They're taking over the country.

Whatever. Yeah, man. Telegram. That sucks for him. You know, he's—

I guess he's in jail. I don't know what's gonna happen.

Jail is shit. Jail is not fun, Allen.

I get that.

3 hots in a cot, buddy. Been there, did that. No thanks. Yeah, man. Uh, back to—

I—

the other— I forgot to mention about OpenAI. They're about to— they're seeking another investing round.

Wow.

And they're going, they're already valued at $80 billion, bro. Just the, what, in 2022?

So are they gonna go public?

No, they're opening, they're looking to raise up to $100 billion plus.

Wow, that's crazy.

And they're, I don't know what the, well, obviously they're just making some huge investments But, uh, Thrive Capital already invested a billion dollars just to— on this new round. They're like leading the new round. Uh, so I— they went up from $29 billion to $80 billion in less than a year, bro.

It's crazy. Well, Elon Musk made a good investment.

Oh yeah, he's, he's A lot of stuff, a lot of stuff good for him. You know, he just got that, he just won that lawsuit, um, a bunch of stuff. Yeah, he's happy. I know he's happy. That one that he just lost, that he just won, is, uh, that's a big deal for him for sure.

No, it says that he lives in Dubai. It says that he was, he has libertarian beliefs and he thinks that the Russian government needs to change and He's— his parents, I guess, are Ukrainian, have a Ukrainian background. But anyway, that all used to be Russia anyway.

Whatever. I don't know, I don't want to talk about that because I guess the last thing I heard was that— never mind, dude. Okay, dude, this shit is terrible, bro. We're headed down a really dark path here. Well, people, this is just a PSA. I would highly suggest that everyone get at least 3 to 4 weeks of food to store non-perishable items in your house, some water, and something to see at nighttime that is safe, like a flashlight or some shit. And stock up on some sort of solar rechargeable generator so that you can charge your devices. And yeah, man, I'm not joking around at all.

I don't think, I'm not gonna be for doomsday, so.

Shit. You're not going to be alive for doomsday. Are you shitting me?

I'm not.

Because the doomsday scenario that you think of is not what's going to happen. You got to think of it like this. As if I'm the ruler of another country.

Yeah.

Why would I try to kill everyone in there, right? No, no, they're not going to do that. What they're going to do is they're going to eliminate all communication and it's going to cause a total blackout and it's going to cause straight chaos. And we're gonna kill each other. They're not, we're gonna, they're gonna, we ain't gonna have to do nothing, right?

Yeah.

Until they come in and are the big saviors of the day. Now what I'm saying is, at the end of the day, man, you know, if at least 3, 4 weeks, if you able to stay and bunker down in your house, I would, you should be okay. If it lasts longer than 3 to 4 weeks, I highly, everyone should have a bug out plan. Somewhere that you can get safe. And I'm not bullshitting. But anyway, man, uh, who knows? On another— the other, the other, man, another thing, man.

No, so like, listen, a worst case scenario is we have to go through like the Walking Dead scenario where all of a sudden they drop some, some, uh—

is that the worst case scenario?

Yeah. Then all of a sudden a bunch of people turn into zombies and then we got to kill them.

We're already walking around a whole bunch of zombies, bro. Like, I just feel like we were literally— The Walking Dead for me was like a representation of the hood. Like, I'm just, you know, when I'm around it, like, it literally— Anyway, you know, you know, so do you know who Scarface is?

Scarface the movie? No.

The rapper?

No, I don't know who Scarface is.

Okay, well, he's like legendary, and, uh, just last year his son gave him a kidney.

Oh, okay.

But he had a scare, so he's in the hospital. He's like one of my all-time favorites, bro. So I hope he gets all right. And then the other guy, Irv Gotti from Murder, Inc., I guess he had a stroke and now he's walking around with a walker. And I'm saying, I'm saying this, this is the point I'm bringing this up for. And it's like, for you, like the older generation, man, y'all got to start taking care of yourself. Like, I literally had this conversation with my dad the other day.

Like, you know, the vaccine has anything to do with people getting sick.

I mean, it's— the studies are there. It's, you know, people, it's, it's obvious, you know, when, when, when healthy teenage athletes and college athletes are like falling.

LeBron's son, yeah, had a heart attack, bro. Right.

Like, obviously there was something wrong with that shit. So I mean, y'all, like, I'm not— I don't want to, like, make this a, you know, target you or anyone, but I'm just saying, like, in general, like, I'm on everybody's ass, dude. Like, y'all, like, because you got kids, I get it, you know what I'm saying? And they're gonna have kids.

That's why I lost 50 pounds, right?

That's what I'm saying. I told my dad, I was like, dude, you want to take— we want to go to Jamaica, right? And he's like, damn, man, you know, like, so it's like motivation type shit, you know what I'm saying? So I just think that, like I said, when I seen that, it just made me really— it kind of made me sad and shit because it's like I'm seeing my idols and my people from the older, from the generation before me and they're starting to perish and they're getting old and not— you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, we definitely have a lot of people falling, passing away all the time. Exactly. So on the last note here, Adam Sandler's got a new special coming out on, uh, a new movie coming out on Netflix, and he's filming a remake of Happy Gilmore 2. Yeah, I heard about that. I mean, that's just crazy. That was a funny movie.

I don't know, I, you know, I hope it's not forced. I hope, I hope it's good because, yeah, I mean, because, you know, he's smart, so it's not— I don't know if he's just gonna throw anything out there because it's like a cult classic.

Right.

So like, you don't want to fuck that up.

Oh, exactly.

Pardon me. You know what I mean?

So the only movie he kind of ever repeated is the one where they go on vacation. What was that one called? Where everybody goes, Chris Rock, David Spade, everybody, adult, whatever.

I know what you're talking about.

They all go on, yeah, go on a family vacation together.

Yeah.

Now I should know it, right? But yeah, so they all go on vacation together and all that. They did like 3 of them already. But I, you know, they asked him, oh, would he remake like Waterboy or any of that other stuff? But you know, it is what it is.

Yeah. All right, man, shout out Scarface. Get well, brother.

Yep, get well everybody. Stay healthy, be healthy, duns.

Smoke mad trees.

Peace out. Carpe diem.