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Speaker 1: Welcome to How the Money. I'm Joel and I am Matt.

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Speaker 1: Today we're asking the question is crypto going extinct? With

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Speaker 1: Stacy Marie Ishmael. That's right, Joel, we are diving into

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Speaker 1: cryptocurrencies today because guess what, Uh, there's a very good

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Speaker 1: chance that if you're listening, your crypto holdings are worth

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Speaker 1: much less and you might be a little concerned. Um.

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Speaker 1: And if so, it turns out you're not alone because

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Speaker 1: a recent bank Rate survey show that only about thirty

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Speaker 1: of millennials are comfortable investing in crypto today, which is

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Speaker 1: down from about a year ago. There's just not as

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Speaker 1: much confidence in crypto as there used to be. And

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Speaker 1: so we're excited to be joined by Stacy Marie Ishmael

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Speaker 1: for yours. Stacy, she used to work at The Finance Times,

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Speaker 1: where she started the block Alphaville. She's worked as a

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Speaker 1: senior editor at Apple, and now she's a writer and

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Speaker 1: podcaster over at Bloomberg, where basically she eats and drinks

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Speaker 1: crypto every single day. So, Stacy, thank you for joining

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Speaker 1: us today. Thank you so much for having me. I

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Speaker 1: wouldn't say that crypto is like super delicious as a mean,

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Speaker 1: I was wondering. Yeah, bacon eggs in a side of

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Speaker 1: cryptos like that that sounds like a nice breakfast and

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Speaker 1: and well balanced, probably too. Uh Well, the first question

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Speaker 1: we ask everybody that comes on the show, Stacy, is

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Speaker 1: we want to know what they explored John Matt and

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Speaker 1: I we sported John beer. We already showed you ours

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Speaker 1: before we started recording. It's uh an expensive like twenty

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Speaker 1: dollar bottle craft here that we're enjoying on today's episode

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Speaker 1: and very much looking forward to talking about this at

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Speaker 1: the end. Yeah. Well, and so we we sporge on

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Speaker 1: that while we're saving and investing well for the future. So, yeah,

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Speaker 1: what's that sport for you? What do you like to

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Speaker 1: spend money on where people might think you're you're a

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Speaker 1: little crazy for for doing it? Fountain pens. Oh, very nice.

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Speaker 1: It's basically like the sit of cryptocurrency, like what is

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Speaker 1: the most Yeah? Absolutely? Was this something you've always been

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Speaker 1: into or was it because you needed something to juxtapose

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Speaker 1: against cryptocurrencies and all the digital stuff that you're into. Oh,

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Speaker 1: I've always been into it. So I'm left handed and

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Speaker 1: a curse of being left handed, as you find that

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Speaker 1: most pens don't work for you, and so I kind

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Speaker 1: of fell down this path relatively early on of trying

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Speaker 1: to find the perfect pen and trying to find, you know,

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Speaker 1: something that would make my handwriting look a little bit

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Speaker 1: less like chicken scratches. And somebody was like, have you

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Speaker 1: heard of fountain pens? I was like, no, but I'm

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Speaker 1: going to find out everything there is to know. And

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Speaker 1: then I found out how expensive these can get, and

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Speaker 1: it was a whole thing. So Matt and I we

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Speaker 1: have a mutual friend who got so into fountain pens.

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Speaker 1: He and I didn't. I was like, oh, that's cool.

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Speaker 1: I'm glad that you're that you're interested in this, and

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Speaker 1: he would talk about it occasionally show off his pens.

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Speaker 1: But he went to a physical conference I have really

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Speaker 1: wanted to go to. Okay, he had a really good time.

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Speaker 1: So I think it would be worth the time and

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Speaker 1: energy that it would take for you to get like,

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Speaker 1: I didn't know that was a thing, but okay, So

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Speaker 1: can I ask what is the most expensive pen that

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Speaker 1: you own? It's okay, ask you can ask, um, the

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Speaker 1: most expensive pen that I own is not the most

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Speaker 1: expensive pen that I want, but I would say that

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Speaker 1: I have spent at least there was one pen in

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Speaker 1: particular that cost me more than all Right, I like it.

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Speaker 1: I would love to just I mean, I've never held

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Speaker 1: a pen like that before. It is I'm gorgeous, It

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Speaker 1: writes beautifully, it's perfectly balanced. It is a work of arts. Okay, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's exactly. I have to follow up with this then,

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Speaker 1: So how often are you writing letters to people? Because

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Speaker 1: I would think if this is a sporge, like you

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Speaker 1: don't want to get these pens just so you can

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Speaker 1: you're not looking just look look at I'm putting them

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Speaker 1: on the wall or something like that, Like are you

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Speaker 1: are you often writing letters like old school style to

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Speaker 1: fans and family? I even make wax seals for them.

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Speaker 1: That's that's all. That is awesome. That is Can you

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Speaker 1: send us a letter? We will send address. We'll give

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Speaker 1: you our our millions, like put us on your your

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Speaker 1: Christmas card list or whatever whatever in holiday card you

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Speaker 1: send out. We would love to be on the receiving

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Speaker 1: end of that beautiful writing. Well. I love that it's

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Speaker 1: coming back to and and that you're helping bring it

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Speaker 1: back because it's it's one of the like there's not

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Speaker 1: much better than something handwritten from somebody to share to

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Speaker 1: show that like you, you, you were thoughtful about you,

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Speaker 1: you care about them. So I think it's cool. I

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Speaker 1: think it's super cool as well. Thanks for sharing that, Stacy.

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Speaker 1: Uh So, your background, right, like, you've lived, You've gone

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Speaker 1: to school all over the world, just generally speaking, How

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Speaker 1: has spending just a significant amount of time, you know,

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Speaker 1: on a few different continents, how has that impacted your

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Speaker 1: perspective when it comes to just economic matters that we're

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Speaker 1: dealing with today. I think I've been very fortunate to

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Speaker 1: be able to live what it feels like to not

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Speaker 1: just like think about things like foreign exchange in the abstract,

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Speaker 1: but actually go from one country to another where you know,

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Speaker 1: all of my savings were in the Trinidad and Tobago

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Speaker 1: dollar and I was paying bills in the the British

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Speaker 1: pounds sterling, or to experience what it's like to have

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Speaker 1: in one place, what would be considered kind of like

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Speaker 1: a very comfortable standard of living that costs X y

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Speaker 1: z amount, and then you moved to say San Francisco,

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Speaker 1: where for exactly the same amount and rent you essentially

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Speaker 1: live in a closet with no window. Um and it's

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Speaker 1: it's really made me appreciate how important having a range

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Speaker 1: of understandings of local contexts is as a as a reporter,

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Speaker 1: as an and as an editor. Okay, talk to me,

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Speaker 1: talk to me about your how you got interested in cryptocurrency,

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Speaker 1: because yeah, you're at the point you host a daily

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Speaker 1: podcast about it. Like Matt said at the beginning, you

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Speaker 1: eat and breathe crypto and so like, what what got

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Speaker 1: to this point where Stacy Marie Ishmael is now like

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Speaker 1: that enthusiastic, that interested in the space where you hold

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Speaker 1: client sinker that's your day job. Now, this is a

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Speaker 1: reasonable question, and it comes from, I think the confluence

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Speaker 1: of several of my interests. So when I started as

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Speaker 1: a finance report to financial journalist, I was responsible for

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Speaker 1: covering structured finance, for covering things like derivatives, for covering

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Speaker 1: things that were called credit default swaps, um. I was

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Speaker 1: looking at mortgage backed securities, you know, all the things

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Speaker 1: that in two thousand and eight seemed like a good

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Speaker 1: idea until they stopped seeming like a good idea. And

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Speaker 1: so I've been I've always been interested in, like what

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Speaker 1: is the nerdiest possible corner of a financial market and

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Speaker 1: how can I make that interesting and accessible to people

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Speaker 1: other than me and my immediate editors. And I've always

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Speaker 1: also been the kind of person who is super interested

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Speaker 1: in technology, Like I've worked at large and small technology companies.

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Speaker 1: I was definitely the friend that would build your website.

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Speaker 1: I was definitely the friend that you'd be like, I

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Speaker 1: can't get by pre ne to work, like try this.

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Speaker 1: And you know, crypto is essentially the confluence of risk pricing,

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Speaker 1: financial arbitrage and speculation, and interesting underlying technology smashed together.

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Speaker 1: M Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, So I mean, on

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Speaker 1: that note, can you maybe just give us a brief

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Speaker 1: cryptocurrency history or just like an evolution, And obviously there's

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Speaker 1: a lot to cover, but cover and kind of like

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Speaker 1: go over the aspects of crypto that you think are

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Speaker 1: most important given where we are with crypto today. So

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Speaker 1: in a historical context, the main thing to understand is

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Speaker 1: that crypto, which started as bitcoin, started as a rejection

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Speaker 1: of traditional banking, started as a rejection of the idea

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Speaker 1: that governments should have a say in your ability to

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Speaker 1: transact with somebody else, and started as a rejection of

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Speaker 1: the idea that you should have to trust big centralized

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Speaker 1: agencies like central banks or banks in general, to be

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Speaker 1: an intermediary in those same types of trans actions. And

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Speaker 1: this was all written out in a relatively short white

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Speaker 1: paper about thirteen years ago that was the origins of bitcoin,

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Speaker 1: and it was based on you know, like some some

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Speaker 1: political theories, some philosophies, some mathematical proofs, some conspiracy theory. Toadah,

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Speaker 1: you've got a bitcoin white paper. And since then what

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Speaker 1: it has evolved into is absolutely for a lot of

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Speaker 1: people are kind of an ideological expression of other deeply

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Speaker 1: held beliefs that they might have. For some people it's

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Speaker 1: a means of transacting. For some people it's a means

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Speaker 1: of you know, kind of speculating and generating some kind

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Speaker 1: of financial yield. And for other people it's just like

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Speaker 1: an interesting problem to be solved. They're like, oh, this

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Speaker 1: this is a cool piece of technology. What what can

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Speaker 1: I build on top of this? Yeah, So it seems

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Speaker 1: like there's definitely some we mentioned political elements are certainly

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Speaker 1: some like libertarian libertarian leaning elements right in a lot

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Speaker 1: of the crypto space. And and we we take a

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Speaker 1: look step back and you look at maybe decentralized finance

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Speaker 1: as a whole um I guess what what do you

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Speaker 1: think what makes it worth striving for? Or what do

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Speaker 1: these people, the people who are who are crypto enthusiasts enthusiasts,

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Speaker 1: what what what makes them think that the centralized finance

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Speaker 1: is worth striving for. I guess to our listener, the

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Speaker 1: average American, right, it feels like the current system works

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Speaker 1: decently well. Sure, the banks, their credit card companies, they

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Speaker 1: make lots of money on every transaction that we make.

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Speaker 1: But you know, the system, it meets our needs pretty

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Speaker 1: well and it seems to hold up. So why in

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Speaker 1: the world do we need defy in our lives? Well,

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Speaker 1: if let's jump back to two thousand and you know,

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Speaker 1: the sort of late two thousand's, early two thousand tens,

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Speaker 1: when for a lot of people, particularly people in the

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Speaker 1: United States, they wouldn't say that the financial system was

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Speaker 1: working particularly well. There were tons of people that had

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Speaker 1: lost their homes to mortgage foreclosure. There were people who

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Speaker 1: had lost their savings to bank failures. There were people

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Speaker 1: who were looking at those same banks that they were saying, hey, sorry,

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Speaker 1: we we can't pay you back. We're out of money.

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Speaker 1: Their ceo s were like flying around in private It's

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Speaker 1: like there was this real perception on both ends of

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Speaker 1: the political spectrum that you know, banks, the financial system

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Speaker 1: was not serving the quote unquote average American and a

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Speaker 1: lot of the belief system of crypto is well reject

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Speaker 1: that system that wasn't serving you, and let's create a

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Speaker 1: different one that is based on much more egalitarian principles.

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Speaker 1: And that idea of we don't need to rely on

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Speaker 1: somebody else who is just like looking to monetize us

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Speaker 1: to you know, to be able to participate in a

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Speaker 1: financial system was really powerful for a lot of people

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Speaker 1: and remains really powerful for a lot of people, even

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Speaker 1: though a lot of people are doing just fine and

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Speaker 1: are not facing foreclosure and actually are using banks to

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Speaker 1: store their considerable assets that they may have generated from

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Speaker 1: bitcoin or otherwise. You know, this narrative, the story the

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Speaker 1: white paper behind crypto, like our bitcoin specifically, like it's

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Speaker 1: it's been like like you said, it's been around for

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Speaker 1: a while, but I think a lot of folks have

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Speaker 1: kind of jumped onto it within the recent years. Um,

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Speaker 1: do you think that that story, that narrative combined with

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Speaker 1: than what we experienced with the pandemic, right, like the

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Speaker 1: pandemic coupled with stimmy checks. Do you think all those

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Speaker 1: things combined contributed to the to the rise and the

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Speaker 1: fall that that we've seen cryptocurrencies and door Absolutely, So

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Speaker 1: I have a um, my friends will have heard me

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Speaker 1: say this, So if any of them are listening, they're

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Speaker 1: about to rule their eyes. But I have I have

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Speaker 1: a unified theory of like video games, meme stocks, crypto reddit,

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Speaker 1: which is that all of these things kind of tapped

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Speaker 1: into a desire to be a part of something. They

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Speaker 1: tapped into the fact that a lot of people were

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Speaker 1: just spending a lot of time staring at computer screens

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Speaker 1: because they couldn't go outside, and that for various reasons,

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Speaker 1: some folks had like an above average amount of disposable income.

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Speaker 1: And so you know, whether it was people suddenly spending

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Speaker 1: a bunch of money playing video games or getting aggressively

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Speaker 1: into online poker in the states where that's allowed, or

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Speaker 1: you know, trying to persuade everybody that buying game stop

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Speaker 1: is a good idea, or shares and game Stop was

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Speaker 1: a good idea. It was the sort of the same fuel.

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Speaker 1: Everything was fueled by very similar things, and none of

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Speaker 1: those things really have to do with that sense of

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Speaker 1: you know, pure libertarianism. None of that necessarily requires you

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Speaker 1: to have read a white paper. It's just a sense of, Oh,

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Speaker 1: this coin that looks like a sheba. You knew that

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Speaker 1: Elon Muski is talking about. That seems fun and I

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Speaker 1: need fun, and I'm going to do something like that.

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Speaker 1: And you know, so there was it is impossible to

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Speaker 1: separate some of the price increases of the past two

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Speaker 1: years with the overarching macro reality of all of these

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Speaker 1: other things that were happening at the same time. It's

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Speaker 1: it's almost like it was just in the right place

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Speaker 1: at the right time. Like it kind of makes me

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Speaker 1: wonder if cryptocurrencies didn't exist, Well, what when we have

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Speaker 1: turned to write like just as a world in particular

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Speaker 1: here in the US, Like, what would all of those

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Speaker 1: individuals have done instead of dumping that money into crypto

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Speaker 1: As physical communities are kind of breaking down and you

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Speaker 1: can't in time with people that you're close to in

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Speaker 1: the ways that you're used to. It's the cryptocurrency is

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Speaker 1: kind of filled a void and I don't know what

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Speaker 1: they absolutely did, And it's you know, whether you look

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Speaker 1: at subreddits like our Cryptocurrency, which is one of the

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Speaker 1: largest on Reddit, or you know, Discord, which I tend

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Speaker 1: to describe as like slack for video games. There were

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Speaker 1: so many people in there that in between sharing trading

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Speaker 1: tips or whatever they were talking about, we're just like

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Speaker 1: talking about their lives and you know, just kind of

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Speaker 1: sharing experiences and finding community in a way that also

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Speaker 1: happened to be like, oh, by the way, I'm buying

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Speaker 1: this thing is going to the moon. You should get

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Speaker 1: in on that as well. Yeah, okay, so I guess there.

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Speaker 1: But there are more and more naysayers in the crypto

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Speaker 1: space now or or or like you know, they talk

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Speaker 1: about crypto even though they're not they're not in on

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Speaker 1: on the game. And Jamie Diamonds, the CEO of Chase,

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Speaker 1: he recently he called crypto. I mean this, I mean,

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Speaker 1: I'm sure this made ripples in that Reddit community, right.

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Speaker 1: He called crypto a decentralized Ponzi scheme. And he's He's

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Speaker 1: not the only one who's kind of a Debbie Downer

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Speaker 1: in this regard, but it certainly feels like, you know,

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Speaker 1: anyone like Matt Side at the beginning, who invested some

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Speaker 1: of their money around Super Bowl time earlier this year,

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Speaker 1: like they might feel the same way as he does, so,

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Speaker 1: I don't know how how has the crypto community responded

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Speaker 1: to big time players like it are they? Is he

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Speaker 1: like the arch nemesis now of the crypto community. There

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Speaker 1: are so many animals in crypto, like Jamie Diavon, like

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Speaker 1: some you know, the it's like you know those murder

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Speaker 1: boards where there's just a bunch of people and they're

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Speaker 1: connected by red string like some dudes. Somewhere definitely has

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Speaker 1: like Jamie Diamond's face as well as Somewhere board somewhere. Um, well,

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Speaker 1: I'll say a couple of things. One is, it is

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Speaker 1: very much the case that a lot of people bought

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Speaker 1: into crypto because prices were hitting all time highs and

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Speaker 1: there was this this you know, legit fomo, this fair

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Speaker 1: of missing out, this idea of like wow, all of

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Speaker 1: my friends are suddenly rich on paper, Um, I want

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Speaker 1: to get in on this action. And so, and that

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Speaker 1: was before the super Bowl. For me, the Super Bowl

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Speaker 1: was kind of like the toppi Ist top of the

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Speaker 1: marketing crency. Um, you know, if like million dollar ads

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Speaker 1: with famous celebrities, exactly Matt Damon is telling you to

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Speaker 1: buy something, it's like a strong counter indicator. Otherwise you're weak,

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Speaker 1: are you not your exactly so, but that enthusiasm has

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Speaker 1: been going on for several months, and you know, like

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Speaker 1: that September to December period is when you couldn't if

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Speaker 1: you were a celebrity and you weren't talking about your

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Speaker 1: board ape and ft like, were you even a celebrity?

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Speaker 1: And but the reality for a lot of other people

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Speaker 1: who bought into crypto in two thousand thirteen, two thousand

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Speaker 1: fourteen when it was trading like the low thousands of dollars,

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Speaker 1: is that even though it's down, you know, more than

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Speaker 1: fifty this year, those people are still fine. And so

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Speaker 1: you have this kind of dichotomy emerging in the market

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Speaker 1: of folks who piled in at the top and folks

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Speaker 1: who have been in from the beginning. And it's sort

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Speaker 1: of it's almost like two sides talking past each other

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Speaker 1: because a lot of the folks who piled in at

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Speaker 1: the top, and to be clear, some of the people

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Speaker 1: piled on the top were very sophisticated. They were, in

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Speaker 1: kind of parlance, I'm sure folks and you're shore familiar with,

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Speaker 1: considered like qualified investors. Right. They had they had the

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Speaker 1: liquid assets, they had the background, they had the experience um,

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Speaker 1: and they made decisions that institutional investors, including major hedge funds,

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Speaker 1: were also making, Like this token looks like a smart bet,

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Speaker 1: you know, hindsight and all that stuff. So I would

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Speaker 1: be very careful not to say that everybody who came

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Speaker 1: in because of the Super Bowl was like didn't know

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Speaker 1: what they were doing. People who very much knew what

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Speaker 1: they were doing also made bad bets and bad calculations.

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Speaker 1: That's very true, good distinction to make, Stacy. You know,

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Speaker 1: we're kind of talking about crypto here, just kind of

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Speaker 1: widely and broadly. We're gonna take a quick break, but

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Speaker 1: after that break, we're going to dive into kind of

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Speaker 1: some of the more specific and practical applications that we

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Speaker 1: can see cryptocurrencies impacting our lives directly. We'll get to

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Speaker 1: all of that right after this our we're background the break,

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Speaker 1: still talking with Stacy Marie Ishmael about cryptocurrency. And you know,

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Speaker 1: we covered a lot of history, old history, recent history

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Speaker 1: just a second ago. But obviously since the Super Bowl time,

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Speaker 1: right since the topi ist of the top Stacy, we're

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Speaker 1: we're experiencing a lot of volatility um a lull in

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Speaker 1: the crypto market, right and so I guess I'm curious

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Speaker 1: to hear from you. Like, We've got a lot of

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Speaker 1: history to draw from when it comes to stock market recoveries,

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Speaker 1: but we just, you know, we just don't have as

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Speaker 1: much history on the crypto front. So how have you

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Speaker 1: seen investing strategies shifting in the face of less data

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Speaker 1: less information? There's a phrase in crypto that is deployed

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Speaker 1: in a way that's not always helpful. Um that's called

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Speaker 1: do your own research. And it's this it's you know,

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Speaker 1: you would have seen this at the heights of meme

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Speaker 1: stocks as well, But it's just this idea of you

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Speaker 1: should be able to find out and you should be

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Speaker 1: able to you know, like use Google, use Reddit, use

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Speaker 1: discord talks to your financial advisor, whatever, but you should

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Speaker 1: be able to figure this out for yourself. The reality, though,

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Speaker 1: and I say this from the vantage points of somebody

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Speaker 1: who works at in a newsroom that has access to

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Speaker 1: like the best, fastest, most real time financial data in

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Speaker 1: the world, you can stare at crypto data all day

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Speaker 1: long and not be sure what exactly you're looking at because,

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Speaker 1: as you say, you have a relatively short amount of

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Speaker 1: like sample, right, it's you know, Thirteen years is not

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Speaker 1: a long time for a financial asset to be in existence.

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Speaker 1: You have many different types of pricing because one of

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Speaker 1: the things about being decentralized is like you don't necessarily

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Speaker 1: have one single clearing price that everybody agrees on is

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Speaker 1: is the price. It can be quite hard to get

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Speaker 1: certain other kinds of data, like volumes, you know, things

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Speaker 1: that if you are like a traditional look at a

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Speaker 1: person coming at this from a traditional financial perspective, You're like,

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Speaker 1: how do you assess the fundamentals of bitcoin? Question mark?

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Speaker 1: And the folks on the more skeptical side of the

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Speaker 1: spectrum will say, well, bitcoin has no fundamentals, And the

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Speaker 1: folks on the more maximalist side of the spectrum, she'll say,

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Speaker 1: the fundamentals don't matter. What matters is like the future

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Speaker 1: and the optimism and the limited supply, and so trying

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Speaker 1: to value this thing like a traditional financial asset is

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Speaker 1: extremely difficult. So what folks have done instead is things like, okay,

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Speaker 1: what is crypto correlated to? And for a decent stretch

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Speaker 1: over the past several months, it was very correlated with

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Speaker 1: like big cap tech stocks, So you know, whatever Apple

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Speaker 1: or Meta or Amazon were up to or even Netflix,

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Speaker 1: like that was what you were going to see in bitcoin.

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Speaker 1: You know, if you were to chart Bitcoin versus the

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Speaker 1: fangs for a while, it looked like a single chart.

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Speaker 1: Some people would look at this from the perspective of

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Speaker 1: something that you said earlier. Okay, like nobody has stimmy

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Speaker 1: checks anymore. There's less liquidity in the economy. That means

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Speaker 1: that fewer people are going to have the appetite for

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Speaker 1: riskier assets. We're going to expect that we're gonna adjust

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Speaker 1: our price targets downward. But again, those are things that

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Speaker 1: are almost orthogonal to crypto itself that folks are trying

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Speaker 1: to model on top of, because again they're just there

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Speaker 1: are very few crypto native inputs that are scalable and

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Speaker 1: available for the average person to analyze. Right, Yeah, as

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Speaker 1: we're trying to find these corollaries, I mean, a lot

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Speaker 1: of folks said that Bitcoin that it would be this

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Speaker 1: inflation hedge, almost like a like a digital form of gold, right,

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Speaker 1: and so folks turn to sort of like those safe

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Speaker 1: harbor assets like gold when you're seeing, you know, the

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Speaker 1: market tank. But obviously as inflation has been soaring, Bitcoin

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Speaker 1: has been crashing along with the market, and yeah, So,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I guess why is it that you think

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Speaker 1: bitcoin hasn't lived up to its billing. Is it just

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Speaker 1: an improper comparison to something like gold or to something

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Speaker 1: like some of the top stocks. Well, I think it's

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Speaker 1: the difference between like theory and the reality of markets, right,

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Speaker 1: which is, you can have a really good theory and

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Speaker 1: then markets will be like ha ha you thought. And

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Speaker 1: one of the but one of the things that is

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Speaker 1: true about crypto is this is a This is an asset.

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Speaker 1: Whether you're thinking about you know, the big ones like

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Speaker 1: ethereum and bitcoin or even the you know things like

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Speaker 1: stable points, but this is an asset that started in retail.

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Speaker 1: It started with people who were interested enough to solve

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Speaker 1: math problems on paper in their bedrooms, and then you

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Speaker 1: know kind of like upgrade their their PCs versus starting

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Speaker 1: from you know, fully formed from the minds of some

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Speaker 1: person at Goldman Sacks or JP Morgan or wherever. And

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Speaker 1: retail investors are much less predictable than your average institutional

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Speaker 1: investors and much less likely to be engaging in trillion

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Speaker 1: dollar group think. Billion dollar group think absolutely, but you know,

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Speaker 1: generally speaking, the capitalization of any one retail investor is

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Speaker 1: way way smaller. But as institutional investors got into the market,

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Speaker 1: they do the kinds of things that institutional investors do,

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Speaker 1: which is they pile into a position or or a

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Speaker 1: series of positions. They allocate their portfolios where they're looking

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Speaker 1: for things that can hedge, so you know, they want

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Speaker 1: something that's going up while something else is going down

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Speaker 1: and vice versa. And that has this like same making

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Speaker 1: tendency where trades become very crowded and they become identical

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Speaker 1: because you have a bunch of very large entities all

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Speaker 1: moving in the same direction at once. So something that

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Speaker 1: somebody else would argue is supposed to be uncoupled from

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Speaker 1: sociain kinds of fundamentals like becomes coupled because people who

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Speaker 1: are prone to big investment band group think are now

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Speaker 1: playing in that space. All right, I want to know

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Speaker 1: about like we we've seen problems with wallets and crypto

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Speaker 1: storage and people losing their passwords and getting locked out

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Speaker 1: and they've got like a deadline in order to figure

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Speaker 1: out what their password was or they're gonna lose like

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Speaker 1: a ton of money, and um so yeah, I guess

431
00:22:32,920 --> 00:22:35,280
Speaker 1: what's the best way for people maybe to go about

432
00:22:35,400 --> 00:22:38,600
Speaker 1: investing in cryptic currency. Do E t F solve this problem?

433
00:22:38,640 --> 00:22:40,800
Speaker 1: Like that's something that's happening outside of the United States.

434
00:22:40,880 --> 00:22:45,080
Speaker 1: We don't have any crypto approved ets here inside the

435
00:22:45,119 --> 00:22:46,919
Speaker 1: US yet. But is that the future and is that

436
00:22:46,960 --> 00:22:49,040
Speaker 1: the best way for people to have some exposure or

437
00:22:49,240 --> 00:22:52,120
Speaker 1: I guess there's two different problems. There's one like the

438
00:22:52,119 --> 00:22:54,360
Speaker 1: the investor wants some sort of exposure, but then there's

439
00:22:54,359 --> 00:22:57,520
Speaker 1: also that somebody who feels like there's a use case

440
00:22:57,560 --> 00:23:00,959
Speaker 1: they want actual crypto in some sort of you know,

441
00:23:01,440 --> 00:23:04,199
Speaker 1: at crypto wallet. Right, yeah, I mean you hit on

442
00:23:04,240 --> 00:23:07,119
Speaker 1: something really important, which is that the user experience of

443
00:23:07,160 --> 00:23:14,520
Speaker 1: crypto is challenging. Most people in most countries have figured

444
00:23:14,560 --> 00:23:19,399
Speaker 1: out paper money. A large percentage of people in countries

445
00:23:19,440 --> 00:23:22,240
Speaker 1: that you might not have expect have figured out digital money.

446
00:23:22,359 --> 00:23:25,840
Speaker 1: Right there, like Venmo native or Empesso native. They're like cash,

447
00:23:25,880 --> 00:23:28,919
Speaker 1: what is cash? I'll venmo you or i'll you know

448
00:23:29,000 --> 00:23:32,520
Speaker 1: cash app you or whatever those things are. Crypto has

449
00:23:32,640 --> 00:23:37,600
Speaker 1: not quite reached that same level of user friendliness. You

450
00:23:37,600 --> 00:23:40,400
Speaker 1: you start from a place of if you forget your password,

451
00:23:41,000 --> 00:23:44,080
Speaker 1: r I p all your money, right It's it's not

452
00:23:44,119 --> 00:23:47,520
Speaker 1: like you can call your bank and give them, you know,

453
00:23:47,840 --> 00:23:50,960
Speaker 1: nineteen different forms of identification and your firstborn child, and

454
00:23:51,000 --> 00:23:53,120
Speaker 1: they'd be like, okay, we've unlocked your account. Here you go.

455
00:23:53,560 --> 00:23:55,600
Speaker 1: There's none of that because again, this is a rejection

456
00:23:55,640 --> 00:23:58,600
Speaker 1: of centralization. There's no appeal to a higher authority to

457
00:23:58,640 --> 00:24:02,280
Speaker 1: say it comes down to you. And frankly, most people

458
00:24:02,280 --> 00:24:05,680
Speaker 1: are bounded password managements. It's just not a strength for

459
00:24:06,040 --> 00:24:09,919
Speaker 1: acquired right now. So you know, anything that gets like

460
00:24:10,000 --> 00:24:12,479
Speaker 1: really intensely built around make sure you remember this very

461
00:24:12,480 --> 00:24:15,879
Speaker 1: complicated combination of characters and never forget it's a hurdle.

462
00:24:16,520 --> 00:24:18,480
Speaker 1: Uh So, I think the last problem number one. I

463
00:24:18,480 --> 00:24:22,280
Speaker 1: think problem number two is the way that some folks

464
00:24:22,320 --> 00:24:24,919
Speaker 1: think about crypto is that as if it's as safe

465
00:24:25,200 --> 00:24:28,199
Speaker 1: as other kinds of financial assets. You know, like a

466
00:24:28,200 --> 00:24:33,040
Speaker 1: lot of the most um depressing testimony from people who

467
00:24:33,080 --> 00:24:36,360
Speaker 1: lost money to entities like Celsius and Voyage has been

468
00:24:36,400 --> 00:24:39,560
Speaker 1: folks saying I thought you were a bank, and I

469
00:24:39,560 --> 00:24:42,080
Speaker 1: thought you had f D I C type insurance and

470
00:24:42,080 --> 00:24:44,000
Speaker 1: I thought that'd be okay. And you you know, this

471
00:24:44,040 --> 00:24:46,439
Speaker 1: was marketed to me as a savings product. And so

472
00:24:46,480 --> 00:24:49,280
Speaker 1: I think there's a misunderstanding of the levels of risk here.

473
00:24:49,800 --> 00:24:52,080
Speaker 1: Even when you get two products like e t f s,

474
00:24:52,119 --> 00:24:56,280
Speaker 1: which are supposed to provide more of those traditional looking things,

475
00:24:56,320 --> 00:25:00,400
Speaker 1: they're still just rappers on an underlying asset class that's

476
00:25:00,440 --> 00:25:03,960
Speaker 1: right volatile, or on equities exposed to an underlying acid

477
00:25:04,000 --> 00:25:07,679
Speaker 1: class that is very volatile. Basically, that's why stable coins

478
00:25:07,680 --> 00:25:11,840
Speaker 1: weren't so stable, right because at least some of them, Yeah, right, right, yeah,

479
00:25:11,840 --> 00:25:14,240
Speaker 1: because like they get labeled as such, they get wrapped

480
00:25:14,359 --> 00:25:17,240
Speaker 1: in it's in the name exictically, it kind of gets

481
00:25:17,240 --> 00:25:19,600
Speaker 1: wrapped in that way, gets promoted, gets marketed the less

482
00:25:19,640 --> 00:25:22,399
Speaker 1: volatile form of cryptocurrency. But like you said, some of

483
00:25:22,400 --> 00:25:25,040
Speaker 1: them didn't experience that. But okay, so you're kind of

484
00:25:25,040 --> 00:25:28,480
Speaker 1: talking about some of the reasons why cryptocurrencies, how they're

485
00:25:28,480 --> 00:25:31,960
Speaker 1: not actually being used as a currency, right, Like you're

486
00:25:32,000 --> 00:25:34,479
Speaker 1: you're talking about first of all, it's tough to manage

487
00:25:35,160 --> 00:25:37,480
Speaker 1: whether or not they're safe. It's not an actual bank.

488
00:25:37,920 --> 00:25:41,600
Speaker 1: Are there other reasons that we're not seeing countries adopt cryptocurrencies?

489
00:25:41,640 --> 00:25:44,800
Speaker 1: We've seen too, right, right, So yet El Salvador, right,

490
00:25:44,880 --> 00:25:47,600
Speaker 1: like they made it their national exchange, but it just

491
00:25:47,800 --> 00:25:50,560
Speaker 1: in the Central African Republic is the other one. But

492
00:25:50,640 --> 00:25:53,119
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like it's it's getting widely adopted. Up.

493
00:25:53,119 --> 00:25:55,280
Speaker 1: I'm curious if there are some other reasons that you

494
00:25:55,280 --> 00:25:57,240
Speaker 1: think that that's the case. Yeah, I mean the big

495
00:25:57,240 --> 00:26:00,520
Speaker 1: one is slowness. And and this is thing that is

496
00:26:00,560 --> 00:26:03,080
Speaker 1: not like talked about as often. It's like you want

497
00:26:03,119 --> 00:26:07,400
Speaker 1: to send, like you want to buy something on a blockchain,

498
00:26:07,480 --> 00:26:09,600
Speaker 1: or you want to send money from one way to another,

499
00:26:10,080 --> 00:26:12,480
Speaker 1: most of the solutions that are available to most people

500
00:26:12,720 --> 00:26:16,440
Speaker 1: are nowhere near as fast as your average like Venmo transaction.

501
00:26:17,359 --> 00:26:20,240
Speaker 1: There's just a lot of latency built into these networks,

502
00:26:20,240 --> 00:26:22,800
Speaker 1: and there are fees that folks might not expect. Right.

503
00:26:22,880 --> 00:26:24,720
Speaker 1: It's which is not to say that there are no

504
00:26:24,800 --> 00:26:27,280
Speaker 1: fees in banking, because like every time I get dinged

505
00:26:27,359 --> 00:26:30,640
Speaker 1: for a wire transfer fee, I'm like, ah, But in

506
00:26:30,760 --> 00:26:33,080
Speaker 1: every single time you do a transaction in crypto, you

507
00:26:33,080 --> 00:26:36,320
Speaker 1: you pay some kind of fee to process that transaction.

508
00:26:36,880 --> 00:26:40,760
Speaker 1: And I remember in like last fall, when folks were

509
00:26:40,760 --> 00:26:42,240
Speaker 1: doing they were like, oh, we're going to save the

510
00:26:42,280 --> 00:26:45,240
Speaker 1: world by raising money in crypto. Donate here and we'll

511
00:26:45,240 --> 00:26:47,840
Speaker 1: send it to good cause of your choosing, And people

512
00:26:47,960 --> 00:26:49,760
Speaker 1: be like, great, I want to donate a hundred dollars

513
00:26:49,800 --> 00:26:51,120
Speaker 1: and then on the other end they'd be like, great,

514
00:26:51,119 --> 00:26:53,159
Speaker 1: that will be fifty dollars in fees, And excuse me

515
00:26:54,720 --> 00:26:56,240
Speaker 1: for you know, so that I was a calculation you

516
00:26:56,280 --> 00:26:58,600
Speaker 1: were not expecting because even the world's most aggressive credit

517
00:26:58,600 --> 00:27:02,120
Speaker 1: card is rarely going to charge you a fIF on

518
00:27:02,119 --> 00:27:04,760
Speaker 1: on some kind of donation. And then I think, just

519
00:27:04,800 --> 00:27:07,760
Speaker 1: like a third thing is the inherance volatility of the

520
00:27:07,760 --> 00:27:11,359
Speaker 1: thing itself. Like one of the key expected attributes of

521
00:27:11,440 --> 00:27:13,480
Speaker 1: something that acts like a currency is that it's a

522
00:27:13,600 --> 00:27:16,760
Speaker 1: store of value that at the beginning, middle of the

523
00:27:16,880 --> 00:27:19,000
Speaker 1: end of transaction, this one dollar is still going to

524
00:27:19,040 --> 00:27:22,320
Speaker 1: be worth a dollar. And if you combine like the

525
00:27:22,440 --> 00:27:25,679
Speaker 1: slowness and the fees that I mentioned, that you're by

526
00:27:25,680 --> 00:27:27,560
Speaker 1: the end of a transaction, you're one dollar might be

527
00:27:27,560 --> 00:27:29,600
Speaker 1: worth two dollars or it might be worth twenty cets.

528
00:27:30,200 --> 00:27:32,879
Speaker 1: And that is a degree of instability that not everybody

529
00:27:32,920 --> 00:27:35,639
Speaker 1: is super comfortable with. Yeah, and and something else that

530
00:27:35,920 --> 00:27:38,040
Speaker 1: people aren't comfortable with in the crypto space or more

531
00:27:38,200 --> 00:27:42,080
Speaker 1: there's more more discomfort with these days, is is hacking

532
00:27:42,080 --> 00:27:45,280
Speaker 1: in scam attempts? Right, because we saw it just the

533
00:27:45,320 --> 00:27:47,959
Speaker 1: other day. Stats came out that more than two billion

534
00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:50,960
Speaker 1: dollars has been stolen in crypto accounts this year alone,

535
00:27:51,320 --> 00:27:55,320
Speaker 1: and so I guess, uh, some of these some of

536
00:27:55,359 --> 00:27:59,000
Speaker 1: these places where people buy in store cryptocurrency, they're not

537
00:27:59,080 --> 00:28:03,760
Speaker 1: as secure as may be the end end user thinks,

538
00:28:04,200 --> 00:28:06,800
Speaker 1: and then they find out that their money has been

539
00:28:06,840 --> 00:28:09,200
Speaker 1: stolen by hackers. I mean, how big of a problem

540
00:28:09,240 --> 00:28:11,680
Speaker 1: is this, because it seems like the more the more

541
00:28:11,720 --> 00:28:14,119
Speaker 1: money that's being ripped from people's hands as they're getting

542
00:28:14,160 --> 00:28:18,240
Speaker 1: into the space, that that creates just preponderance of issues

543
00:28:18,520 --> 00:28:22,159
Speaker 1: for adoption of crypto in general. This is a problem,

544
00:28:22,280 --> 00:28:23,719
Speaker 1: and it's a problem for all of the reasons you've

545
00:28:23,760 --> 00:28:27,280
Speaker 1: identified and a few more. And one of the things

546
00:28:28,320 --> 00:28:32,080
Speaker 1: is that a lot of the energy coming into like

547
00:28:32,160 --> 00:28:36,439
Speaker 1: crypto hacking are non state or state actors like the

548
00:28:36,520 --> 00:28:38,920
Speaker 1: Lazarus Group, which is, you know, kind of an infamous

549
00:28:38,960 --> 00:28:44,480
Speaker 1: North Korea based hacking collective who five years ago might

550
00:28:44,480 --> 00:28:47,080
Speaker 1: have been ripping people off or attempting to hack into

551
00:28:47,160 --> 00:28:49,120
Speaker 1: into like non crypto things, but there was less money

552
00:28:49,160 --> 00:28:51,160
Speaker 1: in crypto five years ago. So what you have are

553
00:28:51,200 --> 00:28:56,280
Speaker 1: these incredibly sophisticated, well organized actors that are very opportunistic

554
00:28:56,760 --> 00:28:58,760
Speaker 1: and they're looking for where is there a bunch of

555
00:28:58,760 --> 00:29:01,880
Speaker 1: money slashing around and the opportunity to confuse people and

556
00:29:01,920 --> 00:29:05,080
Speaker 1: make an easy book as a result of that. And

557
00:29:05,280 --> 00:29:07,640
Speaker 1: that is a real challenge. And when I say sophisticated,

558
00:29:07,720 --> 00:29:09,880
Speaker 1: it's you know, some of my colleagues on the cybersecurity

559
00:29:09,880 --> 00:29:12,360
Speaker 1: team here at Bloomberg have reported on things like that

560
00:29:12,440 --> 00:29:16,560
Speaker 1: group will bribe employees at Team Mobile to get them

561
00:29:16,600 --> 00:29:19,720
Speaker 1: to clone your simcard, you know, so that they can

562
00:29:19,800 --> 00:29:25,240
Speaker 1: redirect your two factor authentication code and log into your account.

563
00:29:25,280 --> 00:29:27,080
Speaker 1: I mean, this is not like your average like somebody

564
00:29:27,080 --> 00:29:29,600
Speaker 1: clicked on a spa bammily link in an email thing.

565
00:29:30,120 --> 00:29:36,640
Speaker 1: This is legit incredibly sophisticated attempts that are very hard

566
00:29:36,640 --> 00:29:39,719
Speaker 1: as an ordinary human being to protect yourself against. So

567
00:29:39,760 --> 00:29:42,640
Speaker 1: that's the first thing, and I think the second thing is, yeah,

568
00:29:42,640 --> 00:29:44,320
Speaker 1: there's also just a bunch of like you click on

569
00:29:44,360 --> 00:29:47,320
Speaker 1: a spammi link in an email, or you know, somebody

570
00:29:47,560 --> 00:29:50,480
Speaker 1: loses or had a very weak password on their Instagram

571
00:29:50,480 --> 00:29:53,120
Speaker 1: account and then their Instagram was taken over and it's

572
00:29:53,120 --> 00:29:55,400
Speaker 1: a celebrity account. So people are like, oh, yeah, why

573
00:29:55,440 --> 00:29:57,480
Speaker 1: is so and so celebrity telling me to buy dogecoin.

574
00:29:57,560 --> 00:29:59,680
Speaker 1: I guess I'll buy dogcoin, but it was in fact

575
00:29:59,680 --> 00:30:02,680
Speaker 1: somebody who has compromised that celebrity account. Or you know,

576
00:30:02,720 --> 00:30:05,440
Speaker 1: you get an email that looks like your n f

577
00:30:05,520 --> 00:30:07,640
Speaker 1: T provider and it says click here for a free

578
00:30:07,720 --> 00:30:10,040
Speaker 1: n f T and everybody loves free stuff and they

579
00:30:10,080 --> 00:30:12,400
Speaker 1: click on the thing. But the thing is a link

580
00:30:12,480 --> 00:30:15,400
Speaker 1: to some kind of malware, and that malware, you know,

581
00:30:15,520 --> 00:30:17,400
Speaker 1: connects to a server, and that server is like, cool,

582
00:30:17,440 --> 00:30:19,080
Speaker 1: thank you, We'll take all your actual n f T

583
00:30:19,200 --> 00:30:20,760
Speaker 1: s and we will make our merry away with it.

584
00:30:21,280 --> 00:30:23,400
Speaker 1: You know. So I don't think that the hacking is

585
00:30:23,480 --> 00:30:28,520
Speaker 1: necessarily like new I do think that the the opportunity

586
00:30:28,680 --> 00:30:30,920
Speaker 1: is so large that a lot of folks who are

587
00:30:30,960 --> 00:30:34,000
Speaker 1: being like sketchy and netherious in other areas have turned

588
00:30:34,000 --> 00:30:36,280
Speaker 1: their attention to crypto. That makes a ton of sense.

589
00:30:36,360 --> 00:30:38,160
Speaker 1: You're getting hit on both ends. You're getting hit by

590
00:30:38,160 --> 00:30:42,360
Speaker 1: the folks who are trying the less sophisticated spam attacks.

591
00:30:42,440 --> 00:30:44,160
Speaker 1: But then you've got, like you said, some of these

592
00:30:44,200 --> 00:30:46,360
Speaker 1: big players as well. And I think some folks would

593
00:30:46,360 --> 00:30:48,280
Speaker 1: say that like one of the solutions to this frauds

594
00:30:48,400 --> 00:30:51,000
Speaker 1: these attempts would be tieder regulation. So can you talk

595
00:30:51,040 --> 00:30:54,640
Speaker 1: about how you think that type of regulation by the state,

596
00:30:55,080 --> 00:30:59,440
Speaker 1: how would that affect something like cryptocurrencies. This is one

597
00:30:59,440 --> 00:31:04,280
Speaker 1: of the hardest simple questions because crypto is global, right,

598
00:31:04,320 --> 00:31:06,440
Speaker 1: So when you're when you're talking about regulation, you're also

599
00:31:06,480 --> 00:31:09,160
Speaker 1: talking about you have to have some kind of cross

600
00:31:09,200 --> 00:31:13,200
Speaker 1: border framework, because you can't only regulate bitcoin in the

601
00:31:13,280 --> 00:31:16,560
Speaker 1: United States and then have nothing happening in Europe because

602
00:31:16,560 --> 00:31:18,280
Speaker 1: you're gonna want to You're gonna have people in Paris

603
00:31:18,320 --> 00:31:19,880
Speaker 1: who want to send something to people in New York,

604
00:31:20,280 --> 00:31:22,640
Speaker 1: and then you're gonna have a conflict of regulatory entities.

605
00:31:23,120 --> 00:31:25,280
Speaker 1: So that's kind of a huge problem. And there are

606
00:31:25,280 --> 00:31:27,760
Speaker 1: there are many efforts by the folks who are paid

607
00:31:27,760 --> 00:31:30,840
Speaker 1: to write white papers that are very long about global

608
00:31:30,840 --> 00:31:33,920
Speaker 1: financial stability and regulation, that are attempting to find solutions

609
00:31:33,920 --> 00:31:37,080
Speaker 1: to this problem. But then you have different kinds of

610
00:31:38,080 --> 00:31:40,560
Speaker 1: potential regulation. You have regulation at the state level. As

611
00:31:40,560 --> 00:31:42,479
Speaker 1: you say, so, like I live in New York City,

612
00:31:42,920 --> 00:31:46,080
Speaker 1: the New York Attorney General and others have been very

613
00:31:46,120 --> 00:31:48,680
Speaker 1: aggressive in saying, okay, crypto companies, if you want to

614
00:31:48,720 --> 00:31:51,240
Speaker 1: operate here, if you want to have New Yorkers sign

615
00:31:51,360 --> 00:31:52,720
Speaker 1: up for your stuff, you are going to have to

616
00:31:52,760 --> 00:31:57,160
Speaker 1: abide by a higher class of disclosure requirements. There's way

617
00:31:57,160 --> 00:31:59,600
Speaker 1: more paperwork in your future. Get ready. And by the way,

618
00:31:59,600 --> 00:32:01,440
Speaker 1: if you don't follow up, we will find you out

619
00:32:01,440 --> 00:32:06,320
Speaker 1: of existence. Other states have been like, word, chill, we

620
00:32:06,320 --> 00:32:08,720
Speaker 1: we have no requirements. Do what you will, it's fine.

621
00:32:09,440 --> 00:32:12,600
Speaker 1: Then you have federal level regulations, right, So you've got

622
00:32:12,720 --> 00:32:15,520
Speaker 1: the Securities and Exchange Commission, you have the the cftc

623
00:32:16,160 --> 00:32:18,360
Speaker 1: UM and others saying we are going to make sure

624
00:32:18,400 --> 00:32:21,920
Speaker 1: that at the level of like qualified Investors or Kim Kardashian,

625
00:32:22,440 --> 00:32:26,600
Speaker 1: that no one is engaging in behavior that contravene existing laws.

626
00:32:27,080 --> 00:32:30,720
Speaker 1: Then you've got the legislators, so people who are trying

627
00:32:30,720 --> 00:32:32,680
Speaker 1: to say, well, I as a congress person or I

628
00:32:32,720 --> 00:32:35,800
Speaker 1: as a Senator, I'm proposing that we do more stuff

629
00:32:35,800 --> 00:32:38,280
Speaker 1: with stable coin. And here's my five page long bill.

630
00:32:38,640 --> 00:32:40,720
Speaker 1: Will somebody please remember to vote on this before the

631
00:32:40,720 --> 00:32:43,959
Speaker 1: midterm elections. So you've got this sort of stew of

632
00:32:44,080 --> 00:32:47,080
Speaker 1: different kinds of things, and that's leading to a bunch

633
00:32:47,080 --> 00:32:49,160
Speaker 1: of people in the industry being like, woe is us.

634
00:32:49,200 --> 00:32:51,760
Speaker 1: There's no regulatory clarity. We don't know how to proceed.

635
00:32:52,120 --> 00:32:54,080
Speaker 1: And in the meantime, the people who are really suffering

636
00:32:54,120 --> 00:32:57,560
Speaker 1: are those individual investors who thought this thing was a bank. Yeah,

637
00:32:57,680 --> 00:32:59,840
Speaker 1: I guess when we're talking about decentralized find its right

638
00:33:00,000 --> 00:33:02,240
Speaker 1: to currency is a part of this movement to get

639
00:33:02,280 --> 00:33:06,240
Speaker 1: away from traditionally regulated ways of doing of doing business,

640
00:33:06,240 --> 00:33:09,440
Speaker 1: sending money and does regulation kind of flying the face

641
00:33:09,440 --> 00:33:11,280
Speaker 1: of that is does it kind of up end like

642
00:33:11,360 --> 00:33:14,240
Speaker 1: toss over to the apple cart? Per se? It absolutely

643
00:33:14,280 --> 00:33:18,600
Speaker 1: does by definition. So it's because this to regulate something,

644
00:33:18,720 --> 00:33:21,479
Speaker 1: you have to be able to define it. You have

645
00:33:21,600 --> 00:33:25,040
Speaker 1: to be able to say, these are the this is

646
00:33:25,080 --> 00:33:27,400
Speaker 1: the jurisdiction that you operate in. There is there are

647
00:33:27,440 --> 00:33:29,720
Speaker 1: a couple of crypto companies that famously are like we

648
00:33:29,760 --> 00:33:34,000
Speaker 1: are not headquartered anywhere, no one can regulate us, and

649
00:33:34,120 --> 00:33:40,520
Speaker 1: regulators like, um, yeah we can. We will regulate you

650
00:33:40,520 --> 00:33:43,360
Speaker 1: in every place that you have in office like good try.

651
00:33:43,480 --> 00:33:46,720
Speaker 1: Uh you know. So it's this this idea of statelessness,

652
00:33:46,720 --> 00:33:51,840
Speaker 1: this idea of being entirely decentralized. There are always people

653
00:33:51,880 --> 00:33:54,680
Speaker 1: behind these protocols, and those people will say things like well,

654
00:33:54,800 --> 00:33:58,000
Speaker 1: you can't regulate software and the European Union and be

655
00:33:58,040 --> 00:34:00,720
Speaker 1: like tell that's a Microsoft, my guys, we absolutely can

656
00:34:00,840 --> 00:34:03,640
Speaker 1: regulate software. So you know, I think that this this

657
00:34:03,800 --> 00:34:09,120
Speaker 1: paradigm of you want something that is entirely decentralized, entirely stateless,

658
00:34:09,160 --> 00:34:12,920
Speaker 1: but also safe, it's very hard to reconcile. Yeah, all right,

659
00:34:13,080 --> 00:34:15,000
Speaker 1: We've got a few more questions we want to get

660
00:34:15,000 --> 00:34:17,320
Speaker 1: to with you. Stay. That's that's fascinating. I'm so curious.

661
00:34:17,400 --> 00:34:18,880
Speaker 1: I feel like this is one of those things where

662
00:34:19,520 --> 00:34:21,319
Speaker 1: like what happens here is where I'm on the edge

663
00:34:21,320 --> 00:34:24,160
Speaker 1: of my seat because it's in tossing popcorn of my

664
00:34:24,160 --> 00:34:26,319
Speaker 1: mouth while I watch um. But yeah, we've got a

665
00:34:26,320 --> 00:34:28,360
Speaker 1: few more questions to get to with you, including we

666
00:34:28,440 --> 00:34:30,240
Speaker 1: want to talk about n f T s. We also

667
00:34:30,520 --> 00:34:34,720
Speaker 1: want to discuss maybe like crypto and how it seems

668
00:34:34,719 --> 00:34:37,040
Speaker 1: to have religious elements to it going on. We'll we'll

669
00:34:37,040 --> 00:34:48,200
Speaker 1: get to those questions right after this. All right, we're

670
00:34:48,239 --> 00:34:52,080
Speaker 1: back from the break talking with Stacy Marie Ishmael about cryptocurrencies,

671
00:34:52,640 --> 00:34:55,080
Speaker 1: and just before the break, you heard it here Stacy

672
00:34:55,320 --> 00:34:58,719
Speaker 1: is a proponent for one global organization to regulate all

673
00:34:58,800 --> 00:35:03,960
Speaker 1: the one ring to rule the act exactly. It sounds

674
00:35:03,960 --> 00:35:08,719
Speaker 1: like even watching the series as well. Stacy. On that note,

675
00:35:08,960 --> 00:35:13,359
Speaker 1: let's talk about religion, because yeah, a lot of segues here,

676
00:35:13,680 --> 00:35:15,480
Speaker 1: like earlier on, like you're kind of talking about this

677
00:35:15,800 --> 00:35:18,239
Speaker 1: sort of like your unified theory as to why it

678
00:35:18,320 --> 00:35:21,640
Speaker 1: is that folks were sort of latching onto something like crypto.

679
00:35:21,760 --> 00:35:23,680
Speaker 1: I mean to that end, like do you see parallels

680
00:35:23,760 --> 00:35:27,279
Speaker 1: between cryptocurrencies and sort of like fundamentalist religion, because I

681
00:35:27,280 --> 00:35:30,800
Speaker 1: feel like the like the fear, uncertainty, doubts, the mantra,

682
00:35:30,880 --> 00:35:35,600
Speaker 1: the combined with continued calls for fellow crypto enthusiast to

683
00:35:35,680 --> 00:35:37,440
Speaker 1: hold all to keep the faith like that has a

684
00:35:37,480 --> 00:35:40,279
Speaker 1: lot of these kind of like quasi religious elements, which

685
00:35:40,360 --> 00:35:43,520
Speaker 1: kind of makes this an even weirder asset class. Oh,

686
00:35:43,520 --> 00:35:45,759
Speaker 1: it's super weird. Um. One of my colleagues was on

687
00:35:45,760 --> 00:35:52,560
Speaker 1: the team in London, Emily Nicole. She academically studied cults

688
00:35:52,600 --> 00:35:56,600
Speaker 1: and has a kind of a research background in understanding,

689
00:35:57,000 --> 00:36:01,359
Speaker 1: you know, what makes people coalesced a round, either an

690
00:36:01,440 --> 00:36:07,040
Speaker 1: idea or particularly compelling personality, And it's so interesting to

691
00:36:07,040 --> 00:36:10,120
Speaker 1: get to benefit from the perspective that she brings to

692
00:36:10,400 --> 00:36:13,040
Speaker 1: covering this for all of the reasons that you've just described,

693
00:36:13,160 --> 00:36:16,200
Speaker 1: which is I don't know if I would necessarily go

694
00:36:16,280 --> 00:36:19,120
Speaker 1: so far as to say it is religious, but it

695
00:36:19,680 --> 00:36:26,000
Speaker 1: is certainly a space that is marked by charismatic leaders

696
00:36:26,920 --> 00:36:34,239
Speaker 1: and by people who are held up as quasi deities.

697
00:36:34,520 --> 00:36:36,920
Speaker 1: You know, whether it's like you believe in Doge and

698
00:36:36,960 --> 00:36:40,560
Speaker 1: Elon Musk, or you believe in Jack Dorsey and bitcoin,

699
00:36:40,840 --> 00:36:43,960
Speaker 1: or you perhaps some of your listeners are familiar with

700
00:36:44,000 --> 00:36:49,640
Speaker 1: something that was called Home and was a very interesting

701
00:36:50,520 --> 00:36:54,040
Speaker 1: set of tokens that relied very heavily on the idea

702
00:36:54,080 --> 00:36:57,640
Speaker 1: that if nobody ever sells, this can only go up,

703
00:36:58,200 --> 00:37:02,680
Speaker 1: which is in other parts the financial markets described very differently.

704
00:37:03,480 --> 00:37:07,680
Speaker 1: But this was led by a person who was pseudonymously

705
00:37:07,760 --> 00:37:11,480
Speaker 1: known as Zeus, and Zeus would hold these town halls

706
00:37:11,560 --> 00:37:15,400
Speaker 1: where he would like rally his followers who call themselves

707
00:37:15,400 --> 00:37:18,600
Speaker 1: Om's and talk about the need to keep the faith

708
00:37:19,320 --> 00:37:21,120
Speaker 1: and you know, all of us have to be in

709
00:37:21,160 --> 00:37:23,479
Speaker 1: this together. I mean they're down like ninety seven percent

710
00:37:23,480 --> 00:37:26,680
Speaker 1: since the height of the height of those town halls.

711
00:37:26,719 --> 00:37:31,120
Speaker 1: But there is something about crypto that is very much

712
00:37:31,200 --> 00:37:34,920
Speaker 1: based in this idea of community, which is very confusing

713
00:37:35,840 --> 00:37:37,719
Speaker 1: when you think about the fact that it is also

714
00:37:37,800 --> 00:37:41,560
Speaker 1: explicitly a rejection of trust, right that this whole thing

715
00:37:41,800 --> 00:37:45,799
Speaker 1: is supposed to function even if you don't know or

716
00:37:45,920 --> 00:37:49,640
Speaker 1: trust your counterparty. And yet so many of these kinds

717
00:37:49,640 --> 00:37:53,960
Speaker 1: of appeals are to identity, are to the idea of

718
00:37:54,080 --> 00:37:58,960
Speaker 1: like tribe or nation and other kind of collective organizing principles,

719
00:37:58,960 --> 00:38:02,400
Speaker 1: like crypto people even invented companies. They were like, you know,

720
00:38:02,440 --> 00:38:05,719
Speaker 1: forget ll c s, we can have decentralized autonomous organization

721
00:38:06,480 --> 00:38:09,239
Speaker 1: because we like, we need a way to make decisions collectively.

722
00:38:09,960 --> 00:38:13,560
Speaker 1: So I absolutely think that I don't know if it's

723
00:38:13,560 --> 00:38:15,440
Speaker 1: inherent to the asset class or if it's that the

724
00:38:15,520 --> 00:38:18,360
Speaker 1: kinds of people who are attracted to this tend to

725
00:38:18,520 --> 00:38:20,960
Speaker 1: manifest in very specific ways, but there are there are

726
00:38:21,040 --> 00:38:23,640
Speaker 1: very much elements of this that are defined by that

727
00:38:23,719 --> 00:38:28,400
Speaker 1: appeal to charisma. I'm sure that that unknown identity of Satoshi,

728
00:38:28,560 --> 00:38:30,839
Speaker 1: right has to has to play a little part in that, right,

729
00:38:30,880 --> 00:38:33,960
Speaker 1: the ambiguous nature of who wrote the paper and kind

730
00:38:33,960 --> 00:38:35,919
Speaker 1: of like it came from on high, what's started. Yeah,

731
00:38:35,960 --> 00:38:37,600
Speaker 1: it's like the tablet's coming down from the mountain and

732
00:38:37,640 --> 00:38:40,080
Speaker 1: you're like, all right, cool. And that has to be

733
00:38:40,080 --> 00:38:41,439
Speaker 1: a part of it, because if you could just point

734
00:38:41,480 --> 00:38:44,759
Speaker 1: to a nerdy individual like in their mom's basement, you

735
00:38:44,840 --> 00:38:47,000
Speaker 1: might be like, okay, well, some of the mystery is lost,

736
00:38:47,080 --> 00:38:49,960
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to keep the faith in that. Yeah,

737
00:38:49,960 --> 00:38:53,399
Speaker 1: I mean, mythology is really important, right, It's people love

738
00:38:54,239 --> 00:38:57,120
Speaker 1: hero they love villains even more, but they do they

739
00:38:57,120 --> 00:38:59,240
Speaker 1: do love a hero, and they do love the idea

740
00:38:59,320 --> 00:39:02,399
Speaker 1: that somebody out there was like smarter than everyone else

741
00:39:02,440 --> 00:39:04,640
Speaker 1: and figured something out and then like rude off into

742
00:39:04,760 --> 00:39:08,439
Speaker 1: some kind of financial sunset mysteriously. Yeah, yeah, I want

743
00:39:08,440 --> 00:39:09,960
Speaker 1: to know to Let's talk about n f T s

744
00:39:09,960 --> 00:39:12,440
Speaker 1: for a second, because this is very much a part

745
00:39:12,520 --> 00:39:15,480
Speaker 1: of this DeFi space. And and you know, obviously we

746
00:39:15,560 --> 00:39:18,680
Speaker 1: remember when picks of apes and crypto punks were going

747
00:39:18,719 --> 00:39:22,280
Speaker 1: for millions and digital pet rocks. Basically we're costing hundreds

748
00:39:22,280 --> 00:39:25,799
Speaker 1: of thousands of dollars and when you think about it, though,

749
00:39:25,840 --> 00:39:28,319
Speaker 1: it really wasn't that long ago, although it looks like

750
00:39:28,440 --> 00:39:30,880
Speaker 1: art based n f t s have seen this enormous

751
00:39:30,960 --> 00:39:34,440
Speaker 1: drop in value. But yeah, what's what's going on in

752
00:39:34,480 --> 00:39:36,359
Speaker 1: the n f T space. What do we need to know?

753
00:39:36,640 --> 00:39:39,640
Speaker 1: And is is there a future for enough T s?

754
00:39:39,680 --> 00:39:41,840
Speaker 1: What does that look like? Well, I'll start with the

755
00:39:42,120 --> 00:39:43,520
Speaker 1: question of is there a future for n f T

756
00:39:43,719 --> 00:39:46,840
Speaker 1: s and an n f T fundamentally is just a

757
00:39:46,840 --> 00:39:53,080
Speaker 1: piece of software. It's a way of defining encode, rights, obligations,

758
00:39:53,120 --> 00:39:57,120
Speaker 1: and benefits. And for you know, say about a year

759
00:39:57,200 --> 00:40:00,319
Speaker 1: or so, the primary use case of that software was

760
00:40:00,360 --> 00:40:04,880
Speaker 1: telling somebody you have the right to be recognized as

761
00:40:04,960 --> 00:40:08,520
Speaker 1: the owner of this picture of a monkey, which is

762
00:40:08,560 --> 00:40:10,719
Speaker 1: definitely something you could use software for. Sounds goofy, that

763
00:40:11,840 --> 00:40:14,799
Speaker 1: seems fine, um, but there are other things that you

764
00:40:14,840 --> 00:40:17,799
Speaker 1: can do with that software. And that's where I think, like,

765
00:40:18,480 --> 00:40:23,120
Speaker 1: we haven't seen anything close to actual use cases. And

766
00:40:23,120 --> 00:40:26,040
Speaker 1: by use cases, I don't mean you know, like nobody's

767
00:40:26,080 --> 00:40:29,879
Speaker 1: doing this. I mean like widespread utility and usefulness and

768
00:40:30,080 --> 00:40:32,120
Speaker 1: you know, but I've seen people do experiments. They're like, well,

769
00:40:32,200 --> 00:40:35,040
Speaker 1: we can sell music in the form of an n

770
00:40:35,080 --> 00:40:38,360
Speaker 1: f T, and that software, that code that defines this

771
00:40:38,400 --> 00:40:42,160
Speaker 1: transaction can say you know, if I, Stacy sell this

772
00:40:42,280 --> 00:40:44,719
Speaker 1: to you at and then you sell this to somebody else,

773
00:40:44,800 --> 00:40:47,360
Speaker 1: I will still get royalties without having to do anything.

774
00:40:47,840 --> 00:40:49,680
Speaker 1: And you don't have to do anything either, because that's

775
00:40:49,719 --> 00:40:54,040
Speaker 1: just encoded into the contracts like the world's smartest analytic basically,

776
00:40:54,160 --> 00:40:57,280
Speaker 1: right yea um, And that's you know, that's that's really interesting.

777
00:40:57,320 --> 00:41:00,440
Speaker 1: There are other people who are trying to design n

778
00:41:00,480 --> 00:41:04,399
Speaker 1: f T s that would allow like portability between video games. Right, so,

779
00:41:04,400 --> 00:41:07,640
Speaker 1: say you have like some really cool bow and arrow

780
00:41:07,760 --> 00:41:11,080
Speaker 1: set in Fortnite, but you also play elden Ring. There's

781
00:41:11,120 --> 00:41:13,720
Speaker 1: a bunch of assumptions based into this, including that Fortnite

782
00:41:13,719 --> 00:41:15,480
Speaker 1: and the makers of elden Ring will ever get along

783
00:41:16,000 --> 00:41:18,120
Speaker 1: stay with me? Um, so you know, see whom the

784
00:41:18,200 --> 00:41:21,120
Speaker 1: video games were interoperable, and you could like take that

785
00:41:21,320 --> 00:41:23,160
Speaker 1: bow and you know, that bow and arrow out of

786
00:41:23,160 --> 00:41:25,279
Speaker 1: Fortnite and into elden Ring and vice versa. Like you

787
00:41:25,320 --> 00:41:26,960
Speaker 1: would do that in the form of software, and you

788
00:41:26,960 --> 00:41:28,080
Speaker 1: would do that in the form of an n f

789
00:41:28,120 --> 00:41:32,279
Speaker 1: T and like those sorts of things where you're sort

790
00:41:32,280 --> 00:41:36,200
Speaker 1: of taking a step back and imagining the possibilities of

791
00:41:36,680 --> 00:41:40,680
Speaker 1: software that reacts intelligently to circumstances. Is I think a

792
00:41:40,800 --> 00:41:43,360
Speaker 1: much more expansive way of understanding the reality of n

793
00:41:43,360 --> 00:41:45,560
Speaker 1: f T s than apes. But but it's also like

794
00:41:45,880 --> 00:41:49,440
Speaker 1: less profitable immediately, right, Yeah, I mean it kind of

795
00:41:49,440 --> 00:41:51,799
Speaker 1: makes me think just to early computing and just some

796
00:41:51,880 --> 00:41:54,440
Speaker 1: of the applications early on, it was a lot of

797
00:41:54,440 --> 00:41:56,600
Speaker 1: it was kind of dumb stuff, maybe like we've seen today,

798
00:41:56,760 --> 00:41:59,920
Speaker 1: like with the digital pet rocks and monkeys in stomical

799
00:42:00,040 --> 00:42:05,480
Speaker 1: cheese were brilliant. Yeah, but it does seem like that

800
00:42:05,520 --> 00:42:07,000
Speaker 1: there's a lot of future ahead of us when it

801
00:42:07,000 --> 00:42:11,440
Speaker 1: comes to just the application specifically of blockchain, which which

802
00:42:11,480 --> 00:42:13,359
Speaker 1: kind of makes me then want to ask you how

803
00:42:13,400 --> 00:42:16,360
Speaker 1: excited should we be about the possibility that blockchain is

804
00:42:16,360 --> 00:42:18,759
Speaker 1: going to be able to change the future and a

805
00:42:19,280 --> 00:42:21,279
Speaker 1: how likely is that do you think to happen? And

806
00:42:21,280 --> 00:42:23,520
Speaker 1: then be do you think we can do that without

807
00:42:23,600 --> 00:42:27,480
Speaker 1: going all in and buying actual cryptocurrencies because the underlying

808
00:42:27,480 --> 00:42:30,680
Speaker 1: technology will solve problems and we don't necessarily have to

809
00:42:31,160 --> 00:42:34,440
Speaker 1: egg it on with our investing dollars. I mean that

810
00:42:34,480 --> 00:42:37,320
Speaker 1: phrase that you used people have used in like crypto

811
00:42:37,360 --> 00:42:39,759
Speaker 1: skeptic drinking games, which is like somebody's going to say

812
00:42:39,800 --> 00:42:45,279
Speaker 1: underlying techno and we've alway said once, thank goodness. So

813
00:42:45,360 --> 00:42:47,600
Speaker 1: but this is kind of this is sort of the challenge,

814
00:42:47,719 --> 00:42:51,560
Speaker 1: right where a lot of those early tech things that

815
00:42:51,600 --> 00:42:53,680
Speaker 1: you're describing, like some of that turned into pets dot

816
00:42:53,680 --> 00:42:56,000
Speaker 1: Com and some of it turned into Apple, and it's

817
00:42:56,280 --> 00:43:00,880
Speaker 1: very very hard to predict what direct action any of

818
00:43:00,920 --> 00:43:03,239
Speaker 1: this is going to be used for is you know,

819
00:43:04,040 --> 00:43:07,839
Speaker 1: is crypto gonna go from like interesting but marginal from

820
00:43:07,840 --> 00:43:11,920
Speaker 1: a technology perspective to redefining the way that you understand

821
00:43:11,960 --> 00:43:15,760
Speaker 1: the universe. There are absolutely people, mostly venture capitalists, making

822
00:43:15,840 --> 00:43:19,080
Speaker 1: extremely significant bets in that direction. But then there's also

823
00:43:19,120 --> 00:43:21,799
Speaker 1: a ton of people that are like, I don't know,

824
00:43:22,040 --> 00:43:25,520
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, and you know, I think journalists in

825
00:43:25,560 --> 00:43:28,520
Speaker 1: general are not prone to like wild bouts of enthusiasm

826
00:43:29,320 --> 00:43:32,560
Speaker 1: or for any particular thing. But I think what makes

827
00:43:33,120 --> 00:43:36,680
Speaker 1: class Fountain bens foreshort, that is like where I channel

828
00:43:36,800 --> 00:43:39,160
Speaker 1: my enthusiasm. Um. But I think what makes this as

829
00:43:39,200 --> 00:43:40,799
Speaker 1: the class interesting to me is the fact that I

830
00:43:40,800 --> 00:43:43,439
Speaker 1: don't know, right, It's the fact that sort of every day,

831
00:43:43,800 --> 00:43:47,720
Speaker 1: some utterly chaotic thing happens that makes me think about

832
00:43:48,440 --> 00:43:51,520
Speaker 1: the potential both in terms of upside and downside in

833
00:43:51,640 --> 00:43:54,560
Speaker 1: very different ways. Again, this is another thing where I'm

834
00:43:54,680 --> 00:43:56,560
Speaker 1: be on the edge of my seat, popcorn like watching

835
00:43:56,560 --> 00:43:59,280
Speaker 1: how things play out. Because in the next ten years,

836
00:43:59,120 --> 00:44:01,600
Speaker 1: it's right a fascinating space. We're going to continue to

837
00:44:01,600 --> 00:44:05,239
Speaker 1: see developments for sure, And uh, Stacy, Marie Ishmael, we

838
00:44:05,320 --> 00:44:07,520
Speaker 1: really really appreciate you joining us today on the podcast

839
00:44:07,880 --> 00:44:10,759
Speaker 1: Where can Our listeners go to find out more about

840
00:44:10,760 --> 00:44:12,719
Speaker 1: you and what you're up to. Well, we're all part

841
00:44:12,760 --> 00:44:15,120
Speaker 1: of the I Heart Radio family, sir. The Bloomberg. The

842
00:44:15,160 --> 00:44:18,400
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Crypto podcast is Monday to Friday. It's available wherever

843
00:44:18,400 --> 00:44:22,600
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts um I am on easily findable

844
00:44:22,640 --> 00:44:24,319
Speaker 1: on the internet. But please do check out the work

845
00:44:24,360 --> 00:44:27,600
Speaker 1: of my fantastic reporters and editors on Bloomberg dot com.

846
00:44:27,680 --> 00:44:30,000
Speaker 1: It's awesome. We'll make sure to link to all of that. Stacy,

847
00:44:30,239 --> 00:44:33,520
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us today. My pleasure. Well,

848
00:44:33,520 --> 00:44:35,600
Speaker 1: all right, Joel May, what a fun conversation we just

849
00:44:35,640 --> 00:44:38,880
Speaker 1: had here with Stacy Marie ishmael Um. I feel like

850
00:44:38,920 --> 00:44:40,880
Speaker 1: we were able to this truly did feel like a

851
00:44:40,880 --> 00:44:42,640
Speaker 1: conversation we had with a friend, Like I felt like

852
00:44:42,680 --> 00:44:44,839
Speaker 1: she was here with us. We're all having a beer

853
00:44:44,920 --> 00:44:47,240
Speaker 1: together and we're able just to talk about a topic

854
00:44:47,320 --> 00:44:50,640
Speaker 1: that you and I are very interested in. But simultaneously

855
00:44:50,640 --> 00:44:52,600
Speaker 1: it's difficult for us to die, like really dive into

856
00:44:52,640 --> 00:44:55,480
Speaker 1: it a because we're we don't have the depth of

857
00:44:55,520 --> 00:44:58,000
Speaker 1: knowledge that someone likes Stacy does, but we're idiots on

858
00:44:58,040 --> 00:45:00,719
Speaker 1: this front. But also we I want to talk about

859
00:45:00,719 --> 00:45:04,120
Speaker 1: it too much. Um, and that's something I'm afraid, Like,

860
00:45:04,160 --> 00:45:05,960
Speaker 1: I wonder if we talked about it too much back

861
00:45:06,000 --> 00:45:08,560
Speaker 1: when it was more hots and folks bought more of

862
00:45:08,560 --> 00:45:10,399
Speaker 1: it maybe than they should have. We're still talking about

863
00:45:10,400 --> 00:45:12,239
Speaker 1: and we're still hating on the folks who are just

864
00:45:12,640 --> 00:45:15,160
Speaker 1: too enthusiastics. And I will say that's the right to

865
00:45:15,160 --> 00:45:17,839
Speaker 1: bring some nuance conversation. That's a nice thing about having

866
00:45:17,880 --> 00:45:19,759
Speaker 1: a journalist on the show to talk about it who

867
00:45:19,760 --> 00:45:23,719
Speaker 1: covers it with ridiculous frequency like Stacy, because you're you're

868
00:45:23,719 --> 00:45:27,600
Speaker 1: not getting someone who is sold out to this asset

869
00:45:27,640 --> 00:45:30,560
Speaker 1: class who believes the cryptocurrency is the future. And if

870
00:45:30,560 --> 00:45:32,840
Speaker 1: we interview somebody like that, it would be difficult to

871
00:45:32,880 --> 00:45:35,440
Speaker 1: temper their enthusiast and ask them the hard questions. But

872
00:45:35,480 --> 00:45:38,000
Speaker 1: Stacy is like involved talking to all the players in

873
00:45:38,000 --> 00:45:39,840
Speaker 1: this space, and so I feel like she has a

874
00:45:39,880 --> 00:45:43,480
Speaker 1: really nuanced helfold take and just provides a lot of understanding.

875
00:45:43,520 --> 00:45:45,920
Speaker 1: So now I feel like I understand crypto more now

876
00:45:45,960 --> 00:45:48,719
Speaker 1: after that comment, and even possibly the future depending on

877
00:45:48,800 --> 00:45:50,480
Speaker 1: I mean, who knows what's actually gonna happen, but the

878
00:45:50,480 --> 00:45:53,720
Speaker 1: possibilities are there. She's not holding her own town halls

879
00:45:54,239 --> 00:45:56,319
Speaker 1: where She's just launched her own coin, right, and it's

880
00:45:56,320 --> 00:45:58,279
Speaker 1: just like, let me tell you, you can get it

881
00:45:58,320 --> 00:46:02,440
Speaker 1: on the ground floor, this nig the Stacey Coin, Fountain

882
00:46:02,440 --> 00:46:04,719
Speaker 1: pen Coin. But yeah, do you have a Do you

883
00:46:04,719 --> 00:46:07,879
Speaker 1: have a big takeaway from this conversation? Yeah? I think

884
00:46:07,920 --> 00:46:11,360
Speaker 1: my biggest takeaway was when she said that we we

885
00:46:11,440 --> 00:46:15,000
Speaker 1: have this misunderstanding of risk when it comes to crypto markets,

886
00:46:15,160 --> 00:46:17,399
Speaker 1: and I thought that was I thought that was really

887
00:46:17,400 --> 00:46:21,560
Speaker 1: smart that oftentimes we're thinking about the risk of like,

888
00:46:21,840 --> 00:46:24,640
Speaker 1: are are the price of the asset going down? Deploying

889
00:46:24,680 --> 00:46:27,279
Speaker 1: some capital into the crypto space and then seeing that

890
00:46:27,320 --> 00:46:29,080
Speaker 1: we have less money six months from now than we

891
00:46:29,120 --> 00:46:31,680
Speaker 1: had before, and that is a real risk, right, and

892
00:46:31,719 --> 00:46:34,360
Speaker 1: we a lot of people have experienced that risk. But

893
00:46:34,400 --> 00:46:36,239
Speaker 1: when I'm thinking about like all of the risks in

894
00:46:36,280 --> 00:46:38,680
Speaker 1: the crypto space, like there are actually a lot more

895
00:46:38,719 --> 00:46:41,400
Speaker 1: than there are with other traditional asset classes. So so

896
00:46:41,520 --> 00:46:43,880
Speaker 1: not only are you at risk of deeper price cuts,

897
00:46:44,000 --> 00:46:47,279
Speaker 1: you're also you potentially experienced faster gains right in the

898
00:46:47,280 --> 00:46:49,879
Speaker 1: crypto space. But not only are you at risk of

899
00:46:49,880 --> 00:46:52,080
Speaker 1: of even deeper price cuts, but you're also at risk

900
00:46:52,360 --> 00:46:56,359
Speaker 1: of fraud, hacking, scam attempts, and so I guess, um,

901
00:46:56,400 --> 00:46:59,000
Speaker 1: I think crypto is, like we said, it's a fascinating space.

902
00:46:59,040 --> 00:47:00,960
Speaker 1: There's a lot going on, there's a lot to kind

903
00:47:00,960 --> 00:47:03,800
Speaker 1: of keep your eyes on. Um. But I think with

904
00:47:03,800 --> 00:47:07,960
Speaker 1: with the preponderance of nefarious activity we've seen in the space,

905
00:47:08,120 --> 00:47:10,640
Speaker 1: I think your risk appetite has to be pretty strong

906
00:47:10,760 --> 00:47:13,359
Speaker 1: to be in the crypto game, to have to hold

907
00:47:13,400 --> 00:47:16,520
Speaker 1: many of your assets in cryptocurrency at the current time. Yeah,

908
00:47:16,560 --> 00:47:17,799
Speaker 1: and I think I thought you're going to go in

909
00:47:17,800 --> 00:47:20,760
Speaker 1: this direction, like you're talking, we're talking about different countries

910
00:47:20,800 --> 00:47:24,840
Speaker 1: that have adopted cryptocurrencies as their national medium of exchange.

911
00:47:25,280 --> 00:47:27,640
Speaker 1: And she was talking about how that that volatility that

912
00:47:27,680 --> 00:47:30,239
Speaker 1: you're talking about, Joll, is what is keeping it from

913
00:47:30,239 --> 00:47:32,719
Speaker 1: being becoming more widely adopted because people don't like that.

914
00:47:32,960 --> 00:47:35,400
Speaker 1: I mean, even just with inflation that is providing some

915
00:47:35,480 --> 00:47:39,880
Speaker 1: uncertainty within our lives, you see prices rising and dropping. No,

916
00:47:40,040 --> 00:47:42,120
Speaker 1: we don't as a people, we don't like that kind

917
00:47:42,160 --> 00:47:44,520
Speaker 1: of uncertainty. There's enough uncertainty that we have in life,

918
00:47:44,719 --> 00:47:47,560
Speaker 1: let alone the the mediums of exchange that we're using

919
00:47:47,920 --> 00:47:50,520
Speaker 1: within our lives. But if you're trying to use your

920
00:47:50,560 --> 00:47:52,279
Speaker 1: money as a store of value as a medium of

921
00:47:52,280 --> 00:47:54,600
Speaker 1: exchange if it's up or down by ten percent in

922
00:47:54,640 --> 00:47:56,520
Speaker 1: a given day, doesn't work well as a store of

923
00:47:56,600 --> 00:47:58,520
Speaker 1: value if it felluctuates that much. And that's so that's

924
00:47:58,560 --> 00:48:01,560
Speaker 1: clearly a hurdle that has to be overcome before I think,

925
00:48:01,719 --> 00:48:04,840
Speaker 1: before it becomes widely adopted. So that was a little,

926
00:48:05,200 --> 00:48:07,320
Speaker 1: I guess, small idendum to yours, But my big takeaway

927
00:48:07,360 --> 00:48:09,800
Speaker 1: she said the phrase that you need to like in

928
00:48:10,080 --> 00:48:13,000
Speaker 1: a lot of cryptocurrency circles, how you should be doing

929
00:48:13,000 --> 00:48:15,120
Speaker 1: your own research. And man, that stood out to me

930
00:48:15,200 --> 00:48:17,160
Speaker 1: because not only is that true when it comes to

931
00:48:17,480 --> 00:48:21,240
Speaker 1: a more speculative asset like crypto, but how about everything

932
00:48:21,280 --> 00:48:23,480
Speaker 1: that we put our money towards uh and within the

933
00:48:23,480 --> 00:48:26,279
Speaker 1: world of personal finance, and not just cryptocurrencies, but just

934
00:48:26,680 --> 00:48:28,160
Speaker 1: what it is that you spend your money on from

935
00:48:28,160 --> 00:48:30,399
Speaker 1: a consumption standpoint, the bank that you choose to leave

936
00:48:30,400 --> 00:48:33,120
Speaker 1: your money with where you're expecting it to stay safe,

937
00:48:33,440 --> 00:48:36,680
Speaker 1: the different kind of investments, whatever company you're thinking about

938
00:48:36,760 --> 00:48:39,120
Speaker 1: joining with in order to earn money, all the different

939
00:48:39,160 --> 00:48:42,400
Speaker 1: arenas it's important that we vet do our own research

940
00:48:42,440 --> 00:48:45,960
Speaker 1: and all the different arenas within our personal finance life

941
00:48:45,960 --> 00:48:48,440
Speaker 1: as a whole. Because like, truly there, I don't think

942
00:48:48,440 --> 00:48:50,640
Speaker 1: there should be anything that we just take for granted.

943
00:48:50,880 --> 00:48:53,360
Speaker 1: I really do think that there should be a higher

944
00:48:53,520 --> 00:48:56,239
Speaker 1: level of personal responsibility when it comes to what it

945
00:48:56,360 --> 00:48:58,640
Speaker 1: is that we each do individually with our money. That

946
00:48:58,680 --> 00:49:00,880
Speaker 1: it makes me just think that anybody who's listening to

947
00:49:00,880 --> 00:49:02,839
Speaker 1: this show, even if they've been listening for a long time,

948
00:49:02,840 --> 00:49:04,600
Speaker 1: and they're like, man, I really think Matt and Joeler

949
00:49:04,640 --> 00:49:06,239
Speaker 1: spot on a lot of things, and you you might

950
00:49:06,239 --> 00:49:08,000
Speaker 1: be like, they're idiots on a lot of things, which

951
00:49:08,160 --> 00:49:11,400
Speaker 1: which which is probably true. But even that, even in

952
00:49:11,440 --> 00:49:13,719
Speaker 1: that like take our word with a grain of salt, like,

953
00:49:13,840 --> 00:49:16,400
Speaker 1: listen to us. Hopefully we can provide you valuable information

954
00:49:16,440 --> 00:49:18,759
Speaker 1: and a helpful way to think about important topics in

955
00:49:18,760 --> 00:49:22,319
Speaker 1: your life, like whatever personal finance conundrum you've got going on.

956
00:49:22,600 --> 00:49:25,840
Speaker 1: But we're also fallible human beings, and and it just

957
00:49:25,880 --> 00:49:28,319
Speaker 1: makes me think of like TikTok and how there's some

958
00:49:28,360 --> 00:49:30,480
Speaker 1: great people dishing some good advice on TikTok, but there's

959
00:49:30,480 --> 00:49:31,960
Speaker 1: a lot of bad information out there too, and it's

960
00:49:31,960 --> 00:49:35,040
Speaker 1: coming at you in these bite sized bits that are,

961
00:49:35,080 --> 00:49:37,160
Speaker 1: you know, a minute or less in length, and so

962
00:49:37,200 --> 00:49:39,879
Speaker 1: it's really hard to communicate effectively when we're talking about

963
00:49:39,960 --> 00:49:42,760
Speaker 1: complicated maneuvers that we might be making with our money.

964
00:49:43,000 --> 00:49:46,040
Speaker 1: So yeah, I would listen to a range of people.

965
00:49:46,160 --> 00:49:48,960
Speaker 1: I would read books, blogs, I listen to podcasts. I

966
00:49:48,960 --> 00:49:50,960
Speaker 1: would kind of run the gamut when I'm getting my

967
00:49:51,000 --> 00:49:53,920
Speaker 1: information on things. And if you found one guru in

968
00:49:53,960 --> 00:49:57,040
Speaker 1: the crypto space that you're beholden to, then you're treading

969
00:49:57,080 --> 00:49:59,480
Speaker 1: on really risky ground at that point. Yeah, that's true.

970
00:49:59,719 --> 00:50:01,719
Speaker 1: Although I will say, like, there's nothing that we stay

971
00:50:01,719 --> 00:50:04,400
Speaker 1: here on the show that we don't personally do. Although

972
00:50:04,440 --> 00:50:06,480
Speaker 1: I'm sure those gurus out there say the same thing

973
00:50:06,480 --> 00:50:08,560
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, they're like, no, this is what I'm doing.

974
00:50:08,600 --> 00:50:11,000
Speaker 1: Obviously I believe it. I mean, we we plent crypto broke.

975
00:50:11,800 --> 00:50:14,040
Speaker 1: We try to say things that that only that are

976
00:50:14,080 --> 00:50:16,640
Speaker 1: in the best interest supper audience, and that's our goal

977
00:50:16,960 --> 00:50:18,960
Speaker 1: three days a week, every week. And I think it

978
00:50:19,040 --> 00:50:21,279
Speaker 1: is important to mention that, to say that that's kind

979
00:50:21,280 --> 00:50:23,400
Speaker 1: of the standard we hold ourselves too. But there are

980
00:50:23,400 --> 00:50:25,399
Speaker 1: a lot of other people who might say the same

981
00:50:25,400 --> 00:50:28,120
Speaker 1: thing and then not actually practice it. That's right, Okay,

982
00:50:28,160 --> 00:50:30,000
Speaker 1: let's get to our amazing beer that you and I

983
00:50:30,080 --> 00:50:33,240
Speaker 1: enjoyed during this episode. Well, this is a barrel aged

984
00:50:33,360 --> 00:50:37,240
Speaker 1: blended strong ale by our friends over at Monday night brewing.

985
00:50:37,840 --> 00:50:40,279
Speaker 1: So this is their anniversary beer, their anniversary ale. They

986
00:50:40,360 --> 00:50:43,160
Speaker 1: used to call it tie whatever on, like whatever year

987
00:50:43,160 --> 00:50:44,919
Speaker 1: it was, So if it was the fifth anniversary, tie

988
00:50:44,920 --> 00:50:48,319
Speaker 1: five on. So this one it doesn't say tie eleven on,

989
00:50:48,560 --> 00:50:50,600
Speaker 1: but it just has an eleven on there made out

990
00:50:50,600 --> 00:50:52,239
Speaker 1: of neck ties because neck ties are kind of their thing.

991
00:50:52,280 --> 00:50:55,600
Speaker 1: It's kind of like their original original thing was like

992
00:50:55,760 --> 00:50:58,879
Speaker 1: a young professional individual who was loosening as tie after

993
00:50:58,880 --> 00:51:00,880
Speaker 1: a hard, hard day's work. Essentially, they were trying to

994
00:51:00,880 --> 00:51:04,160
Speaker 1: like combat the we're drinking beer on the weekends. It's like, no, no,

995
00:51:04,200 --> 00:51:07,439
Speaker 1: we make sophisticated beers that you enjoy during the week.

996
00:51:07,480 --> 00:51:10,120
Speaker 1: It's more about quality than quantity. Munch of the clock,

997
00:51:10,400 --> 00:51:12,400
Speaker 1: leave your work, go get a good beer at the

998
00:51:12,440 --> 00:51:14,920
Speaker 1: end of the day, exactly. And this beer is a

999
00:51:15,000 --> 00:51:17,600
Speaker 1: quality beer, I'll say. So. It's a blended strong ale.

1000
00:51:18,000 --> 00:51:21,800
Speaker 1: And the reason it's not a particular style is because

1001
00:51:22,320 --> 00:51:24,080
Speaker 1: this is truly a mash up of a bunch of

1002
00:51:24,080 --> 00:51:26,000
Speaker 1: different beers. Like like they say here, it's a mash

1003
00:51:26,080 --> 00:51:30,120
Speaker 1: up of a stout quad brown Ale, barley wine Ale, Doppelbox.

1004
00:51:30,840 --> 00:51:32,840
Speaker 1: There are so many different beers that they've brewed in

1005
00:51:32,960 --> 00:51:37,399
Speaker 1: order to blend together. In some of these extra special makes,

1006
00:51:37,440 --> 00:51:40,239
Speaker 1: Burana would barrels. I guess this is what they stuck

1007
00:51:40,239 --> 00:51:44,520
Speaker 1: these things. It's like Brazilian Brazilian. That makes me think

1008
00:51:44,600 --> 00:51:46,640
Speaker 1: of when I was a kid, and you would do

1009
00:51:46,760 --> 00:51:51,200
Speaker 1: the suicide of this and but awestent times that tasted

1010
00:51:51,480 --> 00:51:54,279
Speaker 1: like trash. But this this one does not. Because when

1011
00:51:54,280 --> 00:51:56,319
Speaker 1: I hear because it's funny, I was like, man, this

1012
00:51:56,400 --> 00:51:58,759
Speaker 1: has some quad like elements. So this has some barley

1013
00:51:58,760 --> 00:52:01,040
Speaker 1: wine like elements. I didn't the label and know that,

1014
00:52:01,200 --> 00:52:03,120
Speaker 1: but I can taste it all coming through. It wasn't

1015
00:52:03,200 --> 00:52:06,440
Speaker 1: it works. It was like a traditional stouts Russian Imperial,

1016
00:52:06,560 --> 00:52:08,480
Speaker 1: or it wasn't just a straight up barley wine. It's

1017
00:52:08,520 --> 00:52:12,920
Speaker 1: just a dark, rich, flavorful ale that also happens to

1018
00:52:12,960 --> 00:52:16,360
Speaker 1: have some vanilla. But yeah, man, this was a fantastic beer. Often,

1019
00:52:16,480 --> 00:52:18,400
Speaker 1: when you're doing that, it takes like a master blender.

1020
00:52:18,600 --> 00:52:21,480
Speaker 1: Blending multiple beers to create a great beer is actually

1021
00:52:21,480 --> 00:52:23,480
Speaker 1: a really difficult thing to do well. And there's a

1022
00:52:23,480 --> 00:52:25,839
Speaker 1: lot of really crappy, blendid beers out there, but this

1023
00:52:26,000 --> 00:52:29,520
Speaker 1: is a really really good blendid beer that yeah, I

1024
00:52:29,560 --> 00:52:31,200
Speaker 1: would like to have more of for sure. Yeah. The

1025
00:52:31,280 --> 00:52:34,239
Speaker 1: technique they borrowed from the world of scotch, because that's

1026
00:52:34,280 --> 00:52:37,400
Speaker 1: typically that's how you get some of those consistently amazing

1027
00:52:37,640 --> 00:52:40,239
Speaker 1: scotches like you you know, the Johnny Walker whatever, You've

1028
00:52:40,239 --> 00:52:42,320
Speaker 1: got the different colors, like each one of those are blends,

1029
00:52:42,400 --> 00:52:44,600
Speaker 1: and so you've got single malts, which are a single

1030
00:52:45,239 --> 00:52:48,200
Speaker 1: like vintage basically a single year. Most folks like the

1031
00:52:48,200 --> 00:52:50,360
Speaker 1: consistency that comes with the blend. But then there's folks

1032
00:52:50,400 --> 00:52:53,520
Speaker 1: who use that blending technique to create entirely new products,

1033
00:52:53,680 --> 00:52:55,880
Speaker 1: which is the beer that you and I are enjoying today.

1034
00:52:55,960 --> 00:53:00,880
Speaker 1: It's like blending on steroids. Yeah, absolutely, so good, agreed, delicious.

1035
00:53:00,960 --> 00:53:02,919
Speaker 1: So that's gonna do it for this episode. For folks

1036
00:53:02,960 --> 00:53:05,560
Speaker 1: who want show notes links to anything that that Stacy

1037
00:53:05,600 --> 00:53:07,719
Speaker 1: mentioned in the interview, Will will put those up on

1038
00:53:07,719 --> 00:53:09,600
Speaker 1: our website and how to money dot com. That's right,

1039
00:53:09,600 --> 00:53:12,040
Speaker 1: So Joel, that's going to be it, buddy. Until next time,

1040
00:53:12,200 --> 00:53:13,959
Speaker 1: Best Friends Out, Best Friends Out,