Payment Technology Trends July 2022 | FinTech News | The Payment Technology Podcast | B2B Vault Episode 95

Hey, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast with your host Allen Kopelman, and we'll be providing you educational information about business payments, fintech, decentralized finance, and the technology businesses use in today's world. And in today's podcast, we're going to be talking about the payment trends for July 2022. Um, there's been a lot of stuff going on in the news. I mean, it's— there's just constantly, uh, payment technology news, fintech news, all of the above. Every day my email's going ding ding ding, notifications about some weird new thing that's going on. So yeah, man, pop right into it, Allen.

All right, so there's a lot of things, probably, I don't know, there's like the biggest stories going on, it's like with Apple. So there's a lot of stuff going on with Apple. They've been on in the news a lot. And then what about Apple Live? Oh, so Apple, you know, big talk with them. They're being sued for creating a non-competitive environment.

And what does that mean for those that don't?

So what that means is, is the big complaint is that you can only put the Apple Wallet in your phone, and Apple only loads the credit cards in there who pay them money. So if the credit card company you use doesn't pay Apple money for to use the Apple Wallet, then they don't let you load into their wallet.

So like, does that mean like if I say if you bank with Chase, right, and they don't partner with Apple, then you can't use Apple Pay. Obviously Chase does, or whatever. I'm pretty sure Chase is partnered with—

well, I have like one business card, I don't want to say who it's from, but it can't— doesn't work with Apple Pay. So, and, and then they're not letting anybody else put wallets on their phone, so you can't load the Google Wallet, or, you know, Samsung has a wallet. You can't load any other, or there's other third-party wallets. You can't put the Google Pay on iPhone? I don't think so.

You sure?

I haven't tried, but apparently that's why they're being sued.

Really?

So, and then there's big talk about—

Shame on you, Apple.

Apple with Buy Now Pay Later, and you know, they're trying to get more and more people to use the Apple credit card. You know, and then incorporate features in there. So they're saying it's a non-competitive environment. But, you know, the other— you know, the buy now pay later is continuing to trend. Uh, there's another big company, Synchronicity, I think it's pronounced, and that's like the company when you go to like the furniture store and you buy furniture, you know, they're the ones doing like all the financing for that, like alarm company financings and all different types of finance. They're jumping into the buy now pay later space.

I know, there's really difficult to get signed up to them.

Yeah, well, they're for— depends, like, for bigger stuff.

Yeah, because I was trying to set up a furniture store's website so I could sell furniture from their site. They wanted like half a million dollars in their checking account.

Oh yeah, they want to make sure, like, it was crazy, the company's not a scam.

So Well, no, I'm talking about like, like, you know, more we're talking about how Square, right, hides that little— not little amount— hides that amount from people in case chargebacks, right?

Well, that's a reserve.

A reserve. That's what it is. So they wanted a half a million dollar reserve to even start processing.

Wow, that's crazy. So the other stuff that's going on in the news is like I started, started, I follow all these committees in the House and the Senate. So I try to follow the financial committees. And then in the Senate, you got to kind of follow also the Judiciary Committee, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me only because the guy Senator Durbin is on there. And he seems to, even though he's on the Judiciary Committee, seems to dip his toe into the payments world all the time. I try to follow all that. So then I started following one of the stories, and I was like, there was all these agencies that I never heard of before that were coming up. And one that I didn't even know about is this consume— CFPB, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I just don't know why they need to have all these different types of um, different types of agencies, right, involved in the federal government. Every time you turn around, there's like another agency, and then there's—

so this agency is supposed to be making sure that we're not getting—

consumers, yeah, are protected.

Okay, right.

But there's other—

you guys are doing a good job.

Yeah, there's other agencies like involved too, like who, you know, the Federal Reserve, you know, like I said, House and Senate committees, and they're talking about these like central digital banks. And then there was a discussion about neobanks. And then they have this other committee, this other task force or agency, the Task Force on Financial Technology. We're going to get into that. They have another task force on mobile and security. And then they have this new, newer one called the Office of this I don't understand— of competition and innovation to promote competitive competition in the area of payments. This seems like they're like really into like anti-Visa and MasterCard. Doesn't make sense. If businesses don't want to take Visa and MasterCard, right, and American Express and Discover, they can stop. But then how are you going to get paid? They built a system, a private company built a system. It's successful. And, you know, the government is putting it under attack. And the other thing, the government just— yeah, the government is—

or is it like they're all attacking each other?

No, the government is attacking private companies in this way. I mean, if the government would just stop getting involved in the payments business, you know, you know, maybe costs would be reduced, but they keep creating more regulatory issues. And then obviously, if you create a regulatory issue— like, I'll go back to when somebody else was president. They said, oh, companies who have more than 50 or more employees has to provide health insurance, right? So what happened? Every company who had 50 or more employees got under 50 because they didn't want to be forced into providing health insurance. And companies started and we had this— it was a massive headache for us. Let's say you had somebody that owned like 20 restaurants and that was under one corporation. They went and reincorporated and they made every restaurant its own corporation just to keep under the 50 rule. So that just shows you that when government make rule— makes rules, private businesses make adjustments.

Is that Because I always wondered about that. Is that a better way of going about—

No, what they should do—

or I'm saying, I'm saying that when you say you, you know, you have the government— okay, so you got 10 restaurants.

Yeah.

Is it better to have 10 separate LLCs set up, or is it better just to have like one and then—

well, no, it's better for them to have 10 and they don't have to comply with it.

I'm not just talking about that, I'm just talking about in general.

Like, in general, it's probably better to have 10 separate LLCs because God forbid there's a lawsuit, right? There's better protection under that, you know. So yeah, there's benefits to doing that. But also, like, you know, there—

I was right then. Yeah, someone— I never mind.

Yeah, but under government regulation, there's too many government regulations, right? So you have all these crazy government regulations of all sorts of— on all sorts of things. Insurance, this, that, whatever they are, it's much better to, you know, businesses are going to react quickly to government regulation. So government, if they would stay out of business, the businesses would run— business would run smoother without a massive amount of regulation. And one of the things that they're talking about, which I wrote lower down on the note, is which I'm going to come back to is that payment innovation right now is outpacing regulation. And, and there's basically like in Congress, like I would call Dick Durbin, Senator Dick Durbin, he can come on the podcast, tag him on Twitter, come on the podcast. Let's talk payments.

I'll call him up.

Okay. I'll call him. Payment activists in Congress. So he's one of those. I call him a payment activist. That's what you call it.

I thought you said— never mind.

Okay, so that's like what's going on, because Reg Payment Innovation, while they're trying to say that they need this Office of Competition, then they're saying, oh, they need that because innovation is outpacing regulation.

Another area where you shouldn't be promoting innovation if you can't keep up with it, pal, right?

I don't understand why they're trying more like they're trying to hold back innovation.

Of course, they've always—

they're always trying to hold us back, right? And, you know, neobanks, which are the banks that don't have like a building, are all been in the news. So one of the surveys I was reading said that— and I, I was surprised to read this— 20% of the neobanks that are out there right now were established in 2021. 20% of them. There's not a lot, but there's— that's a lot. And there's a big concern for fraud, not only with neobanks, with regular banks, because everybody's moving to where you can open up a bank account online. And they're trying to come up with how are they gonna, you know, do the KYC, otherwise known, known as know your customer, right? How are they going to accomplish that? And they're talking about biometrics and other little things on how to do that, but it seems to be a big problem with fraud. But, you know, now this— so, so we'll go back to this office, the one of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They're like going crazy with Congress, and that right now there's a big thing going on where they— that agency has ordered Google, Apple, Meta, aka Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, Block, also known as Square, PayPal, and others to hand over information about how they use the data that they collect. Now, I've long argued that those companies are in existence more for the data they collect, of course, than for the— than for the payments that they run. I mean, they're more focused on data than payments.

I mean, when you think about it, it's like, how do you think they're able to target all these ads to everyone, right? Exactly. Because of the stuff that you purchase. So when you purchase these things with one of these cards that you use, they sell that information to marketing companies who are doing their retargeting ads. And, you know, they're anal— they're doing— they're analyzing the data for, you know, specific age groups race, demographic, demographic, all demographic. Yeah, I mean, so zip code targeting. I mean, every time you do something on Facebook, it's being tracked. So, uh, I mean, you know, people with the whole data thing is just— you just don't— people don't understand it, and they're afraid of what they don't see. And so they look at it like, you know, oh, they're collecting my data, my data.

A lot of people, you know, like, my wife is nuts with that. Yeah, like your phone, that— like, a lot of people try to use incognito mode on their computer and the browsers. They try to shut off— yeah, they shut off the tracking in the apps and in the phone, but then when you shut that off, it messes up everything in your phone because then you can't do a bunch.

Can I tell you somebody, all that— I mean, unless you're walking around with literally your face covered, you know, like, or you don't have any social media accounts, like, you're just— you're, you're doing it for nothing, man.

Like, that's what Yeah, it's kind of crazy. So now they're ordering them to hand over what are their data privacy policies, what do they do with the data, what products do they have that— and that they're selling that with this, you know, with all this knowledge that they're— all the information they're collecting, what are their pricing plans, and what are their business practices. I mean, that's a pretty deep dive. Yeah.

So basically they're asking how much do you get paid for, like, say, 10,000 contacts, right? What's involved in that? Which is—

yeah, well, they're not going to even understand. My point is, is Congress, they can't— what, like, there's way more important stuff for them to be dealing with. Inflation, drill for oil, get some more gasoline, lower the price of gas, forget all this mess that they're, you you know, going after all these companies because they're just going to go change. They're just going to go hide what they're doing, right? And they're like— you think like they're so smart. I mean, the government— I remember when they came out with that Obamacare, which, you know, they went and they paid some company in Canada like hundreds of millions of that— hundreds— I don't even remember what it was, double-digit millions, right, to build this website that was crashing and crashing.

Oh, Obamacare.

Okay, so why didn't they just go to like Google and to Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, oh, build me this website. They could have probably built it for like $500 grand.

It's a government agency, you know, it's all about bidding, right?

I'm just— well, they went to the highest bidder, not the lowest, for sure. And the website kept crashing. And why would you—

I guess I don't know about that.

Okay, but why would you have your website built in Canada?

Not in the United States. Who built it?

Some company in Canada.

Who was on the committee in charge of hiring?

Who knows?

Let's find out. So before you get into the next subject, hey man, real quick, we got our, uh, 100th episode coming up with a really cool giveaway. We're giving away the Meta Oculus, uh, Meta Quest 2, 128GB thingamajigger.

Uh, yeah, Oculus—

it's not an Oculus anymore, it's called the Meta Quest.

Meta Quest. Now you can do cool stuff, work out with it, go fishing, reality, take augmented reality.

You can go to net—

you go take a nap and you go to Star Trek. In the metaverse, you can go to concerts in the metaverse. Yeah, that's pretty cool.

That is the coolest part of it. I like the—

I don't know if I'm gonna like— if I would like wearing the goggles. I think— I don't know.

I think it's not that bad. It's, it's a little weird at first. It takes—

I would like to see a concert in the metaverse. I think that would be pretty—

I like the, uh, the way that they were showing, like, you could watch, like, Plato give his lecture, the lecture back in Roman times. Yeah, so that— I thought that was interesting. So if you follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, you'll be seeing the link for the giveaway. Follow the instructions, please make sure you confirm the email. If you do not confirm your email, you will not win the prize. Even if you're selected, it automatically you get checkmarked.

And watch out because we're gonna post our, uh, the date of the 100th episode, and you'll be able to get whatever, an invite, so that you get invited.

Well, there's also more than just the Meta Quest.

You also—

there's for— that's first place. Second place, $100 gas card. Third place, $50 Amazon gift card for you buying whatever you make.

And then live giveaways during the live 100th episode, there'll be some live giveaways.

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All right, back to me. So some other stuff that's in the news, other things, you know. So, you know, there's a lot going on. There's a lot going on in Congress, you know.

Payment activists.

Yeah, that's what I call it. And then the other thing that happened is, uh, Visa was blocked from buying this company Plaid. So Plaid is this company that provides confirmation that your bank account belongs to you, right? So they blocked Visa. They said it was going to create too big of a monopoly.

Why? I don't know.

They blocked it. They said it's going to create— because then they would— Visa would control checking and credit cards, you know, checking accounts.

But I mean, it's a security thing. You would think that there'd be—

I don't know, that's blocked by the SEC. And then Plaid, they were— had a partnership with who pissed off who. But Plaid is also in the news because they're in a fight with Stripe because Stripe got rid of them, came out with their own product to replace Plaid and bounce them from the— off their platform.

I don't think Plaid's got any— so what, anyone can go and make—

I don't know, there's a few other smaller apps that do that do bank account verification.

So they don't like that.

I don't know. Bank account verification is becoming kind of a big thing. It's a big thing right now with NACHA, which regulates, you know, the ACH. And I think that they've got to come up with a better way to authenticate so that people, um, can't do like chargebacks on the ACH and that the ACHs are verified.

I don't know why.

Like, I read all these articles about security You know, there's, like I said, there was a whole big thing going on with mobile and security. I just don't want to know why that they don't go to this two-factor authentication. So everybody's got to get a text message or text your phone numbers. Your bank has your phone number, your credit card has your phone number, and that way you can get verified on all—

2FA is great, right? Two-factor authentication is great if you're organized. For people who are unorganized or, you know, lose their phones a lot, misplace passwords. I could see how it can be—

well, they're talking about, oh, we need something else. Well, what is that something else, and how long is it going to take?

I mean, everybody else, they scanned our— everyone scanned our faces with the Snapchat app, right? Everyone did that, right? Right.

So I don't— that's what— that's a two-factor authentication, same thing. Yeah.

So that's what I'm saying, just do that. I mean, every—

most of the They need to just come up with a standard and just go with it, or 2 or 3 different standards and just go with it.

Yeah, you just got to force people, right?

Just not force them, but I'm saying you gotta—

I'm kidding.

They need to make a decision and like move on it instead of vacillating.

I think, right, I think what it really boils down to is like stop giving so many options. Say, yo, look, either you're gonna put your thumbprint in here or you're gonna put your scan your face. Yeah, it's either or. Otherwise you're not going to be able to download your banking app, you won't be able to pay for things online with your credit card. And in my opinion, as opposed I am of like that type of thing—

Big Brother.

Yes, Big Bro is constantly watching.

Fraud needs to stop.

But fraud does need to stop, right? Like, I mean, so if there's only— if that's like literally legitimately one of the only ways that I'm going to be able to ever log into my banking account through my phone, then so be it, man. What— it's not like you have it.

I have— I've got my laptop, and that's a biometric feature. You can put your finger on there to authenticate yourself on the laptops. One of the ways to log in.

I mean, I was young once. Ever gotten arrested? Who, you?

Me? Uh, I was picked up by the cops. You got your fingerprints? I don't think they fingerprinted me.

Well, I've had my fingerprints taken before.

Okay, well, I have my fingerprints taken for a few things, like you have to have your finger at the DMV and stuff like that. Yeah, the DMV. So I mean, like, it's crazy, like in Texas and in Georgia when I was in the food business, or pay for something, you need your thumb on the—

for your check.

No, no, they made you— no, they made you in, in Texas and Georgia, you had to go get fingerprinted if you worked in a bar.

Oh, right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You had to be fingerprinted. And I've been bonded before, and you got to get fingerprinted for that. So your fingerprints are all over the place.

Everyone has your— yeah, it's not a big deal.

It was weird. Like, we had— I worked for this one company when I lived in Atlanta, and they had a restaurant in this weird county, and we— you had to get a TB test, and they took your thumbprint and your index fingerprint only. I thought it was weird.

It's a little weird.

But like, when you do— when you apply for a liquor license, they fingerprint you for that. I didn't get a fingerprint because they're putting you through the database. Yeah, I didn't get fingerprinted. Yeah, man, all over everywhere.

So I, I don't know. I mean, for everyone who's like, I'm never gonna do that, well, I'm sorry for you. I think the technology is going to say they got to do something.

It's got to go.

You're not going to have a choice.

So the other stuff going on in Congress, which I just don't understand, like there's 50-plus bills floating around in Congress about cannabis. Okay, the one that's been around that needs to get taken care of is this SAFE Banking Act. So instead of addressing safe banking, they have a whole bunch of cannabis, um, you know, bills or law, you know, a bill basically. So you— they introduce a bill, then the committees vote on it. And if the committee says they like it, then they send it to the floor. So it has to go to the floor of the House or the Senate, depending on where the bill starts. Then let's say the House votes on it, they go, okay, we want to— they pass the bill. Then it has to go to the Senate, or vice versa. They pass it in the Senate, then it goes to the House. Then if both houses of Congress pass the bill, it goes to the president and the president signs it, and then you have a law, right? Right. So I don't understand. They've got all these bills floating around. Maxine Waters had a whole bunch of them we talked about on the podcast before, right? And now Schumer and a bunch of other people, Cory Booker and a few others, right? Now they come up with this new thing called the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act. Right, and they're saying, oh, this is historic, but they're not legalizing banking for the marijuana industry, which I just don't understand. This is just about the same thing that Maxine Waters thinks about, to decriminalize marijuana.

So, right, so they're going to take it off your record and all that. From my understanding, the reason that they're having such a really big farce right now of why they can't move forward, yeah, is because they literally, literally don't know what to do with all of the people who are on parole and probation for nonviolent.

Right. But I'm just saying, like, but that's why they can't get—

I mean, dude, it's so simple. Drop the charges, start releasing the people who are in, uh, prison in phases. If they've, if, you know, like, dude, smaller time to the guys in it. If the guy's been in jail for 50 years for an ounce of weed, man, let— it's time for him to go home and see his family, right? Yeah. So let's get those guys out first.

A lot of people in jail go down, right? I mean, for minor stuff.

I just don't know why it's such a difficult thing.

Traffic like 500 pounds of marijuana?

No, it's still legal.

Weed is legal.

It's a wrap, bro. If he trafficking 100 tons of it, it's over. There's trafficking 100 tons of cocaine right now. Well, for cocaine, it's a wrap. That's a different thing. You do— but we're talking about marijuana.

That's right. There's a lot of people with small amounts of marijuana in jail.

It don't matter if it's like small or large. The fact of the matter is, at the end of the day, right now, present day, July 25th, 2022, let them all out of jail, dude. Like, right now there's a plane carrying 100 tons of weed from wherever it's grown in different parts of the world. And guess where it's landing? All over the United States, right? And it's legally getting— so there is no reason for any more debate amongst you people. Like, it's time to let those guys go.

I think Congress needs to act on marijuana, but they think they need to act on it in a way that's responsible, like Take care of the people that have it on their record. Legalize it so that it can be sold in stores in all 50 states, right? Simple. At the same time, and legalize it so these businesses can get banking and let them pay taxes.

Why can't you—

multi-billion dollar industry—

exactly the same way as, uh, yes, cigarettes and alcohol. Treat it the exact same way.

Yes, cigarettes and alcohol.

If any— like, you've never seen anybody drive, smoke a joint, and crash into a tree, bro. Like, come on, man.

I don't know about that.

I'm—

there could have been something else on the marijuana.

There you go. There you go. But what we're saying real quick, man, we love you all. We hold your head to everybody that's in prison for minor infractions of cannabis, you know. Pass the dutchie to the left-hand side. No, fire it up, fire it up.

Hey, like chi-ching-chong, right? Up in smoke. So that's just crazy what's going on with that. And I think like Congress needs to figure out and not all these little solutions. I don't know why, like you need to— they got bills in the House, bills in the Senate. And the other thing that's just a little squirrely with all that is, is there's another thing going on in Congress where they're, you know, the news has been asking Nancy Pelosi about buying, uh, stocks and all these companies. And this is going on with the marijuana too.

Well, she's been— she's, she's, she's, she's done a couple shady stuff. Nancy, you kind of messed up.

I'm sorry. Congress should not— people in Congress should not be allowed to buy stocks in companies And even their relatives should not be allowed to buy stocks in companies where they have specific information, you know, about things that are being done. I remember cause them that stuff to go way, way up in value. She's been busted for buying Visa stock during some other thing that she bought.

Something else stupid too.

She just got involved in something else, a chip company that's being awarded a massive contract.

China said if you bring your blood over here.

I don't know. Well, they're upset because she's talking about going to Taiwan and they don't want her to go to Taiwan.

That's what I'm saying. The Chinese said you're gonna start a war, right?

That— well, let's not talk about—

I don't want them in no wars. I had a terrible dream last night.

I don't really don't want that to happen.

No, no, there was like giant mutant fish.

It's bad. Okay, so the other thing going on in Congress now, like this stock thing, they need to pass a law. So this is the thing that's crazy. They can't get anything. They just get the gas price down already. Like, let them— yeah, but let, let them just drill for gas. Why are we buying all this gas from everywhere? It's ridiculous. And we just gave it— Biden just gave millions of gallons of gas to China. What are we doing that for?

We're just rubbing the back, you know. It's like the little baby, the little baby China.

I don't like it.

He's just rubbing the back.

I don't like mine.

It's gonna be okay. You got a little tummy ache.

Let's not get into too crazy with politics.

Yeah, no, no, no.

The other thing's going on in Congress which also has to do with this Nancy Pelosi mess is that members of Congress before they passed this Build Back Whatever blah blah blah bill earlier in the year that created those crypto taxes. Yeah, right. Comes out before that was— before that went in, estimated approx several people in Congress sold over $1.8 million. That's just what they know about in crypto-related investments to avoid paying those taxes. So they knew that it was hidden in the bill, right? It got slid in there.

Can you imagine? In my honest opinion, that $1.8 mil is on the low side, right?

Exactly. Probably more like $1.8 billion or trillion, right? So that's just, that's just a whole big mess. And the finding that, you know, and, and, and this is done by like a research company. And they're saying that— and this is just the midpoint of dollar ranges that was reported in public disclosures. So then it says there's a huge backlash against members of Congress being able to trade securities while in office, and crypto is a huge debate. And the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are you know, talking about regulating, you know, regulating what's going on with that. The Senate Banking and Agriculture, the SEC, the CFTC.

So right now, the way it is, so say you're Allen, you're the senator of whatever, right?

Omaha? Well, Florida. There you go, Florida.

Sorry, I was just, you know, right. So you could— you said you— so you got, you know, you got some money, you got, you know, a couple hundred thousand saved, and you go and buy—

I go buy the special chip stock that's about to get awarded a huge government contract.

And you can do that?

They're not supposed to be doing it, but there's no specific—

you do— how can you stop it?

They need to have rules that—

no, I mean, that's like, right? So you're in the Senate, right? So what if You know, I'm your nephew.

Yeah, it should be forbidden because you have— first of all, insider trading is against the law. Of course. So that's what they're doing. It's insider trading.

But how can they prove it?

They know it. They prove it because those people have to give financial disclosures. Then they see it on their, on their tax returns when they have to file taxes, that they did it, when they did it, and all that. When you own stocks, it shows when you bought it, when you sold it. True. So it shouldn't be allowed.

I guess the proof is in the pudding, right?

None of this should be allowed.

You can't be like, yeah, man, coincidentally, I spent $50,000 on some chip company and I knew tomorrow that they were going to sell for $500 trillion.

Right, exactly. It's just wrong what's going on. I mean, these people in Congress are just making mega bucks, like, left and right. At least the people who have money that have been in Congress for 20, 30, 40 years. That term limits is the only answer. Didn't Florida just pass that term limits? There's a term limit, I think, in Florida for people in the state, but not for federal Congress.

Yeah, I know, but I'm saying like Florida did 12 years or something.

Yeah, I believe that.

I still think that's a little long.

I don't— you know, people need to get things accomplished. 12 years is nothing compared to—

you got no lifelong stuff.

You got Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. They've been in there 40, 50 years. It's enough already.

No, that's not okay.

It's not good.

That's just not—

what are they accomplishing? They're just lining their pockets. Yeah, it's all that's going on. I mean, you got somebody making a $200,000, $300,000 salary worth $10, $20, $30, $40 million. Where did they get the money from? They don't own a business. They didn't make an invention. They didn't invent anything. They doing something else to make that money. It's just wrong. Listen, there's a whole movie Eddie Murphy made about called The Distinguished Gentleman.

I love that movie.

And where he like pretends to be another guy and he gets in Congress and he's like, man, if I did all this stuff on the outside, I'd be locked up in jail. It's all legal. Yeah, it's all legal. But it's a great movie. Like, watch that movie. That's exactly what's going on in Congress. It's been going on, it's just getting worse and worse and worse, and the money's getting bigger and bigger and bigger. The longer these people are in office, they're amassing huge amounts of wealth. It's wrong. The other thing going on in Congress which is crazy is there's like over 50 bills focused on crypto. And, and, and also that agency— let me go back to my notes because it's a long name— the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Right?

They're chart— they're, they're, they're leading the charge on the crypto.

Well, them, the SEC, the Task Force on Financial Technology, everybody, everybody is in on this crypto thing. Well, what to do?

They got the Marines in on it too.

Yeah, they don't know what they're gonna do with crypto, right? They don't know what they're gonna do with it, how they're gonna classify it. Like, and they're saying like, oh, Bitcoin and Ethereum might be controlled by this agency, and the rest of the tokens are going to be controlled by somebody else. And NFTs, somebody else is going to be watching over that. I mean, this is just completely out of— it's very disorganized. Like, Congress, I mean, they're just gonna mess up the whole crypto thing.

They, you know, pretty much already have.

Well, they messed it up with the whole tax situation. I should have just left it alone.

Well, it's not totally— I mean, I'm not a crypto expert. We're not financial advisors. I don't know what the hell I'm talking about most of the time when it comes to crypto coins. I, I mean, I do, but at the end of the day, man, like, I don't think anyone really can— no, no, but to try to understand what's going on, the problem that they're—

what they're talking about is separating Bitcoin and Ethereum from the other tokens and how they're— and how they're going to be— who's going to be the watchdog. The problem with that is, is most of those tokens are based on Ethereum and Bitcoin. So I don't understand how they can do that.

I don't get it either.

And then what are the coins used for and all this stuff?

I mean, that's a real problem. I think I, I just, I don't, I don't get it. I just—

people were trading it. Like, the problem is, is the reason Bitcoin went down— I've mentioned it in other podcasts— They created these laws, they created these extra taxes. So the companies or the people or whatever they were, entities that were day trading coin and going up and going down and going up and going down and buying and selling all day long, all those people pulled their money out of that market because they said, oh, you got to pay tax. So, you know, and then the other thing that we're discussing, which is you see that Elon Musk said that you're about to tax him $416 million. He doesn't care, he pays taxes.

Yeah, I was like, $400 million?

Yeah, he pays a lot of taxes. You know, he's one of the only guys— you can go look, you can Google this— he borrowed like millions from the federal government to build the first Tesla factory.

Yeah, I remember that.

He made so much money, you know what he did? He called up the government, he gave them back the money. They said, you want to give it back so soon? He's like, yeah, because whatever, here. And he gave all the money back. I can't say that for Ford, General Motors, none of those people.

They still owe them.

Who knows? They probably never paid. Who knows if they're making even making payments? Who knows?

I highly doubt Ford is making payments on anything.

No, but I'm just saying it's crazy. Yeah, like that, these companies. You look at somebody like— I look at Elon Musk, I see a guy, this is a successful business guy, right, with a successful business plan. This guy lives in his factory.

I love him, man.

Right?

I mean, I don't know him as a person. I love what he stands for as an entrepreneur and a businessman, right? He doesn't— me and him have a lot of similarities when it comes to like, I'm very blunt, and I'm straightforward, and I'm honest, right? So there's a lot of things that I say that don't go over very well to to certain people, right? But I mean, I mean, I don't know how he is personally. I don't know if he's a total racist douchebag. I don't know, right? He could be. A lot of people's supervillains are anyway. But you know what I mean? Like, what he— what he's— what he's calling out these other corporations like he does with Twitter, I liked how he did that. He wants to buy Twitter, will show me that all these accounts are actually real people. And they couldn't do that. So then he's calling them bullshit.

Look at the government to have a meet that's several meetings since Biden's been in office about electric cars. Do you know that they never invited Elon Musk?

I do not.

How do you not invite Elon Musk? He's built more electric cars than all the companies that make electric— that make cars all together. He's made more cars than them.

Yeah.

And the thing is, is like, I was watching this other thing, this other congressional thing the other day, And then we'll end the podcast.

He's not American. That's what it all boils down to. I feel like no one likes him.

Citizen.

That's it though.

But if he was born in America, there would be no one like him better.

I think so.

I mean, so they were questioning stupid. They were, they were, they were questioning this Pete Buttigieg, whatever, the transportation secretary about electric cars and another guy. And they start, and they start asking them like questions and like, yeah, well, if gas prices keep going higher, people just gonna be forced to buy an electric car. And then he didn't want to answer any of the questions. So then there's these two other guys on there who started putting up some— started discussing facts and figures. So at first I was like, that can't be true. So I looked it up and it says how many cars— because they said it would take 50 to 70 years to replace every car on the road. I was like, wow, there's that many cars. So I looked it up, there's over 7 700 million cars on the road. That's just personal transportation, right? Like light trucks for business, you know, like pickup trucks. 700 million. So then I said, well, how many cars do they make in a year in the United States? Take a guess.

25,000?

No, come on, it's a bigger number than— oh no, how many cars? No, any car, all cars.

Uh, I don't know, $100 million.

No, they make about— on the best, best year ever, they—

million car. Okay, you talk about building cars from scratch up. Yeah, um, $500,000.

$8 to $10 million a year.

Really?

New cars get built in the United States. Million cars? Yeah. And out on— yeah, 10 million new cars. Well, think about it, people get—

I know when you just said $700 million though, that should blew my mind.

Sorry. Right, so 10 million cars, that's on the best year. The average is somewhere like around 8 million or less, right? And Elon Musk, I don't know how many electric cars he made, but I, I think it was like close to a million in one year. Like, he hasn't even crossed a million for like the year, right? So when you look at that and you go, well, they would have to change every single factory, every car would have to ask you how many, how many How many Teslas are produced in a year? No, like less than a million. So, but listen to this. Oh wow. So you would have to replace every single factory, make all electric cars, and then the best year you can only make 10 million cars. That's if you could get all the chips and all the stuff for the battery. Never gonna happen. 10 million cars. Well, if you can only make 10 million, it's going to take you 50 to 70 years to replace everything out on the road. They're talking about Pete Buttigieg is like, oh, by 2025 everybody be driving electric car. These people don't even know how to do math. And I thought that they were wrong, right? I was like, there can't be that many cars.

So I Googled it.

Yeah, there's that many cars. And then they were talking about—

I mean, there's 3 cars in my driveway right now, right?

That's what I'm talking about. People have— you have a family like I have myself, my son, my daughter. Everybody has a car. That's what I mean, that's a car. Almost every person has a car because you could buy a car for less than $30,000. You could buy some cars less than $20,000. Until this, all this upheaval, there was new cars you could buy that were probably $12,000 to $15,000.

Oh yeah, those Kias.

Yeah, now they're like $20,000.

Yeah, yeah, that sucked.

Now they're like $20,000, but you could buy, like, you could have a couple years ago bought So the availability of cars to everybody at an everybody price, right, was out there. So you have 700— over 700 million cars on the road. Well, you ain't going to get rid of 700 million cars in the next couple years. That's why we need to drill for gas, pull the gas out of the ocean, out of Texas. I mean, I was watching this guy— I was watching a video of this guy says that he has land in like South Dakota in the middle of nowhere. It was— he's like, I'm hiring people, come and I'll teach you how to whatever, be a whatever they call that, roughneck, right? To drill for oil. And he says that he has a giant oil reserve under his property and he could fill the whole United States with oil and he wants to build a refinery there. He's like, Biden, call me up. Kristi Noem, I think she's the governor of that state, call me up because I'm ready to go. Says he has a— he's not his—

the only, the only, the only problem I have is like, as long as they're doing it environmentally—

well, that's what he's saying. He's saying instead of having all these pipelines, he's saying that they should drill for the oil and refine it right where they're doing it.

Yeah.

And stop with all this mess. And also stop selling all our refineries to the Chinese and the Saudis and all this stuff and keep it all in America, you know, USA, make the USA number one. I mean, it was only 2 years ago we were completely energy independent. I do remember, and gas was like less than $2, maybe it was a little over $2. I mean, I could fill up my whole car for like $30.

Yeah, I missed those $33 fill-ups.

I mean, let me tell you, it's hurting people.

Bad.

It's hurting and it's causing the prices of everything— food and anything you have to buy.

Clothes is even getting expensive again.

Yeah, well, clothes is a big problem because I didn't—

I— we were talking about this not too long ago on the podcast about clothes was kind of staying the same.

Yeah.

And I went to grab a few, like, you know, socks and boxers. That stuff— you wonder what's weird?

The materials change too.

Yeah, I don't like— you got— and I'm so picky with that.

You need to tell it. Very picky.

It's like everything is made out of super plastic.

Yeah, like weird material, like really weird material. Like I buy— I work out and I walk Rocky in the morning and I work out on my Peloton. Go Peloton! And, and, you know, so I bought those shirt, you know, those wicking, wicking shirts, and I bought some and the material was horrible. I went and returned them. It felt like I was wearing a plastic Bad. No, I didn't like it. It was gross. No, but everybody, I hope everybody enjoyed the podcast. Payment Trends is one of our, uh, podcasts everybody seems to like. We get a lot of, a lot of listens on that.

It's the monthly podcast.

We're gonna just try to, you know, just let you know what's going on, what's going on in the news, what's going on in Congress, what's affecting everybody. If you want to save money on credit card processing, we can help you either with better pricing, or we can show you how you can do our zero pay and pay zero. I mean, I was reading a thing. That's the other thing I wanted to talk about. They were trashing this restaurant that's near my house up in Coral Springs because they added an 8% inflation thing to everybody's bill.

Wow.

And the guy said he had to do it because he can't afford to keep reprinting the menus, and he's had to take items off the menu because they can't get them. Or the price is too high for him to serve it at an affordable price in the restaurant. I mean, this, this gas is, is causing a big upheaval.

And well, I heard it's not just the gas too. I also heard that they can't get people to drive, right?

Well, people don't want to drive. That's why the price of gas has gone down a little bit in the last couple weeks, because people can't afford to drive, so they just don't go anywhere.

I mean, I was, I was talking to a friend of mine who owns his He owns his own semi, right? He said he had to park it. He said he couldn't afford the gas.

Yeah, because they're not paying enough.

He said one day, you know, he was on his— and he realized, like, at the end of the trip that he was almost going to be in the red, right, for the trip, meaning that he wouldn't have made any money for, you know, driving back and forth, right? And by the time all the gas and everything, he was like, dude, I made a couple hundred bucks.

Yeah, exactly.

You can't— he's like, I can't be gone for 3 weeks He's like, so he parked it, uh, he said he's lucky because he actually paid his off, right?

And the price of diesel's through the roof.

Yeah, but he said, he said he knows a bunch of guys who had to— he will not— well, one, either got their trucks repo'd, or two, had to go give them back if the, the, you know, the company where they got it from would take it back.

Yeah, it's a big problem, you know, you gotta I say it, I say it all the time, Economics 101. Gas runs the economy of the United States and the world, period.

Guns and butter, baby.

You have the price of gas goes up, the price of everything goes up. I've seen it happen when I was a kid. I saw it happen in the 2008-2009 And if this continues, this is going to be what we're going to see. We're going to see some— might not be the same things happen that happened in 2008, 2009, but we're going to see other things happen that it's going to cause it not going to be good. Can't have this happen.

So check out the, uh, giveaway on the social media.

Yep, watch out for the posts on the 100th episode so you can get on live because there's going to be live prizes. Also, if you want to book an appointment, try our new text thing. Text BOOK, B-O-O-K, to 954-827-9818. If you don't remember the number, check the notes in the podcast and our listen notes and you'll catch the phone number and you can just text BOOK. We already had a couple of people book appointments. Life like that. It's cool. So everybody, peace out. Carpe diem.

We're out.

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Go Yankees! Go Brewers as well!

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