How The Government Ruined Crypto In A Year! | #bitcoin2023 | Choke Point 2.0 | B2B Vault | Episode 163

Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the Ty Cobb of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman, and we'll be providing you educational information about fintech, payment processing, small business, and the technology businesses are using in the world today. And in today's podcast, we'll be discussing our trip down to Bitcoin 2023. Uh, basically the title of this podcast is How the Government Ruined Crypto in a Year. Oh yeah, I mean, dude, I don't want to hop right into it, but yeah, so, you know, we made our way down there. But anyway, what's new, man? What's shaking? What's shaking with Allen?

Listen, just, you know, busy. Got clients. We've got a new demo unit in here for some POS, point of sale, that we're going to start promoting soon. Uh, exciting. I mean, you know, we went to Bitcoin because last year we were there. It was a massive show. Met tons of people down there.

Oh, by myself? I'm doing all right, thanks for asking.

Sorry.

Well, you're heading into it, man, so get into it, buddy. Go, man, go, go!

Well, the first thing we noticed was when we got out of the car and we made our way down to the— out of the parking lot, we were a little bit shocked because the year before there was like a sea of food trucks out in the park.

Oh, the outside part of it. Yeah, there was a huge event outside. There was like a music festival happening. There was a stage. There was food carts.

I mean, there was like 50 food trucks last year. Yeah, I mean, it was insane. There was— plus the— there was a— there was a throng of people, right?

I mean, there was a lot of people there though.

I know, but I'm saying like last year it was a—

I mean, I mean, in comparison, there's you really can't compare the two. It's like it was a third.

No, they said, they said that in 2022 over 35,000 people were there, and let— and for this year, less than 15,000.

Oh really?

Yeah. And that might even include people who bought tickets and then didn't show up, right? Because we got like a super discount to buy tickets right after the show. So we said, oh, it was a good show, let's buy tickets.

I mean, I said to you, are we going to Bitcoin 2023? And you're like, yeah.

And I was like, You got tickets?

He's like, I think so. And I said, well, I hope so because they're like $1,000 for general admission.

Yeah, well, we got tickets from the year before, so that was much less lucked out. Yeah, there was—

I mean, off top, the promo behind it even was nothing as to last year, you know.

Remember that big bull outside? Yeah, they had the whole big thing outside the bull giving out t-shirts to everybody, take your picture by the bull.

They didn't have anything even remotely close to And then when you entered, you know, it was the same Bitcoin 2023, you know, it wasn't— it was the same sign.

No, last year they had a whole mess of stuff inside, remember?

No, I'm saying like right when you walk in, it was nothing. But then what I'm saying, like last year when you walked in and then you got into the actual event space, there was these gigantic, uh, you know, like art pieces of—

oh yeah, NFT stuff, booths.

The booths—

oh yeah, the booths were massive. I mean, there was a— there was a— there was like— I mean, I would say like there was— there was one area that was for mining last year that was as big as the whole show was, for sure, for sure. I mean, there was a massive amount of like—

I mean, all the different coins, none of those guys were there.

Yeah, there wasn't a single exchange— Binance, OKCoin, Blockchain.com, Coinbase, Robinhood, the list goes on and on. None of them were at this show.

No.

I remember last year we were talking to the guy, remember, from Bitcoin.com— not Bitcoin, Blockchain.com. Yeah, they just opened their office in Miami, and the guy was telling— we were asking them, how do you guys pay 10% interest? Remember, they were telling us all about how you could take— buy take $10 grand and put it in USD Coin, and then you give it to them, and then they loan that money to the miners, and then you're making like 10% interest on your money. I was like, that's crazy. I mean, I was, you know, then people lost all their money on that because the Bitcoin mining went down the crapper, you know, with, with the taxes. And the whole tax—

I mean, the whole— the tax thing. And I mean, the environmental side of mining is terrible.

There's arguments as to like, is it a valid claim or not? The environmental side of mining.

I mean, you were mining. How much was your electric bill?

Yeah, we had an insane electric bill until we put the— until we put the miners inside of a cooler. And then that held the— that put the electric bill in half. Because most of the electric bill was for air conditioning, right? But you saw like the rigs that they had out there were— they were made— a lot of it's now made shipping containers and put it outside in some cold weather areas.

Yeah, on the inside of that place, I was, uh, it was underwhelming for sure, as opposed to last year. Um, the art gallery, that was cool again, you know.

Yeah.

We still did that. The people who buy— who bought one of those Bored Ape Yacht Clubs must have heavily invested because he was trying to sell some bottled waters with one of the—

yeah, with the Bored Ape Yacht Club for $3.50, plus a 20% surcharge.

That was insane.

Yeah, like we went to get lunch at the— that like this food stands and I took a picture of it, and we'll probably put it on social media. Said there was a 20% surcharge. I guess they didn't get the memo from Visa about the 3% cap.

Yeah, that's what I was saying. How can they do that?

I don't know. They did it, and there was a lot, a lot of people getting lunch.

There was a lot of people lined up to get lunch, and What was the— how much was that for? Because I mean, our meals were what, it was $16 each?

No, it was like $42 for— and change for food. Yeah. And all we got was 2 plates, a plate each. We didn't even get a drink. The tip was like $3 because I felt bad for the workers.

Oh, they were under some stress, that's for sure.

Because it was like, you know, we got a vegan lunch. Was vegan lunch was interesting. What I had was good.

I had falafel sandwich because I had like a taste of every—

I just told the lady, put everything, whatever, just lettuce, and then put all the stuff you had. So there was like some picadillo.

How did you like the picadillo?

It was good. It was interesting. I never tried that. Yes, I never tried that before, but that was good. And then a whole bunch of vegetables, and then I got the cilantro sauce.

Yeah, I made a mistake and got the vegan, uh, garlic aioli, and I burping garlic aioli until I went to sleep.

That's horrible.

But it was— I mean, it was good. It was all right. Yeah, one of this wasn't that great. I'm sorry, but the chickpeas weren't even all the way—

Well, we wanted to stay because there was an interesting speaker. Otherwise we would have left and then we would have went to the— we could have went to the shawarma falafel place.

Yeah, that would have been good.

We have to make our way down there one time for a field trip. But, uh, one of the things that kind of was like weird at the show, and I had to research it because there were signs up everywhere Free Ross, free Ross, free Ross. Remember we saw all those signs that said free Ross? I didn't know who Ross was, so I researched it. It's a guy, Ross Albright, and he ran a company called Silk Road, which was a darknet marketplace. And he was convicted— he was arrested in 2013, convicted a couple years later, found guilty of 7 charges. Of conspiracy to launder money, uh, conspiracy to commit computer hacking, trafficking drugs using the internet, although he actually did not sell any drugs, but he allowed people to, to sell drugs through the marketplace and exchange.

I don't think that guy should have been arrested or even ever put in jail, but that's just me.

And they said he was, he was selling basically The main thing he was jailed for was selling people— was allowing people to use the marketplace to sell drugs and weapons using Bitcoin. But mostly it was the— you using Bitcoin as a vehicle to pay. And then I'm assuming nobody paid any taxes or whatever was going on.

I mean, it was just underground stuff.

Yeah, it was underground, but you know, the drug part I don't think was ever proven.

No, but I know people who bought drugs off the Silk Road.

Okay, so then you— then it was true.

But yeah, it's definitely true.

But it was a marketplace. It wasn't like he— listen, people buy drugs using PayPal, Cash App, Zelle, Apple Pay, you name it. They're all involved in the drug trade. And if they—

you imagine all the people in New York taking money for weed right now. On—

yeah, they're like, yeah, sell me some, sell me— hey man, I need a, a bag of weed, sell me, sell me some weed. Yeah, sell me some money. I'm telling you, there's no way to track what that— what somebody's buying using Zelle. So if somebody— if I send you $20 with Zelle, the bank doesn't know what I gave you $20 for. You could have gave me, you know, 2 dime bags. Whoa. And then all of a sudden, then Ice-T hops out, Yo, what you doing, sucker? You're under arrest, you know. So that was kind of, you know, so whatever, whatever events. So that, man, yeah, Free Ross. There were signs everywhere. I was like, I have to look it up. Who's Ross? What's Silk Road? Whatever.

I wonder who was behind that campaign.

I don't know, there was just signs everywhere.

Obviously he's still got some money out here.

Who?

Ross.

Somebody wants him out of jail. Maybe he's got— they, they didn't get his Bitcoin. He's got the Bitcoin somewhere hidden.

Probably did.

They said he has some bit— some Bitcoin. They don't know how much, but he's— he apparently still has it.

Side note, did you hear about like the, the silent whale of the guy who owns a gigantic amount of Bitcoin moved like $23 million or something the other day?

Oh yeah, well, there's been a bunch of that where people moved their Bitcoin out of the US on and onto offshore platforms. It's been going on for a while. I mean, Binance moved out of the US. Coinbase is probably going to be out of the US from the looks of, of things. You know, like we saw company— like last year there was probably 7 or 8 companies down there with more doing mortgages. I think we saw 1 or 2 Bitcoin ATMs last year.

That was still a— that was still pretty cool.

There was one booth. That's it. One booth, one big booth and one small booth.

I was going to say, yeah, but it was pretty crowded.

It was two booths. But last year there was probably 7 or 8 booths with Bitcoin ATMs.

I mean, there was just so many more booths last year. Right. This year it was only half of the convention center.

Not even when you take it—

when you count the food.

The food you had, if you wanted food last year, you had to go outside.

It was literally a third of the size.

You had to go outside. Yeah, and we left to go get food last year.

Oh yeah, that's right, that's when we went to the shawarma spot, right? We left, should have went back to that spot. It wouldn't have cost you $60.

Whatever, it is what it is.

It was ridiculous though, now that I'm thinking about it. That, that we paid for the tickets, we paid for parking, they gave us a bottle of water. That was clutch and it was spring water. So that was cool with that. And then we paid for food.

I would not— I would say I'm not buying tickets to Bitcoin 2024.

I was going to say, yeah, I don't want to— I don't— I don't think we should go back.

We're not going back there. And a lot of people look disappointed that we're a lot of people around here. Yeah. So the big highlight of the day on the day we went was, was Robert Kennedy Jr. was speaking, who's the Democrat, who is a Democratic candidate for the president.

How did he describe himself, though? I'm a Democrat that leans— what did he say?

I don't know if he leans—

like, listen, he said something.

He's more of a— he— first of all, this guy's not a senator or House of Representatives.

He's a lawyer.

Yeah, he's a lawyer and he, and he started a bunch of nonprofits. His family owns a bunch of nonprofits, which he talked about.

He's John F. Kennedy's brother.

No, John F. Kennedy's brother Robert Kennedy's son.

Oh, that's right.

Okay. So the guy who got shot and his dad got shot too, right? Well, no, John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy were brothers.

I know. Didn't Robert get shot too?

Yeah, both of them. John F. Kennedy got shot and Robert F. Kennedy.

Robert, the new thing is that the driver shot— turned around and shot John F. Kennedy.

Really? Yeah, that's crazy.

They said that they've been able to enhance the video footage, so now you can actually see the guy do it.

You want to know something? The guy— that's a Bruder film. So when I lived in Dallas, there's, there's a, um, the— I went to the JCC and I met some people there, and they invited me to their house for dinner. And there, people there for dinner was the, the Bruder, the wife of the guy who shot that film.

No kidding.

Yeah. So yeah, pretty interesting. It was interesting that I met them. That's crazy.

Yeah, it was random information by Allen.

Yes, random information. I remember when I lived in Dallas, I did go to like the Book Depository to go— you can go get a tour, you know, you can see the grassy knoll It's pretty, it's pretty crazy. So you can go see like the whole dealio.

Yeah, so Robert Kennedy Jr. was there, right?

And he spoke.

And he is— what's he going to be doing?

Running for president against Joe Biden and whoever else. And whoever else. Although the DNC says they're not going to let anybody debate Biden, which I don't agree with.

That's because Biden's not really Biden, he's a robot. This is Part 2. They said that Joe Biden died and that there's just this cyborg that—

well, could be like the movie Dave. Remember that movie Dave? There was a movie Dave where the President of the United States, he was actually— oh yes, yes, he had a heart attack while he was fooling around with a friend, and then he was in the basement of the White House in a secret, secret room.

What was the other crazy like sci-fi thing in AV? Oh yeah, V. The president was an alien, right?

The president was an alien.

We're on something.

Uh-oh, maybe. So he got up and he was—

they also found the Sphinx in the Grand Canyon.

They did?

Yeah. Yes. Wow.

Where's that? I'm gonna have to look that up.

Go ahead, man. It's just a rabbit hole.

Sphinx in the Grand Canyon.

That's a giant rabbit hole. That rabbit hole sucked me in like a black hole. Really? Oh my God.

Is there videos on YouTube?

There's all kinds of stuff, man.

This is a whole conspiracy theory.

There is. This is the conspiracy theory pod. I don't want to get droned. I don't know any information about anything. I don't know if it was real or fake. I can neither confirm nor deny. Please, I'm good. I'm just trying to shoot a podcast and make some interesting content.

Okay, so Robert F. Kennedy, one of the things, a couple of the things he talked about in his speech—

before you get into that, yeah, I I would like to say that the guy has some— if you've never seen Robert Kennedy Jr., it's going to be a little bit hard to listen to him because he's, he's got the twitches. But don't let that stop you from—

it's not a smooth— he's not a smooth talker.

No, he's probably got a speech impediment like Joe, maybe.

I don't know.

I don't know. He's— there's something—

he seemed a little nervous too, man.

And he is very nervous and Anyway, just don't let that— he's got a lot of good talking points. He made a lot of sense.

Yeah, he did make a lot of sense. He said he would accept donations for crypto. He was against the crypto current crypto taxes, and he was also against these mining taxes. And one of the things he talked about was, you know, the government, you know, wants to surveil U.S. citizens You know, and basically everybody's turning a blind eye to like this FedNow and the central digital currency because together those two, they can be surveilling everybody. Similar, Rocky doesn't like that at all. Like, you're gonna come surveil B2B Vault, Rocky's gonna, uh, come get you.

No bueno.

He's gonna say no bueno, no good. Yeah, people don't understand. Like in China, one of my friends lived in Asia for quite a few years And he told me, he goes, China is basically a big surveillance country. So he says, when you're in China, they give you that— you have a phone, it has WeChat on it. That phone is used for everything. So you, you have an apartment, whatever you're using in your apartment, you want to get on the internet, you got to scan the QR code to get on their internet so they can see what you're looking at on the internet. Um, they can see when you open the door They know you open the door, you lock the door with the WeChat. You get on the elevator, you got to use WeChat. You get off the elevator on a floor besides the ground floor, you got to use WeChat. They know everything you do, everywhere you go. When you go downstairs—

social credit score, baby.

Yeah, when you exit the building, you have to use WeChat. There's cameras everywhere, so they got surveillance. They have like to go out of the gate of the build— you know, like the building has a gate to get out onto the street. They— you have to use WeChat.

They know which store you get on the bus to go, etc., the train, whatever. Like, that is just— I don't know what to say to that. Yeah, well, this is what part of that—

this is part of what the government's talking about. Because, you know, if they use FedNow and everybody has to pay with FedNow and they want to have digital currency, who are they? They're going to decide, oh, Allen, you put gas in your car. Now you drove all over the place. Well, you can only get $10 this week. Well, how am I going to get to work?

You gotta walk.

Excuse me. No, but I'm just saying, like, they're going to be able to decide what you're doing. Oh, you watch— you're— we have a smart meter in your house. You're watching too much, uh, Law Order: SVU. I'm like, you're brainwashing yourself. I need my— I need my iced tea fix.

Watched too much reality TV this week.

Yeah, you watched too many episodes of Jersey Shore.

Yeah, boom.

This weekend, Paulie D is going to be at Memorial Day weekend. Paulie D is going to be at the Hard Rock in Hollywood.

You gotta stop plugging this concert, bro. Dude, you've been, you've been promoting this concert for over a month. Have I?

I don't think we talked about it on the—

maybe not on the podcast, but you've definitely been—

but he, he talked about the taxes. He also talked about he was not for any of this surveillance, talked about the 88,000 IRS agents, that that's a no-go with him. Also, also the no-go on the $600 transactions that they want to go monitor.

I really like this, this, this talking point. Like, when he was talking, he would bring up like these historical facts.

Yes, he did. Stuff I didn't even know about. I went and looked some of that stuff up.

It was very true.

Yeah, it was all true. 100. This guy was 100% on target.

Yeah, I, you know, I'm not a big—

he was not stuttering.

I'm not into politics like—

no, no, but when, you know, when he was talking about that, he was like less— he was more calm and fluid in his, uh—

yeah, I don't know, it's just like, what are you guys shooting the good guys up with out there? Sorry, I shouldn't have said that. I'm— I don't want to get droned. I'm going to say that. Um, yeah, no, this guy was very smart and, you know, he knew the stuff that he was saying, like, was pulling on my heartstrings, you know, like the tyrannical government. There's just a lot of stuff that totalitarianism, you know, you know, there's a— there's— he just makes sense. And I think that, uh, just listen to what he has to say.

Yeah, go on YouTube, put in Robert Kennedy Bitcoin 2023. It's about a 15-20 minute speech that he gave. It's up on YouTube. On their channel, or it's just on YouTube? I just— YouTube. I just put it in YouTube.

I hope somebody of his camp was out there.

I hope so. I don't know if it's on his page, but I pulled it up on YouTube.

And do you know his— what's his stance on the environment?

Oh, he's an environmentalist. He has a whole— he has a whole charity that's was it all about the environment?

Well, I'm not going to say it on air. I guess I will, but you have my vote. I don't care.

But one of the things that he talked about when he was talking about the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, he was talking about that those things were written not just for the good times but also for the bad times. And he also referenced about how many pandemics there were, um, during the early days of the United States of America that I didn't know about, that there was about 4 or 5 of them that killed off hundreds of thousands of people. And then, you know, if you took that to today's rates—

yeah, the one— why did he throw shots at Canada though?

Well, no, what he was saying was, is that he would know—

what he was saying was that if we wouldn't have died out from the plague, we would have North America would have— the United States would have stretched into Canada, right? That Montreal would have been ours. That's exactly what he said.

Yes, he did.

He wants all the smoke with Canada. He's not playing.

No, he just said that that's history though, that that was cool.

It was cool.

It was very interesting.

Did you know that?

No, I didn't.

I didn't even know we had war out there.

Oh no, there was a war. I remember that. But then there was—

you were alive for that?

Holy shit. I wasn't alive. Not that old. No, but I remember learning about that in school, that there was a war and then, you know, people got sick. But I didn't realize— but when you take— when you go look up these different paintings, I learned that— why?

Oregon Trail, the video game.

Remember that game?

Yes, he died of dysentery, right?

So, but he was talking about that we had all of these. We had cholera, there was, there was a flu thing, there was a flu thing, there was a plague thing, there was a whole bunch of There was 4, 5 different events that killed hundreds of thousands of people. And then if you took that and times that to like how everything would be today, it would have been millions of people. So the pandemic was not that— what happened was not that bad or new or new to be happening, although it hadn't happened in like 100 years.

Yes. Right, so, or so, whatever, right?

Around 100 years was the closest, give or take, was the thing that happened in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. Oh yeah, right. So the thing is, is, you know, he was talking about that the government got too much control during the pandemic.

There was something in San Francisco too, not that long ago, but I don't know, I could be wrong. Whatever.

Well, they did have something going on in San Francisco. I think it was maybe a little before that. One, was it? Yeah, but there was, there was—

but it was interesting to hear like how many health crises there were and how the health crisis, even then, the government didn't have the power to do what they—

yeah, that government, the government definitely overreached their power. And the other thing that he told— we let him, and we let him. And the other thing that he talked about was how when the government wanted to overreach its power and couldn't overreach its power in some cases, that they actually empowered private businesses, aka Facebook, Twitter, pre-Elon Musk, etc., etc., to go along and promote all this stuff.

The FBI just literally put out a statement that they had to apologize for spying on regular people.

Right. Yes.

Because they just felt like they were— you met— if you mentioned Black Lives Matter, well, look at what the school board—

school board stuff—

anything, they were spying on you. So I'm— I wouldn't doubt if I have a file from the FBI. Uh-oh.

I probably— if that— I'm— I don't want to know.

I'm affiliated with Black Panthers. Uh, come on, man. Iron Men. Uh, the Juggernauts.

X-Force Avengers. No, but he went on that— he talked, he spoke about how the government right now is doing a lot of overreach, and in areas where they cannot do what they want to do, they are manipulating private business to do their bidding. That was terrible, to violate the Constitution of the United States of America.

And what's our civil duty?

Our civil duty is to vote these people that are in government now— or they all need to be out of office— or grab your guns. I wouldn't say that far.

I was just gonna say, well, it's written in there that we're supposed— it's our duty to overthrow a tyrannical government.

Yes. Well, it's getting to the point where that's what they're trying to do. I don't think people really aware of it and have blinders on.

I think people are I don't want to say people just your age, but a lot of people that are— I'm 43, right? So I'm Generation X.

Okay.

Right. And so our generation, we really kind of care, right?

Yeah.

So, but we're also like, don't be such a wimp, okay?

Yeah.

So you'll get over it. So we're not very vocal, right? But the generation above us is kind of like just going, you know what I mean? Does that make sense to you?

Yes.

They're just kind of, they're on their, they're on their road and they're driving. They've seen all this before. So they're kind of like, we're just going to keep on driving.

The problem is, is with the young people, the younger generations. They didn't learn civics.

We're just worried about money.

They don't—

that's it.

No, no, but I'm saying they didn't learn civics in school. They don't understand. Listen, everything in Congress can change in 1 minute. All they got to do is say, okay, we're not doing this 51% nuclear option voting thing, and we're going to go back to 2/3 vote for every single bill that comes into the House and the Senate. And if they go back to this 2/3 vote, It forces all the parties, the Republicans, the Democrats, independents, they have to— they have far right, the far left. It forces them to all work together. Yeah, because they're not going to get anything done. Everything needs to go back to the two-thirds vote in Congress. I'm calling for that. I hope we make a reel that says go back to the two-thirds vote, and that anybody who doesn't believe that that exists, go on Google, look it up, All votes in Congress are supposed to be two-thirds. They're not two-thirds anymore because they keep doing this nuclear option thing for 51%, which is kind of like, oh, we've messed around too much with the filibuster, so 51% wins. It needs to stop. That's it.

I think we should just do paper, rock, scissors, best out of three, and whoever wins. Or how about a duel?

A duel? Yeah, that'll— people behave.

What is that? What is it, 60 paces? 15.

15 paces.

20 paces.

So then on Saturday, I didn't want— I didn't go down to the show, but Vivek—

I have no comment. I don't— didn't really like this guy. Okay, he said something stupid, man.

He did say some stupid stuff.

He said a bunch of stupid stuff.

Okay, but Vivek Ramsay, or Ramsay, however he pronounces his name.

I'll sway—

I think he was— he must be from Boston because he was at the Heat game last night. He wasn't too happy. He was—

he to Miami Heat coach— I mean, Miami Dolphins coach at the pregame. No, he got the stadium going nuts.

Oh, that's cool.

Go Bucs! Sorry, Miami Heat, but go Miami because you guys are giving Boston the business. You got Boston gives the Bucs the business everywhere. That's a lot of B's.

Yeah.

Anyway, Miami Heat, I hope you guys, you know, pull it off. Well, I'm glad that the Lakers are getting, you know, their—

yeah, they're down 3-0 to the Denver Nuggets. But up back to Vivek. So Vivek, if you don't know who he is, you know, I don't know if he has any chance. He's the Republic— he's a Republican candidate for president. He's a businessman, which I like. I like that he's a business guy. So he's like— he spoke at Bitcoin 2023. So I listened to his speech on YouTube because I spoke there too. Yeah. Then on Saturday.

Oh, that's right.

Okay.

Yeah, you did. We were going to go, but we didn't go back. Right.

Because it was too late in the afternoon. I was like, I'm not going there at 3:30. No. And Saturday.

Sorry.

So his speech, I would say, was relatively similar to what Kennedy spoke about. So he's for Bitcoin, which everybody's happy about. He also spoke about cash, how cash is important in our society. He's against the central digital currency. He also talked about surveillance going on and government overreach. So when you hear like, oh, one guy on one side, right? The Democrat and another guy.

Well, if that's the case, then why don't they just join forces and then just take over?

They— that's why people—

how come Democrats and Republicans can't do that? Why does it have to be, oh, I'm a Republican and I'm— I can't have a Democratic vice president?

Because before— because before, when we— when everything was a two-thirds vote in Congress, nobody really cared who's a Democrat, who's a Republican. Everybody wanted to vote for people who are more like a moderate, no matter which party they kind of represented. So you wanted to get these more moderate people into Congress because they're going to work together.

So as a— I don't want to call myself a young man because I'm not, right? I'm 43 years old. I'm a middle-aged man. That's what I am.

Yeah. But how old were you?

So my first vote, the first time I voted. Well, it was Barack Obama.

Okay. So prior to Obama, the president before Obama was Bush, and before that was Bill Clinton. When Clinton was in office—

oh wait, no, that was the first time I voted. So that was the first time that I actually was able to.

So when Clinton—

what year was that?

I don't remember. But when Clinton was in office, he tried to do a lot of radical things, but Congress was not ready for that and they stuck to the two-thirds vote. When Obama came into office, okay? And also during Bush. I don't know, I didn't like any of the Bushes because they were too much in bed with oil. And I felt like during all the years when you had—

you want to read us some conspiracy stuff about the Bushes? Oh my God, it goes back to like the start of this country.

Yeah, yeah, it's pretty crazy. I mean, a lot of people don't—

I got the chills just now, so I don't even want to talk about it.

A lot of people don't even know this, but the first Bush He was the head of the CIA.

I don't— yeah, dude, like, you could keep going, bro. It's ridiculous.

It's not good.

But no, it's not.

I didn't like any of those guys. I was, you know, I don't— I try, like, whatever. I like poli— I like to listen to what the policies are going to be.

Allen loves politics.

No, I like policies, and you love politics. Okay, but I like the policies versus personality.

How come you never lose a politician?

You could—

you talk well.

I don't know. I think it's kind of crazy to be a— I don't know if I could be a politician.

Look what they're doing now. Your mouth is way too loose, bro.

Yeah, I would be crazy. You know, so, so basically, basically, you know, it's just interesting to hear what different people have to say about what's going on. Listen, Tim Scott's running for president.

What else did Vivek say, though?

He just talked about— he's about the surveillance of America. He's not—

what was his— did he have any points that differentiated himself?

Not really. He's— he's— he's— that's—

see, that's why I don't like him, because he seems like that guy. Like, he seems like he's watching videotape of, like, all the old athletes. Like, oh yeah, I'm gonna take Michael Jordan's—

he talked— but he's also said stupid stuff like 25 years old to vote.

No, man.

I mean, he talks about the border, he talks about security, I mean, talks about cybersecurity.

Stuff he said about the border was so laughable.

Well, the whole— the border situation is— let's not even have a— we can't do that on a podcast.

No.

But basically, you know, in a year's time, we've watched how, you know, the change and the change in policy for taxes. So taxes on your Bitcoin profits, your crypto profits, taxes on your holdings, the SEC attacking all this NFT stuff, all these in, you know, these NFTs and calling them investments. And all of these things that went on during the last 12 months with Bitcoin has— with crypto has pretty much destroyed the business, the whole— it's put a dent in it in the United States. I mean, outside of the U.S., it's going strong and in another direction. I don't think that NFTs as an investment vehicle was a good idea.

Shout out to all the artists that got paid though.

Yeah, whoever Whoever made money off NFTs, including Gary Vee.

Word. Mazel tov, man. That is the— that was— I was trying to say, I tried selling.

We tried to figure it out.

We were going to do something to figure out. I designed it and put it up there. I didn't sell any, but whatever, you know what I mean? And shout out to all the artists that got paid.

Gary Vee never opened that restaurant either.

So you should ask him.

Yeah, we should. We should post online. Hey, Gary Vee. Where's that NFT restaurant everybody paid millions of dollars for?

Dig. But so I have a question too. Remember last year when we were at Bitcoin and almost at every booth, you know, like these that had the coins, right? Or the marketplaces or the interchange or the wallets, right? Or the whatever you want a business. They were like, you sign up and you get this percentage of Bitcoin, right? What happens to that? Where'd it go?

If you had— if you still have it, you have it.

No, but I mean, some remember like all those—

yes, yeah, they were like, oh yeah, sign up for this and we'll give you— put some Bitcoin in there, we'll give you $10 worth of Bitcoin. Yeah, I still have it.

Oh, you still got it?

Yeah.

Oh nice. I mean, the app still works.

Yeah, some of them don't work.

I got a new phone.

No, one of the— one of the apps does not work anymore. Some of those companies went out of business. Voyager went bankrupt.

Which leads to my next thing. It's just like, man, to have seen this—

yeah, billions of dollars—

ecosystem, this awesome with billions and billions, all these people— excuse me— traveling from all over the world. They came to Miami and they were saying how much money that brought into Miami. Look at your politicians and see what they have— like, to see like what they've done to the— to just this small community of people. Yeah, not a small community, but this to us, man, like, it's because we didn't say enough. We didn't go out and, you know, make our voice. We're not advocating for the things that we want. We're sitting around and letting other people make our choices for us. So, I mean, I don't want to be that guy, but I guess I'm getting older and I'm just, you know, you have to vote, man. You have to be aware of what's going on around you. You have to be aware a little bit more.

Not just that, you got to be aware of the powers Hey, look at this, this Silk Road guy. Okay, I don't know. I don't know how much money he made, but probably not that much.

Oh, he was making a ton of money.

Okay, so that guy's locked up in jail.

It's terrible. He shouldn't be.

Meanwhile, she—

I don't know.

But, but meanwhile, this big A-H, Sam Bankman-Fried, is sitting in the mansion somewhere, right? In Malibu, sitting in a mansion somewhere, chilling out, right? And he's not I mean, lock his butt up already. This guy lost millions and millions and millions of people's dollars. The guy, Mr. Wonderful. How come you're not calling out to get Sam Bankman-Fried in jail? He lost like over $10 mil. Just one guy. But some people lost their life savings.

About Sam Bankman-Fried way too much when this was happening.

Yeah, I know.

And you and I both came to the conclusion that it's because The government officials, politicians have invested so much money into Bitcoin, FTX, and all these other marketplaces. So he's gonna get slapped on the wrist and you'll never see or hear from him again. That whole thing, or he'll be washed up on shore. Yeah, like the rest of his— I'm not making a joke, like literally that's what's happening to all these crypto guys. The bosses, the CEOs. I mean, it's, it's obvious what's going on.

Well, something— I mean, what— look at that, whatever, one guy from Cat— the former Cash App guy got killed.

Did you— what did you see? I, I— so that guy was on some wild stuff.

Yeah, I don't know what was going on.

That dude was going to the deep, dark, dirty dancing parties Duka duka duka duka duka duka duka in San Francisco. Like, they— it's like some sort of rave scene. I don't— it's—

they make—

I was watching some guy, then I talked to my guy who lives out there. He's like, bro, do not believe the media. It is not like some secret organization. These parties happen all over town. You can get an invite. It's not like the Illuminati. You know what I'm saying? But he did say that there is like, you will go in there and you, you know, Tom Hanks might be in there. You know, I'm not saying Tom Hanks parties like that. We know his son Chet does, but you know what I mean? Like he says like, this is a, it's a normal thing.

Yeah, I get it.

And then so like, but this guy specifically was on some really wild parties. He was dating the, this girl ended up being another guy's girl or sister. This other— his friend who is also a mega millionaire from the tech industry, uh, they met up at a party. He didn't— the brother didn't like how this guy was treating the girl.

That's why he killed him.

They— dude, there's whole like this whole beef. There was a whole beef between the two.

Wow, it's not even on the news.

No, they're not going to talk it on the news. There's— there was text messages that came out. They were at the same party together. Like, this dude did kill that guy.

Who knows?

So that's that. Like, I was thinking it was some super fed.

They tried to make it sound—

I literally thought it was like, you know, the feds. I didn't think, I'm just, you know, whatever.

Yeah, we did talk about it.

We talked, it was like we were joking. Not joke, damn, I don't want to say a joke because someone's dead. We didn't joke about it, but we're saying like the government killed this guy, basically.

Yeah, maybe like they didn't want him to— he was against FedNow, so let's kill the guy. I mean, listen, we're going to do—

it's not unheard of.

We're going to do another podcast and talk about FedNow because— and what's going on with that. But yeah, we watched the government basically destroy Bitcoin, destroy tens of— listen, there was how many companies in Miami that were doing Bitcoin stuff? Hundreds and hundreds of companies doing blockchain development.

I mean, it's—

they—

people were selling houses, people were buying art, uh, jewelry, jewelry, yachts. Lamborghinis, going to the strip club, cars, buying commercial property. I mean, and now all those businesses are gone.

Yeah, it's all gone.

Well, I mean, I'm sure they restructured or whatever they had to do, pivot, you know.

Well, people paid for it, you know, but whatever. It's all go— it all went like up in smoke.

So yeah, I feel bad for those guys. I mean, that one guy, we had a conversation, the coin— I can't remember the coin, so obviously I don't feel that bad, but Oh yeah, we talked to one guy, he had a cool— remember that guy? He was a cool dude, like he was super cool. There's two of them, there was two. We talked to the founders that day. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, you know, they're obvious, uh, it's probably not existent, right?

Well, we talked about custody, you know, there has to be some custody rules and things like that, but you know, right now the whole industry is gonna have to get rebuilt.

Policy has to change in the United States because the way it's set up right now, it is almost set up like the Silk Road. Like, that's where people are, you know. So I, you know, like, I, I don't like regulation, but like you say, there's some, you know, you got to be able to— there's got to be a, you know, a standard, right? Like a written in stone, like, this is what you can't just, just cut.

Obviously the government did not like Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency business. So what'd they do? They went out and they destroyed it. The proof was at the show.

They put it in a legal headlock.

Yeah, they put it—

yeah, chokehold.

They put it in a league. Yeah. But also look what they did. They took out all the banks that were dealing with it too. So all the banks that went bankrupt—

that's just another thing we could talk about—

that went bankrupt recently. No, but I'm saying all those banks that got closed down recently, they all had their hand in crypto.

I was going to say it's all related. They're all related to that.

So it's all related to crypto. Everything's all related to crypto.

And where do you think crypto will— where do you think we'll be in 5 years from now when it comes to, you know, digital currency?

I think that we're gonna have to see who becomes the next couple of presidents of the United States, and hopefully things can be more moderate in the United States, and crypt— they could change the policies on cryptocurrency and how it's taxed, and then things can change. But if that doesn't change, it's going to be gone. And I, I think that them putting a war on crypto like they have— and I call it Chokepoint 2.0, right? Because Chokepoint 2— Chokepoint number 1 was all about cash. This one's all about crypto. That's gonna— they want to have a central digital currency. People are not going to trust it.

And people don't trust the government as it is, right?

But I'm saying people aren't going to trust—

I mean, you can see what's happening out in Africa and Nigeria. Yeah, people are going crazy. Only 15% of the country signed up to be a part of it. It's, it's just— I think that, you know, what the— anyway, we're going to talk about FedNow. But yeah, in 5 years from now, where do I think it'll be? I think— I don't— I, I think honestly, I don't think America is going to adopt it. In 5 years. Well, we'll see.

10.

Yeah, I don't think that there'll be a choice, but in the 5 years it's gonna— after 5 years, year 6 from now, we'll be, you know, no one's gonna be walking around with change in their pocket.

I think elect— the next election is gonna be the big decider on whether crypto is gonna survive in the US, because if we don't have a change in policy there won't be Bitcoin 2024.

Well, we got another year. We got 2 years left of Sleepy Joe.

So I'm just saying the election—

we got 2 years of Joe Biden.

Yeah, well, the election's going to be in 2024. There won't be Bitcoin 2024 if the, if the, if the policies stay the same.

We hope there is Bitcoin 2024.

Yeah, we're hoping it's going to make it optimistic.

We're being optimistic.

Yes. All right. That's the podcast.

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Peace out. Peace. Carpe diem.