What The Multiverse of Madness Is Going On In The World FinTech? | FinTech | Episode 175

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 John Madden 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 jumping back into FinTech Friday for everyone, talk about some stuff that's been in the news, mix it up a little bit with some stuff that I may have came across that I thought that was interesting for all the digital marketing nerds out there that do pay attention to the podcast and, you know, that are in my world with me. Yeah, man. So how you doing?

I'm doing good. All-Star Game was yesterday. The Home Run Derby.

Yeah.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. That was interesting. Did his dad ever win this?

Yes, he did.

So that's father-son duo.

I think it's the first time.

Wow. Pretty cool.

Dude, you're not much of a baseball fan, are you?

Uh, a little bit.

I don't like follow it religiously because, yeah, man. So Vlad Jr.'s son won. Shout out to Vlad Jr. He smoked it. The National League won for the first time in almost a decade. So yes, shout out to the National League.

Thank goodness, 'cause that was bad.

There was a couple Brewers on that team.

Couple dudes from the Marlins played too.

I don't care.

What? Come on, man, the Marlins.

Go Brewers.

Okay, go Marlins.

Yeah, man, I mean, you can't, I don't care about the Marlins. I don't care that they're doing okay.

I wonder, the Brewers coming to town in September. Well, let's go.

I'm already gone.

Okay.

Going with my dad.

Nice.

Yeah. So, yeah, man. National League won, man. So that was really cool. Happy for the National League. It's about time. Good for you guys. Round of applause. Where's the round of applause?

But I don't know. You're the one program that thing.

There it is! Round of applause for the National League— And a big la-la-la to the American League. Better luck next year, buddy. Yeah, I don't know, it was cool. I was watching, I got home from the gym yesterday and my dad was snoring away in his room and I was going to wake him up because I had just seen the final score come out on TV. The guy from the National League hit the tying home run.

Oh, nice.

Just literally just turned it on in time to see that. And then I walked away and they were winning and I said, I'm going to turn it off now. So yeah, it was a really shout out to the National League, man.

Yeah. Jacob, my son, is a big baseball fan.

Yeah, I know.

He follows baseball really closely.

He follows the Marlins.

Yes, he does follow the Marlins.

Yeah, goes to the game a lot.

He likes to go to the game. We went to the game. We had a father and son day at the game last week.

That's nice.

So that was kind of fun.

Round of applause to Jacob for taking your dad to the ballgame. Or if you took him around.

No, he took me. There you go. All right. Yeah, man.

So what's new in the world of payment technology, bro.

So, you know, I'm watching some news programs and there was a lot of news coming from the National— about the National Restaurant Show, which happened a little bit ago. But they were talking about a new point of sales, pay at the table, online ordering, QR codes, and then they were talking about robotics. And then this morning I go look in the news and I see there's a whole story. They show some guy, person sitting there with a big huge thing of avocados.

Yeah.

And how long it takes somebody, pretty much like several hours, to cut the avocado and peel them. Yeah, get the pit out. And peel them and then put the avocados in a bowl and then mash them up to make the massive amount of guacamole that they use at a Chipotle daily. So Chipotle now is investing money in constructing this avocado robot. They're calling—

Subway did the same thing. I don't know, did you see that?

No. What did— what their robots—

Subway slice the meat. Yeah. So you— I don't know if you're hip to their big new push, but they're gonna have their— because obviously they've been under so much scrutiny for their meat, their so-called meat. Yeah, well, so their idea is to probably do— well, not probably, you know how like Jersey Mike's— this is a lot of shameless plugging— Jersey Mike's has the cooler where you see the meats, right?

Then the guy slices it up fresh.

Yes. Well, the only thing that Subway isn't gonna do is they're not gonna slice it fresh in front of the people, right? They're, you know, it's going to be done at nighttime, but it's still a robot. You just— there's no— the, you know, like back in the butcher would take the machine and slice it, and then he'd catch it in their hand. It was all cool to watch. My mama worked in a deli for years. And, um, so, uh, yeah, so Subway's gonna use an AI, like a robot, for to cut, slice all their meat, to weigh it Purse sandwich or whatever. I don't know the— but they still have that millions, like, hundreds of millions of dollars on slicers.

Yeah, they're, they're coming up with this, um, robot to make the, to make the guacamole. They're gonna have to put one in every restaurant as they make it fresh. Yeah, there's this really cool sub shop— should I plug them?— called Las Patas. When you go there and you the guy slices the meat and then the guy's making the sandwich. The guy, they slice it and then they throw it down the line and the guy catches it.

Yeah, Jimmy John's used to do that.

Yeah, catches it and then they make a unique sandwich because they put meat on the bottom and then they put all the toppings and then they put meat on the top and tuck it in so that when you cut it in half, the, the meat is surrounding all of the filling. I don't eat bread.

Unappetizing to me, sir. But for all you carnivorous creatures out there, sounds like a great place to go. Yeah, clog up your arteries real quick, give you some high blood pressure, some of that good acid reflux for you, some good gas, stop you up. Good for you guys.

So No, but we've mentioned robots on the show before, but this is like really serious now. These companies are the guy from the— yeah, John Taffer. John Taffer from, uh, Bar Rescue.

Yeah, you showed me the video.

Yeah, he was talking about robots at the restaurant show. Robots are coming.

We said that. I said that.

We said it a couple of months ago, and we said— talked about it a few times.

We went to the SEAA, and the, uh, guy for the restaurant had the, uh The waiter, the waiter robot right there. That was, that was nuts. And then right after that, I actually seen— I was actually at a restaurant and there was a robot there.

So really, what kind of restaurant was it?

A, uh, Chinese.

Pardon me, Chinese. What did it do? Did it bring the food?

It brought the food from around the corner to the people in the—

oh, that's pretty cool. Probably saves a little time.

Maybe, I guess. I don't know. I mean, that gives you— yeah, but the guy looked frustrated, so I don't know if they were really—

it's a gimmick.

They're trying— they may probably trying to figure it out, right?

Yeah, because I saw this other robot and it brought a pizza out.

It was in Miami.

It just came out the pizza, ordered a pizza, and then the pizza— the waiter took the order, then when the pizza was ready All of a sudden I looked and it's like a robot coming with the pizza.

Yeah, there you go.

And the salad and all the stuff. But it's coming, you know. Then, uh, Domino's—

do you tip your robot?

I did not tip the robot. Shame on you, bro. I tipped the waiter. The robot didn't. The robot needs to— they need to put a tip jar on the robot.

What's the tip jar? What's the tip for a robot?

I don't know. Water? Maybe we should ask, uh, that in a question. Would you tip the robot?

And if so, what is the form of said tip?

Yeah, what do they get?

Like pat on the back?

Oil? Do you put a little oil to oil the robot up?

Tin Man. Dude, this shit is— I'm sorry, it's literally The Wizard of Oz. We live in The Wizard of Oz.

And then anyway, then Domino's announced— I don't know, I guess they can't get enough delivery drivers. So they're gonna use Uber to deliver pizzas now.

I was reading this article, um, that is— it really kind of blew my mind that they can't find enough delivery drivers. I get it though too, because gas is expensive and they're— the hourly rates are probably super trash. So I get it. And then, you know, people are trying to wear and tear on your car, so if they're going to be driving, might as well be driving for Uber and at the same time picking up food deliveries. It makes sense to me. I get it. I will never do it.

How would you feel? The Uber guy's driving, he goes, oh, I gotta stop real quick, rolls into a Domino's, picks up some pizzas, puts them in the front seat, and then he—

I think that if you're taking that service, bro, I think you got to deal with it. Uber is a That's a weird— that business model for me is just—

I never did a shared ride, so you know where you got to share with people.

I've done that before in New York.

Yeah, I never did that. I just get my own Uber.

Never again.

Never again. No, I've had mostly—

they were wasted.

Oh, the people that got in?

Oh my God. Yeah, I almost got out.

Really?

Wow.

That's crazy.

But they were getting out before me, so that was— I was like, all right.

And then the other thing that's been in the news kind of nonstop is this—

the Uber driver was cool. Shout out to you. He let me get in the front seat.

Oh, that's nice.

Yeah, because I was alone.

And I like it when they let you get in the front seat if you're by yourself. You know, I don't want to sit in the back.

I don't.

I don't sit in the back.

Yeah. I mean, that's the whole experience. You're, you know, you're paying for someone to drive you around.

You're getting a driver.

Yeah. So Or if you have a bunch of people, hope something makes sense.

Let you get in the front. Yeah.

I mean, for sure. Yeah. In the front. Yeah. My dad's about to Uber us to the, to the airport next Friday morning. That's going to be hilarious. He's going to be so upset, dude. He's got to take all of us first. He's going to take me in the car with all of our bags.

Right.

And then he's going to go back to the house.

Yeah.

And pick up all the girls.

Wow. So, oh, he's the Uber.

Yeah. Oh, he volunteered. You know, he's up at the crack.

That sends me the funniest videos on TikTok.

Shout out to Pops, man.

I don't know, he's sending me something about some energy pills that somebody takes. I'm sure you got the same thing. And then the other thing that you sent me— what? Yeah.

Did he send you the pheromone spray?

Yeah, he sends me everything.

He said he's gonna buy it. I'm not gonna say where he works, but he's gonna buy it. He works for— in a jail. I think I already said it anyway. I don't care. He's gonna buy it and walk around, all the ladies. I was laughing so hard, dude.

Your dad is funny.

He's a good guy.

So the other thing that's going on is crazy in the news is this whole thing with Bank of America. And they basically opened up a bunch of banking.

Wait, man, did we even close out the Domino's thing?

Domino's stock went up. Uber.

No, exactly. We did not close it.

Okay, we didn't close it out.

Back. Let's, you know, Domino's there. I like I was saying, I can't believe that they're hired, like they're having a hard time finding people to deliver. I get it.

But I've seen like Uber, like food delivery on Uber, like Uber Eats. Yeah, and Uber Eats, it'll say like takes an hour to get.

Yeah, exactly. Who wants to order a pizza and it takes you an hour and a half?

Like the restaurants near my house, they're all promoting, please come pick your food up, please come pick your food up.

Hey, I get a pizza and it's cold. I'm going to have emotional damage. So cold pizza only is only good for a hangover in the morning time. Um, yeah, and I don't know how are they going to do it.

The Uber driver is going to do it. They're not going to have that nice bag that Domino's has with the—

I think that they're going to have to. I'm sure they have to like have some sort of compartment to keep food warm. Like, that would, that would make sense.

They don't do it now because you'll see like these guys, Uber guys, roll into like the one place by my house, like Mexican place. They'll roll in there, They'll take like 5 orders and put it in their car and then they're driving around. That's no way everybody's food is hot when they get it.

No, that's disgusting. That's gross. Yeah. But so with this move, their stock went up crazy and they've been doing numbers all day today in the stock market.

Right.

So that's cool. Shout out to Domino's.

I'm sure Uber stock probably went up too.

They're always kind of fluctuating.

But they're like in a big— they're in a fight in a couple of states right now.

Especially in New York.

Yeah, over whether the drivers are employees or not employees and what their rate of pay is.

I agree. Shout out to the cabbies out in New York. I stand with the cab drivers, the yellow cab drivers.

The cab drivers got screwed when Uber came into New York.

Yeah, I wish— honestly, I wish Uber would have never came about, bro. I don't— I think as a girl dad, like, I think it's unsafe. I think there's too many creepy people in the world. I don't trust the world enough, like, to have someone just pick me up. Like, imagine you get in an Uber and this guy, you know, finds out his wife's been cheating on him and now he feels like he's driving off the I-95, you know what I'm saying?

And you see what happened.

You're with him.

No, what happened with that one guy in West Palm? He was retired, but he wanted to have something to do, so he started driving Uber and Lyft. And then he picked up some dude and the guy said, oh, drive me here. Hand it up, the passenger murdered him.

Exactly.

For no reason. Like, that's not no reason whatsoever.

That's my point, man.

I don't even know what happened.

And I— that happens with cabbies all the time, you know what I mean? It's not the— but I just think, like, what happened to the cab drivers specifically in New York, like, the way their badges are, like, basically worthless now.

Yeah, the medallions.

Medallion, I mean. And, uh, so, like, yeah, pre-Uber, they were worth like a million bucks each. People are still getting a million for them. They're still worth a million, but they were getting way more than a million. Let me tell you than in Vegas, depending on how many cabs they could have on there, because there was like different tiers or something like that.

Let me tell you, I don't know how it worked, but I haven't been—

shout out to the cabbies.

No, no, but I haven't been to New York in a long time. But in Vegas, when Uber first came out, uh, they didn't know what to do. The cabs were complaining, right? So when you go to the airport in Vegas, when you come outside, they made the Ubers move into the parking garage right? So if you want Uber, you got to go over to the parking garage. You got to go for a really long walk. Otherwise, the cabs just pull up. Boom, you get in a cab and go to the hotel.

Shout out to them, right?

So they really protected the cabs at the airport. And then at the same time, outside the hotels, the cabs have the preferred, like, area to pick you up in front of the hotel. That's good. You want to go to the Uber, you usually have to go all the way to the back of the hotel. And let me tell you, hotels in Vegas are huge. So you got to walk really far to go get an Uber. Yeah, no thanks. And they can't even drop you off in the— you know, they can't drop you off in the right place in the front either. They have to drop you off in the back at most hotels or in the— or in another— they have the Uber pickup and drop-off area. So you don't go through.

So what do you guys think about the Domino's Uber Eats delivery thing? I'm interested in seeing what anybody thinks. So leave a comment.

Is it going to be better, the same, or worse? You know, let's see. But you know, the other thing, we'll get to the next story. Bank of America fined $250 million.

Yeah, that came out what, Monday?

Yeah, then they have to— then more stuff came out about it. They have to pay back $100 million to customers that they opened up bank accounts for that customers didn't ask for. So they opened up additional accounts to make it look like they had more bank accounts. I don't know why they need to do that. And the lady who did that for Wells Fargo—

yeah, she's got—

the one that was in charge of that, she's going to jail now.

Really?

Oh yeah, that lady, she got jail time. I don't— she was getting sentenced a few months ago and it was the same exact thing. So the other thing, here's something cool, paying through your car radio.

I seen this a while ago. Um, I was, uh, I, I forget what I was— I was, I was reading an article about this a long time ago.

Yeah, they talked about it a while ago, but you know, like, they were—

no, they're saying like paying for— like, if you want to download a movie, for instance, and you're driving in your car, right, it's really difficult to do that right now unless you have like a hotspot and you're connected to it. Like, not all cars are Wi-Fi enabled.

Right. You don't have a, you know, screen in the backseat.

Yeah, exactly. Not everybody's set up like that. So, but I thought that was a really cool idea of being able to, you know, purchase movies or a new album that came out. Yeah. A song or whatever.

Right. Yeah. Download a song. Yeah.

That makes sense to me.

You know, pay for your gas.

If you got a smart car, you know what I'm saying? It makes a lot of sense.

They're talking about like roll up to the pump and pay for your gas. Just hitting a button in your car.

I like that too. That sounds very safe. Yeah, wait till the— wait till you don't have to get out of your car.

Oh, wait till they have— I saw this thing, the another robot at the gas station. That's what I'm talking about, where the guy comes up, he pulls his car in, had an app on his phone. Oh yeah, I want gas. Boom, hits the button. The, the gas pump went, went over. He hit the thing, it, you know, popped open the thing, you know, the flap, put the pump, you know, then it started pumping the gas. The kind that got— because it like through an app pumps the gas, then goes, closes the door, and the guy just hits pay and he's done.

I've seen it.

I like it. It was pretty cool. I like that, you know, there's a lot of robotics.

I could see how that works, like in, like, you know, like in the, uh, what's that called, on when we're driving on the interstate and they got the—

on the turnpike, they got the rest stops.

The rest stops. That would make so much sense in there. Yeah. Because you would speak, it would be almost like a turnstile type of thing where you get those cars in and out. Because now, you know, you got all the people pumping gas, they're going inside of the place.

Costco too, man.

The line at Costco, BJ's, Sam's Club, all those types of places. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. You know, get people in and out of the gas station faster.

I do. I, I do. I'm from the era where there was gas station attendants so that the guys would come.

They still have it at Costco. Like if you want the dude to pump your gas, really, my mom goes there because they pump her gas.

That's dope. That's dope. That, that's still the only other— I had a gas station where I grew up. Yeah, it was like, what's the one with the orange sign? 76?

Yeah, Phillips 76. Phillips 66. 66.

Yeah, right. And then we had the orange circle. There was a gas station in Milwaukee on the corner of like 49th and Lisbon.

Yeah.

And it just like a little corner, just had two pumps, one diesel and one regular gas. And that guy had that guy. I'm going back home next Friday and I'm going to have to see if that place is still there. I wonder if it's still there. But he, he would— why I brought that up is because he came out and he'd pump your gas and it was like literally a Milwaukee staple, like last man standing type thing. Like if you really wanted an old school experience, of going to get your gas pumped, you could stop over here. And it was terrible because like a BP or something literally moved in across the street from him. Like, not literally, like a block away, right? Like a block. So it just destroyed his business. Then there was one, yeah, so he, that place ain't there no more. What am I even talking about? This building I hope is still there. It's gotta be 'cause it was probably a historical landmark. Because it was old. Like, you could tell, like, it was there, old style, like from the first 1826.

Actually fix your car, repair a flat tire, put a new wheel on your tire on your station, in your stagecoach.

He knows what I'm talking about. He's been around since then.

No, we didn't have— I remember as a kid going out to like a restaurant in New York with my parents and it was a steakhouse and they had a stagecoach and you could get a ride in it. The guy would take you around the corner. They still do that in New York. Yeah, it's crazy. I remember doing that as a kid.

And the big elephant in the room or the— I don't know what you want to call it. FedNow, the spookiest character on the whatever big screen. FedNow, man. FedNow in our office is like I don't know, no one wants to talk about it.

FedNow, nobody knows what they're like talking— oh, it's going to do this and it's going to do that, and nobody knows what it can do. I mean, they're looking for integration partners. They're hoping that banks are going to use it. So like, let's say the credit card processors go, okay, well, let's integrate FedNow. Now when you batch out, they could send you your money right away. You don't even have to wait. But, you know, I don't know, you know, but that's, you know, they're only— we do now, we give everybody, you know, as long as you're a low-risk business, you get next-day deposits anyway. Higher-risk businesses, they're not going to give them next-day deposits. That's just way too risky with, with higher-risk type businesses. Even, you know, like auto repair, they get some of these guys, and, you know, if they have really good credit they'll give them next-day funding. But if it's a guy with iffy reviews online, you know, and the credit's not so good, they're not going to give that guy next-day deposit. Yeah, no, I get it, you know.

So I mean, the whole FedNow thing for me— but they're talking about it like, why not? Like, the Fed's— I get it. Like, literally it's a business opportunity for the United States of America, and they're missing out on it tremendously, right? There's no way for you to pay somebody some federal currency, US Reserve currency digitally. You can't do that like on their platform. So I can understand where they got hired some, you know, Snap, whatever, Cash App developers or whatever. Like, hey man, we need our own platform.

But there still needs to be some software with it 'cause it's not gonna work by itself.

I don't think this is gonna like change much in, in the landscape?

I think it'll take a few years to have some good effect where— because, you know, there's risk with it because once the money's sent, that's it. There's no chargebacks, there's no asking for your money back. So you make a mistake, you know. So, you know, Zelle was—

what's another example of the government doing something just because?

The government doing something just because?

This, this seems like a, like like an instance of them doing something just because they're not involved or like they don't have a—

I mean, they really, you know, the first— when they first started, you know, electronic benefits, you know, it was basically going on like a debit card. I know it wasn't, wasn't—

it still goes on a debt, like, right?

But now it's their card.

I pay child support, right? And it goes on a debit card, right? It's been that way forever.

I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about like EBT. Yeah, I'm talking about— yeah, but the EBT, at first those were issued by banks. Now it's issued by the government.

What do you mean it was issued by banks?

But yeah, they had like a partnership with like Chase Bank or Wells Fargo.

My EBD card never had no Chase.

No, no, no, but they're the ones who were doing it for them. Now they do it themselves. It's their own network.

Okay, I get it.

They don't have— they're not piggybacking on somebody else's network. I think they have their own network now for stuff like that.

Anyway, what do you think? What do you guys think of FedNow?

Uh, I don't know, but they're saying now they want to get into the Zelle game. But I think Zelle, you know, Zelle and Venmo and PayPal, they all got slapped around with fraudulent activity. And now my bank, you know, and I think most banks probably put all the same stop measures in place so people don't send money to people they don't know. And after, you have to do a checkbox and you have to hit stuff on your phone and put in a code. Now they've made more steps so somebody is less likely to get ripped off. Plus, if somebody sends too, too much money, you know, the bank can, you know, call the person on the phone. They have it really set up to flag people, you know. Are you sure you want to send somebody $7,000?

Right, so, well, that's good. Anyway, before you ended up, man, uh, I got the two little things I wanted to talk about that I thought, you know, would be kind of interesting. Well, they're big news in, you know, my side of the— on my side of the fence. Uh, um, one is the, uh, the doomsday approach of this Google Analytics 4 integration. Um, I've been using Google Analytics for over a decade now, and, um, it, you know, it is what it is. It's always been a very useful tool for me and, and, and whatnot. So I am always, uh, I'm a fan of innovation and things changing and updating and getting, you know, improvements, right? Um, so I'm excited to see like the differences and, and the new metrics that it provides us. Um, unfortunately my counterparts are not there. Like, a lot of people are really scared because it is going to change. There's a lot of drastic things that they're improving. I'd say improvements, you know, like Neil Patel says, like, he's really impressed with it. I'm sure he's already been working. I've been working a few—

I've seen a couple of videos from Neil Patel and some other articles about the Google thing. Today I came across something that Google had. I didn't even know when I was filling something out, it said, oh, do you have Google Shopping set up for your business? It's like you could go put an item in some kind of like Google—

been around forever.

Yeah, I never even heard of it.

That's what Google Shop is, is when you see the products up there, that's Google Shop.

Oh, that's— I'm surprised.

Google Analytics 4, man, um, they're going to be— they're eliminating some stuff that they thought they— we didn't use. And so yeah, that's going to be cool, man. I, I'm already, uh, set up for the domains.

Nice.

Um, it keeps telling me I need to complete the setup, but I've already completed it. And so I hope they, they don't kill the, uh, you know, the Universal Analytics side like out of nowhere so that it gives you guys, Google, some time to like work the bugs out. I don't, I don't think that, that that would be the approach they would take is just like kill. But the way that everyone's is, a lot of people are really nervous about it. And I would say there's a ton of videos out there for you to, you know, to watch, you know, tutorials on how to convert your Universal Analytics property to a GA4 property. It's really simple. Just follow the, you know, the setup wizard. Yeah. So, so there's that. And then the other thing, you know, it's been huge. Everyone, you know, is Threads, the new social media network by Instagram. And I'm not really in love with it. I like it. I, I'm a fan of Twitter. I'm like, I'm an old head, so I'm, I'm the young old head. So like, I've been using Twitter for a really long time. I really, I've had Twitter since the first day it opened, right? The first day you could create an account. I deleted one of my profiles. I regret it. I should have kept it. I just, I don't know. I was whatever, probably mad at something. And so I deleted that. But yeah, man, Threads seems for all the different, you know, all the, restrictions that our buddy— well, your buddy Elon, uh, has done, you know, the 600 or 6,000.

Yeah, you can read 600 or 6,000 tweets if you're not verified. TweetDeck too.

And if you are verified, you can. And then for verified accounts, I don't—

I—

there's just too much going on, Elon, dude. You got to, you got to relax, bro, and just let us nerds get to it. You know, like you want it to be one thing, but like there's people who use your platform and they have used it this way for years, bro. And you know, you're making too many changes and that's, you know, people love change, but too much change at once is no good for anybody. And so I think Threads, and what Mark Zuckerberg gave the big middle finger to his, his competition over at Twitter. And, you know, I was talking to our social media manager, Sean. Shout out to Sean. You're killing it, bro. Peace. Peace. And we were— what were we talking about? Threads. And he said he wasn't really using it either. He, you know, he's not a real big Twitter Twitter guy and stuff like that. But so yeah, man, I think that there's a disconnect between Elon version of Twitter.

Yeah.

And what people use Twitter as.

You know what's crazy?

So all the— but the thing is that people jumped over to Threads. That's what I was getting at. Like 10 million accounts in like a couple hours. So yeah, I could dig it. I've been trying to—

bigger and bigger every day.

I've been trying to post, you know, you know, just saying what's up, you know, just trying to keep active. I posted a picture of my hibiscus tree.

Just nice.

You know, I'm sure Instagram and Threads will be able to— so like when you'll be able to, you post some on Instagram, it'll automatically post on Threads or vice versa. So yeah, so that, that would probably, you know, that'll probably work. But yeah, so tell me what you guys think about Threads, man. See, let me know how your businesses are using it. Every business that I follow is on Threads, so it's obviously popular.

I see a lot of people on Threads. I made a thread for Rocky.

There you go.

But the thing is, is that like my daughter is a meteorologist, right? And they were using the TweetDeck to do all the for— when they put out the emergency, like, information, like there's a tornado coming, right? Now they took away her blue check mark, you know, and they took away— they're taking away the TweetDeck thing, and they're making it hard for meteorologists to do their job because that was one of— that's one of the main ways. Like, there's people on these farms or out in the field, and the, you know, so now they're trying to get more people to download, like, the station's weather app. Okay, so they can get alerts because a lot of people use Twitter to get these alerts to see is there a tornado in their area. And then are the crazy tornado chasers out there in Iowa, you know, posting pictures of where the tornadoes are and all that. Nice. So, and then the last story which came out just before we came on the air, there was a little bit about it this morning. Celsius which went bankrupt like last year. They were having people stake crypto, and then they were, you know, also letting people like give them crypto and then buying houses. And the whole thing imploded. And then the FTX guy came and like supposedly bailed it out, and then the whole thing went kaput. And all of a sudden today, out of nowhere, They're arresting the guy, throwing it. They want to— they're arresting him for fraud. I'm like, man, arresting this guy for fraud. And meanwhile, you know, FTX is over there chilling on the beach in California, you know, uh, Sam Bankman-Fried. And they're— now they're going to throw the Celsius guy in, in jail. The SEC's at— everybody's after him. And meanwhile, all those houses are in limbo. And like, we went to—

I hope everyone's squatting in there. I hope the banks are having a—

I don't know who owns those houses. We talked about it before.

No one owns the houses if the whole— if the whole company went bankrupt.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Like, I mean, the banks are looking at the owners of that, and a lot of these—

there's no bank.

That's what I mean. These companies who bought all these houses, right? Like Celsius. Who are they going to— come after?

I have no idea. The houses were back.

They should give all those houses to the people that's living in them houses.

I get they lost all their crypto.

Give it to them.

Yeah. Like when we went to Bitcoin 2022, they had a massive— remember that Celsius company had a massive booth?

Yeah, they did.

We went over and asked them like, how do you do that? And there must have been, what, at least 10 different companies saying stake your crypto and then buy— get a mortgage. On a house.

Yeah, that was big.

All those companies went kaput, gone, out of business, done. And then at Bitcoin 2023, you didn't see any of those companies there. No crypto exchanges, and the whole crypto thing imploded.

Bitcoin 2023 was nothing.

It was a big letdown in comparison to 2022. Yeah, it was—

I wouldn't say a letdown. I wasn't, I wasn't expecting much. Well, I wasn't expecting, considering the, the climate of crypto.

Yeah, the tax situation. I was talking to a guy—

tax situation, the government situation. I mean, they were just SOL. They're like, they— the 2023 came and the government just put the hounds on.

Yeah, choke point 2.0.

That's what we got. That it was not— I don't, I don't get— I don't know what happened, but somebody didn't get their palms greased enough. Something, something changed.

They don't, they don't—

somebody somewhere, I don't know what, you know, listen, or somebody lost a whole bunch of money in some crypto, in a crypto plot.

Yeah.

And they're like, forget this, I am going to— I'm making everybody's life miserable.

Like, one of the things with crypto that I didn't like about it. I've generally liked it, right? But the thing I didn't like about it, like, see, they let too many people put out coins, too many tokens, and nothing was behind the tokens. Then, and then people like—

well, that's the point.

No, but I met one guy who bought all these tokens. He paid like $3,000 a token. Now they're worth like 3 cents a piece.

Shame on him for not doing his due diligence though.

Yeah, I'm just saying.

I'm sorry, like, I don't, you know, I've been in this, this tech thing for a long time, man, and I'm one of the person that missed out on Bitcoin. Like, I didn't believe it. I had a guy, there was a guy came to the office, he put a whole presentation together, had a slide deck, PowerPoint, you know, he was there for an hour. And we were at that time, I think it was a $2.25.

Can you imagine? Yeah.

And none of us did it. None of us did it. We were inside of a tech incubator in Milwaukee called Vet Transfer, and we were working on a ticketing platform that would give out mobile ticket tickets, coupons, and vouchers. And yeah, man, they came in there and we just like, yeah, I don't— we just didn't see it, right? We didn't, you know, we didn't. Believe in it.

And it took a long time, unfortunately.

It really quickly after that meeting.

Oh really?

Oh yeah, we would have— I, I wouldn't be sitting here right now. I'd be on my own island.

Believe me, I would be on my own island too. I had a guy come to me and he said, oh, you want to buy some Bitcoin? And me and my brothers talked about it, and the guy was like, oh, you can get in now at a, at $100 apiece.

How long ago was that?

Uh, several years ago.

And then, because I'm talking— so it's 2023, I'm talking around 2009, maybe 2010.

Yeah, around that time. Yeah, it was like—

so maybe it wasn't $2.25, it was probably like $225.

This was like— sure, this was like $100. Could have got in.

The guy's like, oh, that doesn't— yeah, no, because it wasn't expensive, man.

We were all like So I know a guy—

maybe it was $25, I don't remember—

crazy story. I know a guy whose son was playing some video game, some obscure video game, and the tokens were all Bitcoins. And then when Bitcoin went to $70,000, this guy's son realized, he goes, man, I have like 2,000 or 3,000 of these Bitcoins on this game. That I stopped— he stopped playing, right? So he went and fired that computer back up, and all the tokens were still there.

Nice.

This kid started cashing them out on Coinbase. Uh, the IRS came after that like real quick, and you know, what could they do though? He had to pay the taxes.

So what? Yeah, so he's super rich right now, right?

Yeah, the kid became super rich. And shout out to that kid, a game he played when he was a teen, like 12, 13 years old, and then 10, 12 years later, boom, it's all worth a ton of money, right? He's cashing out coins all day long on, on Coinbase, right? And his account got frozen, and he went to, you know, they had to go to an accountant and deal with the IRS and send them their money and That's how it all worked out. But you know, that's the crazy stuff that goes on. Robots are definitely coming. We see it everywhere— pump your gas, making your guacamole, you know, deliver— probably delivering a p— well, Domino's has that robotic car that'll deliver a pizza, although I've seen videos where people go and they see the car and they throw it over.

Yeah, I've seen a bunch of wild videos of them destroying that property.

Yeah, in LA, in LA they destroyed that thing. Gas pump in your car, meat getting sliced at the deli, you know. Who knows what's next with, with, with robotics? Just so long as we don't have Terminator.

Well, this isn't really robotics, but Harvard's about to have an AI bot teach, uh, one of their courses next month— next year.

That's crazy.

Semester.

Yeah, AI bot. I saw one other thing that I'll mention about—

it's like a medical class too, I think.

AI. GoDaddy selling .ai now.

Well, GoDaddy Domains sold their— that company to Squarespace, so GoDaddy ain't selling nothing.

Really? Yeah, I didn't know that. They sold the whole thing?

GoDaddy Domains sold it They're that part of the umbrella.

Prices went up. It wasn't cheap to buy one. I got one today.

.ai. Yeah, no, they're not cheap. Anything that's a, you know, one of those custom— I forget what the word they use for the—

yeah, custom domain, whatever.

Yeah, yeah, that they are charging people out of the, you know, through the roof.

So, but then, you know, I, I went on— I know I usually use Edge And but today when I went on there, for some reason it pops up a whole nother— there's like an extra thing and it pops up a Edge.ai and there's like a whatever, the Microsoft, uh, answer to ChatGPT. I don't know if it's ChatGPT.

It is ChatGPT.

Oh, that's what it is. Yeah, there's some— and then it's connected to a search. I was like, that was real. I have their own form, right? Their own form, right? They integrated—

they might.

I don't know.

I don't know if ChatGPT is directly integrated into Microsoft. I don't think so. I think ChatGPT is its own thing.

Yeah, ChatGPT is its own thing. I'm saying Microsoft had this thing. I know.

Yeah, they have their own AI search.

Yeah, I didn't even know. I was like, wow, that's really cool. I didn't use—

it's been like 2 months, bro.

Well, I just saw it for the first time.

I don't know.

I don't— I'm not like venturing. I got too much going on.

Yeah, Google, man, yo, if you do listen— There's Bard. It is, there is Bard. But the problem is you guys aren't giving me access. You're saying that my company hasn't given me access and I am the admin and I go back to the backend and I look and I have enabled the beta testing for people in my organization. And I'm still unable to access Bard. So please stop hating on Jay, man. Give me access.

I want—

I want—

let's have the Bard.

I want to play with your AI.

Want to see what the Bard will do.

He's going to be my little homie.

I'm happy with the ChatGPT with that plugin you found us. That thing's pretty cool. The—

it's a good extension for Google.

Yeah, that thing is pretty cool. That— it's—

well, it's meant for SEO stuff, so But I like it.

It's, it's cool. Helps with stuff.

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