FinTech News | B2B Vault - The 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 Larry Zonka of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman. How you doing, bro?

We're doing— it was a crazy week last week.

Yeah, why?

Because I was away for a few days, you know. And rushing back. 2 day— 4 days gone, 2 days back. Then we had a holiday Monday, back into another shortened week. Yeah, so that's what's going on. Football season is about to start this weekend. Don't care. College football. Don't care.

Okay, baseball has another 27 games to go, so.

All right, how's the Brewers looking?

They're smoking but don't want to speak on anything. Okay, don't jinx it.

Don't jinx it. The Marlins suck, so yeah, it is for them. It is what it is. So let's see, here's, here's one crazy news story. So Elon Musk is, uh, in the news again. Yeah, for a couple things. One is Brazil banned X yesterday.

Oh, really?

Yeah. So he's kicked out of— he's kicked out of Brazil. Apparently, like a month ago, they brought some sort of a lawsuit against them, and then he never appointed an attorney. He just said whatever. And now I guess X is turned off in Brazil. Not sure why. I don't think that they like that he's, uh, letting, uh, free speech reign, I guess.

I don't know, man. I mean, everyone wants censorship, but then nobody wants to see people express themselves. So I mean, at the end of the day, it's ridiculous. Yeah, there's certain stuff that no one wants to see. I don't want to see babies being beheaded. I don't want to see, you know, like Israeli tractors running over bodies. I don't want— I don't think that should be on any, you know, social media network while X is getting, you know, so much attention lately. It's crazy, you know what I mean? I don't know, like, it's gonna be messed up when everyone is like, I don't want this, I don't want this, and then the government takes away freedom of speech and then everyone's shit outta luck. And so then you can't go, you can't go, you know, march, you can't, freedom of speech, you know, is something that people don't understand. And I think censorship is one thing and I'm a fan of censorship, in a sense of like, you know, certain, you know, video content. Yeah, there should be a— there's a time and a place for everything, right? And again, I think social media, it should be, you know, more regulated in a sense of where kids shouldn't be able to hop on there, you know what I mean? But yeah, I don't run it. I don't have, you know, I don't have the answers to it. But at the end of the day, like, Freedom of speech is important and people, you know, don't understand the difference between censorship and freedom of speech.

Well, did you see what happened with— did you see Mark Zuckerberg supposed to testify before the House and he sent a letter to Jim Jordan, who's one of the House of Representatives guys?

I don't believe anything Zuckerberg says. He was— I don't believe anything he says.

Okay. Well, he says he was pressured to remove certain things off of Facebook.

Sure he was. And I'm sure his pockets was lined as well.

So.

Well, we don't know.

I mean, exactly. We don't know shit. We don't know if what he's saying is true or if he's just saying that because no one's using Facebook and everyone's hopping back on X. So Twitter, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

I mean, so Facebook is for like grandparents and in like weirdos. So like, at the end of the day, like, I'm not— whatever. But yeah, man, shout out to X. I hope Elon Musk doesn't get shut down anymore. And Brazil, you know, who cares?

I guess he— I mean, I don't know.

Does he really give a shit? Is there that much money generated from Brazilian content creators on his platform? I don't know.

No, I don't know. He just didn't seem to care. He was a little pissed about it.

I'm sure he was, because it's the whole— he's been pissed off about the censorship thing. Everyone's saying they don't want this, they don't want this, but then you take away all of that, then what do you have?

Exactly.

People, you know, we have Russia.

This goes back as long as to like in Rome, bro. Like, what did those people do? They went to the Colosseum and watched people massacre themselves.

Right.

That was entertainment. Why? For whatever sick reason, human beings, we like that shit. We watch that. We, we look for it.

Oh, look at UFC.

We watch football, boxing, mixed martial arts, kickboxing, all these things where they're on TV trying to kill each other. And when we actually see the act, that's when we have a problem with it. So, you know, everyone's a tough guy until they gotta be a tough guy.

Yeah, it's true.

So that's, you know, that's my thing. Like, shut up, all you little pansies. Get off of the— get off the internet. You can't take it? Go home and cry under a pillow.

Yeah, there's this, you know, that in the US, you know, they have the 230 protections and all that. I don't— they got to figure that out. The government has to figure it out. I mean, I think Google has too much power, but about what's disseminated to us as the public. Google, X, Facebook, those people have the power over what's being disseminated for information. It's not like it used to be where before, especially like 1980s, you had newspapers. Newspapers were not owned by You didn't have one company that owned like 50 newspapers in major cities. Each newspaper was individually owned. You didn't have like one company like—

And that's when the media took over and now you don't believe anything that you read.

Right.

Because it was all like taken over. There's another thing going on all of a sudden.

They destroyed independent journalism. They did that on purpose because it's all a part of the Fucking plan. Whatever. We—

hopefully I'm not around to see that come to fruition.

But you're already here and watching it happen.

We're watching. It's happening. But is it gonna, you know, people are gonna let it happen?

I think you should be more aware, sir.

I am aware.

Yeah, exactly.

That's the thing. And also, you know, today Yelp filed a class action lawsuit against Google They're saying that Google with that SERP thing is taking all their info off of their site and using it and then pushing their site down so people don't find Yelp results anymore.

Who cares about Yelp?

No, I'm just saying, it's just crazy.

I mean, Yelp is super trash. It's always been trash. It's going to continue to be a dumpster trash fire. So like, just relax, bro. No, no one uses that except for old people and, and people who aren't from the United States. People see that and they, they, they trust the Yelp, not knowing that all the paid, uh, influencers that's going on through Yelp on the back end is ridiculous. You know what I'm saying?

I didn't know that they actually have like a club of people I don't know if they get paid money, but they get invited to like special parties at restaurants and stuff that if you write enough reviews, you get like invited to this stuff. I'm sure. I don't know if they get paid or not, but I know somebody who is like a Yelp influencer. And then the other kind of crazy thing that's in the news is—

You should be ashamed of yourself working for that company.

Okay.

The other thing in the news is is this hotel strike going on. And so like 10,000 workers walked out on Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott, mostly in New York and California because that's where, you know, they have unions. And what the complaint is— and then listen, as a person, like, I went on two recent business trips, one to New Orleans, one to Dallas, right? I will tell you, like, the service in hotels is just going down. It's progressed, like, not, not just like since COVID it's just gotten— it was bad during COVID you know, or as COVID ended, but now it's just they, they're not doing anything to improve service.

So like, you go to a hotel, I don't, I don't agree with that, Allen. No, but I just don't— the way that you explain things and you're the way you see things is one thing. No, no, like, I just don't They're not paying people, so people don't want to do the job.

Right, but I'm explaining, I'm going to explain to you what their complaint is about. So the maids are complaining because a lot of hotels give people the option, do you want your room cleaned every day, or you just, or you want your, you don't want to have your room cleaned at all. So a lot of people, like if they're germaphobe, right, they don't want anybody in their room.

I don't, right?

So they check into the hotel, they get a bunch of extra towels, and they don't get the room cleaned. So now the maids don't have to work as much because they're not cleaning. I worked in the hotel business. When I was in the hotel business, they cleaned every single room every day unless somebody hung a thing outside. Other than that, you had your room cleaned. And they had people cleaning rooms daytime, nighttime, whatever time. So there was rooms being cleaned. But now you go stay in a hotel, they're like, When you're checking in, they go, oh, do you want room service? You want room cleaned every day? If you say no, they just give you a big bag full of towels. Now, you know, so that's less work for the rooms. The hotel we stayed in in New Orleans was—

So what's the problem?

Whatever, they feel like they should end that policy of people not getting their rooms cleaned every day.

That's not going to happen.

Well, I'm just saying.

I'm saying no one wants you coming in your room stealing my shit. No one wants you going through my clothes. No one wants you picking up my stuff. I don't trust nobody for, for at all. I actually hate staying in hotels.

No, but I'm just saying, like, that's kind of—

I don't like staying. I've never liked staying in a hotel.

And the other thing is, is like, every hotel I've stayed in, especially I would say the last 2 years at least, maybe longer. Very, very understaffed. Like the hotel in New Orleans, we went to go eat lunch and they didn't have enough servers. They didn't have enough bartenders to, you know, all of a sudden you got 1,000 people in your hotel and they don't have enough people to serve everybody just going into their food outlets.

That's terrible.

And it's, you know, it's pretty bad. Like we went in this hotel, we just stayed in New Orleans. We went in for breakfast and they had a breakfast buffet or you could get from, or you could order from the menu. And they had like 2 or 3 people serving a whole room that held probably like close to 200. And then the bar, we went to the bar and there was like literally 2 waitresses or waitpersons do you want to be politically correct, two waiters, two servers, and, you know, for a whole huge bar in like the atrium of the hotel. There was like a few hundred people in there trying to get drinks. I mean, they could have made a lot more money if they would have had staff. And then they had like another two outlets closed and the two restaurants were being closed. One looked like it was being renovated. The other one, I don't know what was going on there, but they were closed. I mean, just a, it's a staffing issue, you know? And it was everywhere we went out to.

I don't, it's not just a staffing issue. Well, it's, it's a pay issue.

Okay.

Well, it's a, I'm telling you, man, like my wife's been trying to find a job. I know lots of people trying to find jobs and nobody, the way the economy is, I don't know, man. I don't even wanna talk about it. There's no money, man. That's what it really boils down to. And the people aren't gonna go do no shitty job for $12 an hour no more.

I get it. No, definitely, you know, jobs, if you want people to work, you have to pay more. And the thing is, is like the prices aren't going down at the hotel, like for the room, it's the same price it was before.

Man, I went to the grocery store yesterday and I were this Bond 10 years ago, I would've walked out with my groceries, like without paying for them.

Okay.

I'm for real. Like, it's crazy. This is just, this is nuts. It's nuts.

No, it is nuts. The prices in the grocery store are crazy. I mean, listen, think, you know, I mean, not that I don't live in San Francisco or Portland, but they have people that just literally go into the store there and just walk out with the whole grocery.

I feel you. Keep doing it. Shout out to y'all.

They just walk out. The cops don't do anything.

You're inspiring.

The police don't do anything, but that's the whole— Yeah, man.

I don't know.

It's a little crazy. And, you know, here's kind of a crazy story. You'll laugh at this one. So Ohio, they have recreational marijuana now.

So it's always been legal in Ohio though. You could always walk around with weed in Ohio.

Well, I'm saying they have recreational stores now. So they just started opening up. So this one company decided like, oh, we want to have, we want to do like a giveaway. So they got, food trucks to come out. And if you came to visit the dispensary, you didn't have to buy any weed or marijuana— cannabis, cannabis. You didn't have to make a purchase, and they were giving out free ice cream in the parking lot. Now the state wants to fine the dispensary $150 grand.

Why?

Because they're like inducing people to smoke or consume cannabis. Just seems kind of silly to me. I mean, how— why can't you just promote your business? And so what, you have a truck outside giving out ice cream?

Yeah, that's, that's ridiculous. So I mean, ice cream is, uh, I could see their point because ice cream and kids, the correlation, right? So, you know, that was probably a dumbass choice on the business owner. You probably should have did something a little bit more adult-ish, like, uh, I don't know, an egg roll or something maybe, you know what I mean? Like just something that doesn't—

I—

when you see an ice cream truck, what's the first thing you think of?

Children.

Kids.

Exactly.

So that was a dumbass business decision on the dispensaries, and they probably deserve to be fined so they don't do some dumbass shit like that again.

Yeah, there's definitely laws, especially like with vaping and things like that, not to have packaging that attracts kids.

Kids, exactly.

Name that attracts kids.

What are you, what are you thinking? I know that's what you say. I'm just— yeah, that was really dumb.

Like, for real, it was a bad food choice. Yeah, good idea, bad food choice.

Dog treats would have been a better idea than that.

And then And then, you know, Joey Chestnut, he got banned from— I don't know what he did. He got banned from the hot dog eating contest for Nathan's because he endorsed something. I don't know. There was a rumor he endorsed like a tofu hot dog or something.

I heard it's because he's won too many times. Oh, so the real reason is— so he had to find whatever reason for him not to do it.

So he had an eating contest yesterday versus the guy Kobayashi. Allen Kopelman, who's the other eating guy. So they made new rules. You couldn't dunk the hot dog in the water, so you had to just eat the hot dog. They had a lot of water and they were drinking the water, but you couldn't dunk it and then eat it. And he ate, he won, he ate 83 hot dogs.

That just sounds gross. 83 hot dogs.

I don't see— there's just way too many. And then I look—

dude, I follow on Instagram, Queens Flip. Dude said he went and had a hot dog out in Jersey.

Yeah, and before he could—

he said he was puking and pooping at the same time. He literally had to go to the— in between two houses.

That's not good.

Hot dog, man, that dirty wog daughter, man. It's not for everyone. And if your stomach ain't used to that, bruh, stay away, far away.

And there's also some kind of movie on Netflix or something of Joey Chestnut and Kobayashi, some movie about them they have on Netflix now or some special.

Oh really?

Yeah, going over there eating. I remember one time, this is a really funny story. I was in this bar with a friend of mine And I lived in Atlanta, so it wasn't too many bars that showed like the Miami Dolphins football game. In fact, I think there was none at the time, but there was a Jets bar. Me and my friend went to the Jets bar and there were Dolphin stuff. And these guys started making, they wanted to bet us money, but they had one of those little things where the hot dogs in there spinning around.

And there was one hot dog in there.

Oh my God. This must be funny.

And it was like all different colors.

Shriveled up.

Yeah.

No diddy.

So the guy, so my friend goes, he goes, I'll eat the hot dog if the Jets win, and if the Jets lets lose, the guy, this other guy, they have to eat the hot dog, right?

The Miami Dolphins end up winning. It was like some crazy game. And then the bartender had to take the hot dog out, put it on a bun.

This guy was like, I couldn't even watch the guy eating.

He was putting like mustard on it, but he had to eat the hot dog. It was pretty funny. Me and one of my friends, we're— they told us we're not invited to come back again. To the bar, but that was pretty crazy. Yeah, there's a, there's a girl that I follow. I see like her videos on Facebook or Instagram called Katina Eats Kilos, and she has a boyfriend Randy Santel, and they travel all over the world, and they even get invited like to some places that have like some giant like breakfast where it's like, you know, 30 scrambled eggs, 2 pounds of bacon, sausage, French toast, blah, blah, blah. Now the guy Randy, he's huge. He's like the size of me, you, and, um, Sean, like all put together, like a big dude. She's small, but she's like some kind of like weightlifter, you know. She's— but she's tiny. And I'm just telling, man, they can just— just eating the food like It's like crazy. Like, I mean, I don't know what happens after you eat that much, but I wouldn't want to be anywhere near Joey, just not.

Yeah, no, I'm good.

The kubiashi guy.

When they're done eating.

Yeah, hot dog, man.

Ugh, ugh. Mm. You're cracking me up.

Yeah, it's pretty funny. But, No, that's pretty nut— that's, that, that's pretty nuts. And then, um, you know, now there's this, there's this— I don't know if this is new, but now there's this Bitcoin ATM scam going on where they're targeting older people over 60, probably way over 60. I wouldn't fall for this. So they contact you, they say they're from Google, Microsoft, whatever, any kind of thing. Your kid's in jail, any kind of thing. They tell you to go get money and then they send you to a Bitcoin ATM with instructions because basically if you're putting in somebody else's like phone number in there or something, I guess you're depositing the money into their Bitcoin account.

Oh wow.

So there's a ton of scams going on for that. It hit like over $150 million last year, and it's already at that point this year. And the FTC is sending out warnings and trying to warn older people against like these scams. I mean, it's gotten where I guess people got smart to all the Zelle and the Cash App and Venmo, right? Now this is like the new scam and it's just like getting out of hand. And now these, you know, if you're a Bitcoin— like, I never got into that with the, you know, operating a Bitcoin ATM. Yeah, because it's, uh, it's kind of like a crazy business because it's like an— it's sort of like an ATM machine, but it's more like a kiosk. They definitely don't hold as much money as an ATM, and they're not as secure as an ATM. And, you know, people put money in it, and one of my friends bought 7 of them, and he had, you know, He had a lot of problems dealing with them because as the operator, you have to go there every couple of days and you need to keep money in a bank account because the company who's supplying the Bitcoin has to, you know, they debit your bank account every night.

Right.

So, you know, if you do a big transaction, you need to go get all that money picked up, get it into your bank account. And I just didn't like the whole business model. Of, of doing that. But it's, you know, it's gotten to that point where, you know, and you can, you know, you can go in and a lot of them are in not such good neighborhoods because there's people, you know, using it for money laundering and things like that. So the other thing in the news, I guess the guy Jared Isaacman and Elon Musk— Elon, I don't think Elon Musk was going to space, but the guy Jared Isaacman, who owned 4, he was supposed to go to outer space and then, uh, do a spacewalk, and I guess that's delayed again due to weather.

Good, stay out of there.

Go, go walk in outer space. Would you do it?

No, no, I enjoyed nature outside in on Earth.

I just think it's crazy.

I don't know, man.

I—

did you I—

the fact that people go and spend all this money to do shit like that, and millions he spent, and, you know, do it—

give some money to charity.

I'm not even saying that.

You—

there's a lot of things that you could do that, you know, but he does give to charity.

He's a big sponsor for St. Jude's.

I'm just saying, like, you're just messing with something that And now there's like— it's like going underneath the water, bro. The same shit.

Oh, scuba diving? Yeah, I'm not doing that.

No, I'm talking about the submarines.

Oh, submarine? Oh, I'm not going in a submarine.

Those guys are— that's just crazy, man.

I'm not going in a submarine unless I'm with the Navy. I don't even know if I could handle it. But you know, now there's two astronauts stuck in outer space. Yeah. And Elon Musk wanted to go pick them up and NASA said declined, but they're gonna leave them up there till like February or something.

Well, they say that there's enough food and stuff up there for them to last.

Yeah, well, they're prepared.

Well, they actually— I was under the assumption that they were like in this little capsule just floating around. Oh no, the capsule made it to the base, right, to the space station, and the capsule just is shit. It's just not working.

Oh yeah, so they found out what—

so they can't leave.

The problem was it was some speaker A speaker was making the noise, so it wasn't any kind of mechanical problem.

So why don't they leave?

So now they're trying to figure out how they can get them down because, you know, they have to figure it out. It's not like, oh yeah, you know, everything's got to be right, you know, the time, the thing, where they're going to land. So they're trying to figure it out, but they're not sure, you know, because they were saying That's dead.

That's way faster than what they were initially saying because they were saying they were going to have to build something to go get them. Yeah, well, they have to get another rocket, but now they don't need that is what you're saying.

They might not.

They're not sure that because it just came out like just bullshit now that it's just— I mean, look up here while we snatch your cookies.

I mean, Elon Musk has launched more rockets into space than NASA has, period.

I mean, realistically, what could they do to him if he just went up there and got and rescued them?

I guess he could just stop— he could just send his rocket over there.

And what are they going to blow it up?

No, who knows if they have anything like that floating around in space.

Who knows?

Yeah, we don't know for sure. We could think about it.

I don't know, it's kind of odd that all the buildings with blue roofs and all the blue cars didn't burn in Honolulu, and people were saying that lasers was coming from the sky, right?

I don't know.

Well, then, you know, or you listen to Joe Rogan and he talks about with some guy who's got a secret about a secret base in Antarctica with the special—

well, they're finding all kinds of shit in Antarctica now. There's pyramids, ancient ruins, there's all kinds of really archaeological finds that are blowing scientists away because it's super duper old.

Yeah, so hopefully they don't find the Transformers up there.

Well, they already— the one— there was one guy who said he was terrified of— oh yeah, he drove into the thing and seen a giant, like, basically preserved, uh, what was the giant? It looked like a megalodon, right? That's the thing that could eat everything, right? Yeah, he said there was one he was in the caverns exploring with, you know, whatever, and it was just frozen in the ice perfectly, right?

So that's crazy.

And apparently— and yeah, so yeah, I don't know. They, they say that's what's running around in the ocean eating everything right now.

Well, I'll stay off cruise ships for that, man. All right, so that's the pod for today.

Subscribe to the channel for us for the one time, man. Peace and love.

Peace out. Carpe diem.