Speaker 1: All right, welcome to another episode of the Market Disruptors podcast.
Speaker 1: I am continuing to see the series here on Decentralized Finance.
Speaker 1: You guys really want to know more about Celsius, and
Speaker 1: so I am sitting down with Alec Maschinski from Celsius
Speaker 1: right now. We are at the Bitcoin two thousand nineteen
Speaker 1: conference in San Francisco. Um, super honor that you would
Speaker 1: take the time to sit down with me, so welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. Sure, much rather be riding those bikes
Speaker 1: in Baham and then but you know, next sense of you,
Speaker 1: we're doing it down to the peak. You know we'll
Speaker 1: do that. Well. So for those of you guys we
Speaker 1: were talking before the show and and he's a dirt
Speaker 1: by guy on the dirt By guy, and we're both
Speaker 1: really like off roading and adventure bikes and so, um,
Speaker 1: that's really cool. It's kind of a really niche, you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of and so to find someone else that
Speaker 1: shares that passion is pretty cool. So I'd love to
Speaker 1: take you down on a trip and we can talk
Speaker 1: more about it. Um, And so we could. We could
Speaker 1: go on and on for days about that, but let's
Speaker 1: let's get right into it. So UM, I started talking
Speaker 1: about decentralized finance, which is which is an amazing space. UM,
Speaker 1: you know, de centralized and finance bringing kind of freedom
Speaker 1: and quality back. Um, the way that cryptocurrencies work. Um,
Speaker 1: we have the ability to holdle because it's it's a
Speaker 1: new technology that's gaining you know, it's growing super fast. Obviously,
Speaker 1: bitcoins kind of mooning again right now, and I know,
Speaker 1: you know a lot of people don't want to sell
Speaker 1: and that's a problem, um, and you have come up
Speaker 1: with a way to kind of help people do that.
Speaker 1: Before we dig into that, maybe why don't you just
Speaker 1: go back a little bit I should have done this
Speaker 1: is tell us a little bit about what you're doing
Speaker 1: in the space and kind of how you got here
Speaker 1: before we jump into Yeah. So so first, you know,
Speaker 1: I think the context is very important because people it's
Speaker 1: more for people to understand, yeah, what I've done before
Speaker 1: and why it's relevant. So. So, I'm an immigrant that
Speaker 1: came to this country thirty years ago, and uh, I
Speaker 1: grew up in I was born in in communism in
Speaker 1: Russia and grew up in socialism in Israel and came
Speaker 1: to America and this was like just a dream come true, right, Like,
Speaker 1: you can talk about all the idea as you want
Speaker 1: in other countries and no one is really going to
Speaker 1: help you make them happen. And here you show up
Speaker 1: and you're like, I have this idea. You know, we're
Speaker 1: gonna put voice on the internet, you know, and and
Speaker 1: and people backed me in our it's two fifty million dollars,
Speaker 1: took the company public. You know. Now Voice of IP
Speaker 1: is used by the majority of the people on the planet.
Speaker 1: Right road the original protocols, the patents build the first gateways.
Speaker 1: So that was just an amazing experience. I did that
Speaker 1: in my twenties, right, and and uh so very rarely
Speaker 1: you can do that kind of revolution twice, right, like
Speaker 1: going from yeah, going from um something that the phone
Speaker 1: companies who were the toll collectors, which used to charge
Speaker 1: us three dollars a minute, to something that is free, right,
Speaker 1: I mean that really changed the lives of people. They
Speaker 1: can talk to their friends, they can reach out to
Speaker 1: their family anytime they want. So now we're kind of
Speaker 1: moving from Voice of P two money over and so
Speaker 1: had October. I mean I filed the patents on my
Speaker 1: birthday October. So I think you had an interesting background
Speaker 1: because one, you're not from original from the United States,
Speaker 1: and so you understand the issues that most people face. Right.
Speaker 1: So because of that, you probably saw your family having
Speaker 1: to do a lot of long distance calling, and long
Speaker 1: distance calling is very expensive at that time. It's also
Speaker 1: recognizing that like back then, it was very difficult to
Speaker 1: figure out which network is going to win the phone
Speaker 1: company's bet on a T M. Ethernet was a big thing.
Speaker 1: Frame really was a big thing. So betting on T
Speaker 1: C P I P was actually like looked like crazy idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was not the norm. Like now we all say Internet, Internet,
Speaker 1: but the Internet was an application on the phone network
Speaker 1: when you dial up with your motive. I remember the motive.
Speaker 1: So to think that that would be somehow replaced with
Speaker 1: something that's available seven and it's lost enough to do
Speaker 1: conferdence calls, like my kids have eight of their friends
Speaker 1: in real time right all over the world talking at
Speaker 1: the same time. So that was just a bridge too far.
Speaker 1: And and and that is exactly the analogy for crypto
Speaker 1: today because when you look at these powerful banks and
Speaker 1: you're seeing it how how little they give us right
Speaker 1: for the hard earned money that we earned. For me,
Speaker 1: it's just something that is not just irritating. I have
Speaker 1: to do something about it. I can't just sit back
Speaker 1: and like in my presentation there, I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I asked the crowd, I said, what are you doing
Speaker 1: about it? You know? You know so so so I
Speaker 1: think it's important that people understand that that all of
Speaker 1: us make that decision every day, all of us choose
Speaker 1: to deposit money in the bank or put it somewhere
Speaker 1: else where it will actually do good, where it will
Speaker 1: act in our best interests. Yeah, I want to dig
Speaker 1: into that before I do. I love this because you
Speaker 1: have such an interesting background. I'm just curious. So having
Speaker 1: started in, like you said, and at the time the
Speaker 1: protocol wasn't clear, you were kind of taking a gambler.
Speaker 1: I wrote a new protocol or you wrote a new protocol.
Speaker 1: And at the time there was a lot of people
Speaker 1: that thought it was never gonna work, and the internet
Speaker 1: was the last thing and it was stupid. I started
Speaker 1: internet business in two thousand one, an e commerce business. Earlier,
Speaker 1: people told me no one will ever find anything. Brands
Speaker 1: refused to sell me products, don't will ever bu anything online.
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous. I can only imagine an any four. But
Speaker 1: so I'm curious, and I'm sure you're hearing kind of
Speaker 1: the same things today. Right, A lot of the tractors say,
Speaker 1: it's a scam, it's never gonna work. How do you, um,
Speaker 1: how do you see that future? How did you know
Speaker 1: it was gonna work? How did you manage to stay
Speaker 1: strong and believe in yourself when everybody was telling you wrong? So,
Speaker 1: first look, I was a skeptic in the beginning of myself, right,
Speaker 1: I mean it's not like when I read Satotia's paper.
Speaker 1: But even with the internet, right, I mean, with the Internet,
Speaker 1: you found a way to believe in yourself when other
Speaker 1: people were telling you wrong. Well, when your twenties, you
Speaker 1: don't know any better. You know, like you think you're
Speaker 1: the smartest guy, and you think you have all the answers.
Speaker 1: And I was lucky to be right right, But but
Speaker 1: you know I was plenty time wrong in other ventures.
Speaker 1: It's not like, you know, like we we headed out
Speaker 1: of the park every time. But but they issues more
Speaker 1: about the focus was on disruption, the focus was on
Speaker 1: empowerment of the people. The focus wasn't doing good. I
Speaker 1: didn't do it for the money. I didn't like say, oh,
Speaker 1: where can I make the most money. Let's do voice
Speaker 1: of r IP. The idea was, here is a group,
Speaker 1: new set of rails, right that that bypasses the phone company,
Speaker 1: and soon enough it's going to be powerful enough to
Speaker 1: take all of that business away from the phone companies.
Speaker 1: And today it loses money on international voice because like
Speaker 1: basically all their customers left them and they're all using
Speaker 1: Skype and What's Up and Viber and all kinds of
Speaker 1: other apps. Right, So the banks are exactly the same thing.
Speaker 1: But people don't understand. They look at me and say,
Speaker 1: but the banks are so powerful, and like, the banks
Speaker 1: are not powerful at all. The only reason their powerful
Speaker 1: is because you give them your money for free every day. Again,
Speaker 1: so let's talk about that. So you you have founded
Speaker 1: a huge problem with international calling, and you fix that,
Speaker 1: and today you see another huge problem. And then in
Speaker 1: between I did a few other than seven startups in between, right,
Speaker 1: raised a billion dollars and three billion in exits. I
Speaker 1: I should be retired right now. I just don't have
Speaker 1: enough switch. Because you have so much energy I can.
Speaker 1: I do not have enough switch. I'm like this seven
Speaker 1: days a week because you see problems and you want
Speaker 1: to solve them. And and that's and and I think
Speaker 1: when you're doing that, you have energy, right, So that's good.
Speaker 1: But so now there's another big problem that we have today.
Speaker 1: Fixed that cars. So yeah, yeah, there's a whole cars
Speaker 1: out here we are looking at. So. Um, we have
Speaker 1: a problem with the financial system today, which we're not
Speaker 1: going to get into all of that. I talked about
Speaker 1: it all the time. But one of the big problems
Speaker 1: is in the way the finance works and um, which
Speaker 1: no one understands really and most people, unfortunately, they don't
Speaker 1: teach us in school. They don't just us in high school.
Speaker 1: You could graduate in PhD. In economics and you still
Speaker 1: would not know how to make money. Right. So if
Speaker 1: you think of how many people actually know how how
Speaker 1: out to really earn millions of billions of dollars, it's
Speaker 1: very very few. I mean, that's why we celebrate war
Speaker 1: in Buffett and the guys that Ryan Goldman Sacks and
Speaker 1: people like that, because they can extract billions of dollars
Speaker 1: of profit out of something that for us we barely
Speaker 1: make a salary, right like, and we were like struggling
Speaker 1: to finish our month, and these guys make billions and
Speaker 1: profits every year. So so that talent, the talent of
Speaker 1: earning that return is a very rare talent. And and
Speaker 1: again Stelf celebrating the scientists and the and our real heroes.
Speaker 1: We celebrated people who are making money, who who basically
Speaker 1: aggregate wealth. Right, So so it's just all upside down.
Speaker 1: So I try to create a new system in which
Speaker 1: you don't have to know anything, right, I mean, the
Speaker 1: whole idea about Salesa's network is like Costco. You you
Speaker 1: become a member of COSTCOO, you take a giant card,
Speaker 1: you walk in and everything in the warehouse is at
Speaker 1: the lowest price, the best quality. You just filled the
Speaker 1: card as fast as possible, and you check out. So
Speaker 1: that's that's experience, the financial experience people should have with
Speaker 1: the curated service that acts in your best interest. Right,
Speaker 1: that's what we don't have. We don't have any institution
Speaker 1: acting in augustins is not the brokers, not the insurance guys,
Speaker 1: not the banks, no one. So like a fidelity or
Speaker 1: like no one, none of them is acting in your
Speaker 1: best interests. I'll give you a simple example. Right, you
Speaker 1: think that fidelity charges you, that's a steel, right, it's nothing.
Speaker 1: Let me give you an example. You bought let's say
Speaker 1: Tesla stock, right, and you're deposited with Fidelity, and they
Speaker 1: charge you four the trade. They make thirty percent a year,
Speaker 1: lending your stock to short sellers thirty percent years. So
Speaker 1: if you give them ten thousand dollars, they made three
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a year for you just sitting there holding
Speaker 1: your stock in the Fidelity account. So the same way
Speaker 1: people make money on your Bitcoin or your Ether or
Speaker 1: your Dash. Right, the simplest example is Dash because Dash
Speaker 1: actually earns the yield without doing anything. But if you exactly,
Speaker 1: but most people don't have eighty thousand dollars of Dash,
Speaker 1: so they bought ten thousand or five thousand, They hold
Speaker 1: it on finance or somewhere else. Bidence stakes it bidens
Speaker 1: are in seven percent. They just don't give it to you.
Speaker 1: So all Celsius did and said, give us your Dash.
Speaker 1: We will immediately every week we will send you more
Speaker 1: Dash to your account, will stake it for you, no fees,
Speaker 1: no charges, just we're gonna do it for you. And
Speaker 1: people go like, there must be some hind in the agenda,
Speaker 1: why are you doing it? That's that's because there's no
Speaker 1: education in the way that works. And so you talk
Speaker 1: about there's no way for the average person to know
Speaker 1: what these rich rich they make their money, but there is,
Speaker 1: and so there's clues, right, Warren Buffett tells us, Um,
Speaker 1: if you don't learn to make money while you sleep,
Speaker 1: you'll work till the day that you die. Yes, And
Speaker 1: so it's important for us. And working is a good thing.
Speaker 1: Working is a good thing. But don't forced to work,
Speaker 1: especially doing something you hate, exactly. And so we want,
Speaker 1: we want our money to be worked. We work hard
Speaker 1: for our money. Our money should be with loving hard, yes,
Speaker 1: and warn Buffet says, we need to put to work,
Speaker 1: And that's essentially what you're talking about, right, putting our
Speaker 1: money to work. And most people, unfortunately again half of
Speaker 1: them Americans don't have four hundred dollars in case of emergency.
Speaker 1: I mean that of Americans the bottom of the same
Speaker 1: wealth as the top one percent. Right, So I'm I'm
Speaker 1: part of that one percent. I'm not sitting here telling
Speaker 1: you all I'm poor. I'm fighting for the poor. No,
Speaker 1: I'm rich, but I'm fighting fighting for you giving the
Speaker 1: poor tools Exactly, I'm not giving you the fish. I'm
Speaker 1: teaching you how to fish. So, um, what you're doing
Speaker 1: is you're allowing someone to use their cryptocurrency and uh
Speaker 1: and and use the value that's there without having to
Speaker 1: sell it, without them even knowing how to do it,
Speaker 1: without even knowing how. And maybe maybe we could say
Speaker 1: it's giving them passive income, right because they're passively income.
Speaker 1: There's other ways to make passive and I couldn a dividend,
Speaker 1: pain stock or something like that. Bonds obviously have yield
Speaker 1: and things like that, um, and in those types of situations, um,
Speaker 1: And when I do a bond, right, they have like
Speaker 1: triple A rated bonds or junk bonds, and they pay
Speaker 1: different yields. Would loan in my crypto will be similar
Speaker 1: to that like a bond, So a bond and the
Speaker 1: yields the abounds have been going down drastically, right, So,
Speaker 1: so what people have to understand is that like, for example,
Speaker 1: when I came to this country thirty years ago, I
Speaker 1: could take my dollars, depart them in city bank and
Speaker 1: earned seven percent without doing anything. Try to earn seven
Speaker 1: percent on your money today, right with low risks. So
Speaker 1: the banks I believe on average pay about yes yes
Speaker 1: so so so like JP Morgan, for example, has fourteen
Speaker 1: trillion in assets. Half of its seven trillion. They don't
Speaker 1: pay any interest whatsoever. And that's about a hundred million
Speaker 1: Americans giving them the money and getting nothing because they're
Speaker 1: too lazy to move the money from the checking account
Speaker 1: of the savings account. Because they're saying, I have a
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, I'm gonna exactly times a hundred million, seven
Speaker 1: trillion dollars in deposits. Right, So, so JP Morgan makes
Speaker 1: thirty billion a year in profit just from that, right
Speaker 1: they make all the banks together made thirty four billion
Speaker 1: in fees from overdraft fees. Yeah, I mean this, that's
Speaker 1: taking money from the people that cannot finish the month,
Speaker 1: taking thirty dollars and then the person has to go
Speaker 1: and get a day loan because they can't pay their
Speaker 1: just it's all upside down. Why because they prey on
Speaker 1: the poor. There's just no other way to say it. Right,
Speaker 1: So again, why isn't there anyone acting in your best interests?
Speaker 1: Cost cocts in your best interests. Amazon acts in your
Speaker 1: best interest? Right? I can say that with the stray face.
Speaker 1: I know business wakes up every day and he's trying
Speaker 1: to do everything for his customers. Why isn't anyone doing
Speaker 1: it in their financial services? Well, because they're they're not there.
Speaker 1: Their interests are not aligned with our interests. And the
Speaker 1: number of banks that exists of shrunk down to four
Speaker 1: or five, right, So so there's no reason there's no competition. Right,
Speaker 1: it's impossible since dog Frank, it's impossible to open a
Speaker 1: new breath bank. You if you get a license, you
Speaker 1: have to comply in to eighty thou pages of regulation.
Speaker 1: So the rules that we're supposed to protect us are
Speaker 1: actually preventing competition from coming in. And then when these
Speaker 1: banks take too much risk, we have to bail them
Speaker 1: out with taxpayers. So all we're trying to do. And again,
Speaker 1: our job is not Celsius is not here to play
Speaker 1: with your coins or create manipulation or anything like that.
Speaker 1: Our mission, we have only one mission to earn return
Speaker 1: on your assets. Your asset. You can go all the
Speaker 1: way crazy and take really risky assets, right, we have
Speaker 1: risky coins in our wallet, or you can go super
Speaker 1: safe and take stable coins. We're not we're not telling
Speaker 1: you which one. You have to do your homework and
Speaker 1: you have to decide, and I recommend to people. Pople
Speaker 1: say what what should I do? And I'm like half
Speaker 1: of you asked that you're being stable coins? Right, we
Speaker 1: pay eight point one percent on stable coins right now,
Speaker 1: Like you take your dollars, you convert them into stable coins.
Speaker 1: People don't know what that means. Let me speak in English.
Speaker 1: You take your dollars, you buy t U s D
Speaker 1: or g U s D or U s DC. Right,
Speaker 1: these are issued by by True us D or by
Speaker 1: Gemini or ber Circle. These are reputable company is their
Speaker 1: trust companies, the fiduciaries. So you know the dollar is
Speaker 1: actually sitting in that bank account and your token represents
Speaker 1: a dollar. And now you can deposit the token, earn
Speaker 1: eight point one percent at any time, twenty four hours
Speaker 1: a day. You can enjoy it and get your dollars back.
Speaker 1: For people to earn eight pril one percent, that's a
Speaker 1: life changing event, right it can. We have a guy
Speaker 1: here who's paying his mortgage and his kids college just
Speaker 1: from the interest is earning from Celsius. Right so so,
Speaker 1: and that's what we're saying to people, Look, just create
Speaker 1: a nest egg that like you said, instead of you're
Speaker 1: working for the money, the markets is wanting working for you,
Speaker 1: then take another put in bitcoin, then take another put
Speaker 1: in five other coins. Right now you have a diversified portfolio.
Speaker 1: It's still yielding seven or eight percent, but you have
Speaker 1: the upside of bitcoin. You may have the downside too,
Speaker 1: but at least you have some exposure. But you're yielding
Speaker 1: while you're earning. Right, So the people are deposited with
Speaker 1: us during this downturn in the market, they were paid
Speaker 1: in bitcoin. That bitcoin is now worth three times as much.
Speaker 1: They didn't earn seven percent. They ear Oh so you
Speaker 1: pay that we pay bitcoin? Yes, oh wow. So that's
Speaker 1: a big difference exact crisis going out. So unless you
Speaker 1: only when you feel that when you open your wallet
Speaker 1: and you go, wait a second, I actually made five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars only put five thousand. If I put ten
Speaker 1: bitcoin in, I would get We only pay in bitcoin.
Speaker 1: We're not allowed to pay in dollars because we're not
Speaker 1: a bank. We're not allowed to take dollars. We're not
Speaker 1: allowed to pay in dollars. So you have you so
Speaker 1: going back to this. So again, so there's there's options
Speaker 1: for people if they want to make interest on their money,
Speaker 1: like did it in paying stocks or bonds or whatever,
Speaker 1: which are all pegged in dollars, which are all pegged
Speaker 1: in dollars, and there's an unseen force that is actually
Speaker 1: squeezing your money right inflation. It's three percently your money
Speaker 1: every year, so three and all or more exactly, they
Speaker 1: tell you, They tell you, we know it's a lot exactly.
Speaker 1: So so if you're only earning two percent, right average
Speaker 1: bond right now, pay two right government, But so you're
Speaker 1: actually losing one and a half to two percent a year.
Speaker 1: You think you're earning, but you're actually losing money. So
Speaker 1: you have to earn enough to at least exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: So for you to earn eight percent like we're paying
Speaker 1: unstable coins, you have to take a lot of risk, right,
Speaker 1: And that's what we're telling people. Look look at the
Speaker 1: risk you have to take to earn that in the
Speaker 1: stock market or somewhere else. And look at the risk
Speaker 1: we have. We have all of our loans asset backed.
Speaker 1: We only I want to get into the risk. That's
Speaker 1: definitely what we want to dip into. But I want
Speaker 1: to just talk about this for a second. So that's
Speaker 1: on on USD. The real where the real huge benefit
Speaker 1: is in is in the bitcoin right, or other cryptocurrencies,
Speaker 1: because I mean bitcoin's up over two like this year.
Speaker 1: We're also down before before. But it depends on what
Speaker 1: time period you look at it. But for the most part,
Speaker 1: most people in bitcoin believe it's going to continue going up.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think over the next several years get
Speaker 1: into twenty fifty thousand is realistic. At least I'm hopeful
Speaker 1: that it is. And so I don't want to sell,
Speaker 1: and most people don't want to sell. However, that money
Speaker 1: is locked up, and if I could earn at least
Speaker 1: earn interest on top of what I'm earning, that's a
Speaker 1: huge opportunity. Um. And so that's part of it. But
Speaker 1: you also offer another type of product where I can
Speaker 1: borrow against that as well, right, And so then I
Speaker 1: could take that bitcoin. I have ten thousand in bitcoin,
Speaker 1: and I could borrow five thousand out and I could
Speaker 1: do what I want with that five thousand, including leveraging
Speaker 1: back in or buying a piece of real estate or whatever. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: what do you think are the different types of people
Speaker 1: that are interested in that? So the richest people I know,
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm you know, smoozing around within the Hampton's
Speaker 1: or in on Wall Street with with these people, right,
Speaker 1: I can tell you, including our president, right, they make
Speaker 1: all their money because they don't pay any taxes legally. Right.
Speaker 1: So Donald Trump famously says, I'm I followed all the rules.
Speaker 1: I borrowed dollars against my real estate rights. The interest
Speaker 1: is tax deductible. In the meantime, I don't have any
Speaker 1: tax bill because I didn't sell anything. Same thing with bitcoin.
Speaker 1: If you have bitcoin and it appreciates, right, Let's say
Speaker 1: you wanted a two thousand, and now it's a ten
Speaker 1: thousand if you sell it, so you could you have
Speaker 1: to pay your mortgage, you have to pay your kids college,
Speaker 1: you have to pay almost half of that to the
Speaker 1: government if you live in California and New York anywhere
Speaker 1: else exactly. So you can avoid that, you can just
Speaker 1: borrow against the asset and then you don't have to
Speaker 1: pay any taxes. You're deferring the taxes for later on,
Speaker 1: just like Donald Trump does with his real estate. Which
Speaker 1: is interesting, and it's a percent legal. So we're telling people, Look,
Speaker 1: all these tricks that the rich people do are available
Speaker 1: to all of us. And another trick that the rich
Speaker 1: due that I've talked about is then taking those dollars
Speaker 1: and putting them into another job. So now one dollar
Speaker 1: can be doing two jobs and leverage, leverage and attacks deductible.
Speaker 1: So I could, but you have to be smart about
Speaker 1: your advanced strategy, right and and and most people probably
Speaker 1: to watch the show say too complicated for me, don't
Speaker 1: know how to do it. So Celsius saying, look, you
Speaker 1: don't need to be a genius. We have like a
Speaker 1: hundred fifty different strategies that we automatically deployed to generate
Speaker 1: this yield. You don't have to choose them. You don't
Speaker 1: have to understand them. You we we have one bucket
Speaker 1: of BTC. We don't treat the guy with a ten
Speaker 1: million dollar and the guy with a ten dollars differently.
Speaker 1: You're both in the same bucket. It's a proadia allocation.
Speaker 1: Whatever we earn goes proada to all the people participating.
Speaker 1: Now go to your bank and tell them, hey, I
Speaker 1: have a thousand dollars deposit. I wanted the same treat
Speaker 1: to it. Like Donald Trump, You're not gonna get it right.
Speaker 1: So again, because they make all their money on the poor,
Speaker 1: they cannot charge the rich people any any real feest.
Speaker 1: I don't pay any fees for banks. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: too rich for them to charge me any fees. Right,
Speaker 1: they know I'm gonna leave in a minute if they
Speaker 1: charge me anything. So all we've done in Celsius is
Speaker 1: we said no feast to anyone. We have never charged
Speaker 1: the fee. All of our earnings, whatever we earn eight
Speaker 1: goes to our depositors. That's what no one has done
Speaker 1: in the history of man. No one was crazy enough
Speaker 1: to take real earnings that they can earn on other
Speaker 1: people's money and give it to the depositor. Who would
Speaker 1: do such, Who would do such a stupid thing? Who
Speaker 1: would do that? So when we started this, people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's a scam, it's not for real. Then they start
Speaker 1: looking and we you know, we we've unfortunately in this industry,
Speaker 1: we've seen a bunch of we've seen bits connect they're
Speaker 1: gonna pay one percent today or whatever they're gonna we're
Speaker 1: promising eight percent a year. I know, I get it.
Speaker 1: But we have three million in assets, We've done two
Speaker 1: billion in loans, right, I mean, there's some banks here
Speaker 1: in California that I haven't done that this year. So
Speaker 1: we are moving very very quickly. Why because when people
Speaker 1: look at this, they do a little bit of homework
Speaker 1: on Alex Maschinsky. They're like, Yeah, this guy doesn't need
Speaker 1: to work, why is he doing this? Maybe he is
Speaker 1: really maybe it really cares about us, So let's talk
Speaker 1: about that. So everything has risk. Doing something has risk.
Speaker 1: Doing nothing has us. Right, we all have risk, and
Speaker 1: we we we have to understand what those risks are. Um,
Speaker 1: if I if I leave my money under the match,
Speaker 1: if there's risk that it's losing value, if you get stolen,
Speaker 1: if I put in the bank, and if everything has risk,
Speaker 1: we have to understand that. And it's just important to
Speaker 1: assess those risks. And so you said, um, the average
Speaker 1: person should do a little homework. So, um, you're not
Speaker 1: the only one doing this thing. But maybe we were
Speaker 1: the first one. You were the first one, but maybe
Speaker 1: you could tell people that we forced the other guys
Speaker 1: to do it. Right, So we forced the block fives
Speaker 1: on the sold and the next so and all these
Speaker 1: other people who paid nothing, they took all your coins
Speaker 1: and paid you nothing. Right, we showed up, made up
Speaker 1: their game a little. Let me remind everybody, right, last year,
Speaker 1: just a year ago, you wanted to do a margin
Speaker 1: loan against your bitcoin. You paid eight we paid, We
Speaker 1: charged five to nine percent. So we cut it by
Speaker 1: two thirds. Everybody, everybody hates us. Why why all these
Speaker 1: other companies hate us because we took this game that
Speaker 1: that basically they used to charge like a credit card, right,
Speaker 1: and we said, no, it's an asset back loan. You
Speaker 1: give me a bitcoin, I'm giving you dollars at fifty
Speaker 1: cents on the dollar. I shouldn't be charging you double digits.
Speaker 1: I should be charging a single digit, just like if
Speaker 1: you bore it against your home, you would be past
Speaker 1: the course that. People don't understand that. It's the same thing.
Speaker 1: They don't understand that. So what's the So we we
Speaker 1: broke the game and we said not just that we're
Speaker 1: gonna charge you five percent, We're gonna pay you eight
Speaker 1: percent on your deposit. If you don't take a loan,
Speaker 1: you understand it's it's it's that's what it is. So
Speaker 1: so that because again for us, it's for me, success
Speaker 1: is a hundred million users. For the other guy's success
Speaker 1: is stealing as much as possible from your is a
Speaker 1: completely different game exactly. But but that's the question, is
Speaker 1: what is your motive and why why are you doing this?
Speaker 1: You're doing it for the money? Are you doing it
Speaker 1: for profit? You know? So what I would like to
Speaker 1: find out is what is the counterparty risk that we
Speaker 1: have as a risk As as an investor, I always
Speaker 1: way risk and reward. Great question. Typically I want more
Speaker 1: upside the downside, and it's here it seems like maybe
Speaker 1: I'm risking a hundred percent. You're holding all my coins
Speaker 1: risking make eight. So let's take a few examples. So
Speaker 1: it's a great question. And it's very important that people
Speaker 1: spend time not just listening to me or you, but
Speaker 1: actually doing their own home work because they need to
Speaker 1: feel comfortable that they're taking their precious assets and they're
Speaker 1: putting them in a safe place. So, first of all,
Speaker 1: we use bidgoo as a custodian. Right, it's one of
Speaker 1: the best custodian A hundred million insurance from from Lloyd's.
Speaker 1: It's the same custodian that exchanges like Cracking and other
Speaker 1: people use. You put your coins and cracking they go
Speaker 1: to bid go right, you put your coins and the insurance.
Speaker 1: So if there were some sort of a hack or something,
Speaker 1: have insurance that so so, but there's a big difference.
Speaker 1: For example, if you take that dash coin, we actually
Speaker 1: don't land it out. All we do is take it,
Speaker 1: so it's sits in bid go and you earn seven percent.
Speaker 1: That's the lowest risk ASCID you could actually do. Now.
Speaker 1: Dash can move up and the value but lose value,
Speaker 1: but you will earn that yield. We don't even lend
Speaker 1: it out. It never leaves bidgo. Okay, so it's insured,
Speaker 1: it's yielding, it's doing everything supposed to do. You pay nothing.
Speaker 1: If you want to open a bitgo account, it's three
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a month minimum. We're giving you that for free, right,
Speaker 1: so people have to understand that, Wow, okay, I got
Speaker 1: a bit goo for free, I got the insurance for free.
Speaker 1: I got staking for free, and I'm staking. It's not
Speaker 1: easy for those at homes, it's not easy. You're doing
Speaker 1: all the work of exactly and that's definitely exactly. And
Speaker 1: you needed minimum of eighty thou dollars for each note.
Speaker 1: So if you gave me five hundred dollars worth of Dash,
Speaker 1: I'm still paying you as if you had eighty thou
Speaker 1: and you created your own staking NOE. Then you check
Speaker 1: the computer every day. We're doing all that for free.
Speaker 1: Why are we doing that for free? Right? People go like, no,
Speaker 1: it's too good to be true. Right, So we're doing
Speaker 1: it because we want to convince you that we're acting
Speaker 1: in your best interests, because we make enough money on
Speaker 1: your bitcoin and enough money on your dollar loans and
Speaker 1: everything else that we can give this away, you know.
Speaker 1: So then you have other ousets. For example, if you
Speaker 1: deposit bitcoin with us, we don't earn money from bitcoinsiding
Speaker 1: in bit code, right, so we have to lend it out.
Speaker 1: Lend it out means what we go to exchanges, we
Speaker 1: go to hedge funds. We don't lend to individuals. We
Speaker 1: collect coins from individuals. We only lend to institutions. Right.
Speaker 1: So if you remove your coins from binns and you
Speaker 1: put them with us, guess what not bynus does not
Speaker 1: have enough coins. They're like, hey, we need to do
Speaker 1: market making, we need to do shorting, we need to
Speaker 1: do front running of all of our customers. We need
Speaker 1: more coins. Can you lend us coins all the ship
Speaker 1: that they do? They do it with your coins, which
Speaker 1: you gave them for free. When you remove the coins,
Speaker 1: then they have to pay eight for borrowing from us.
Speaker 1: So we collect the toll from the exchanges and the
Speaker 1: hedge funds instead of them collecting tolls from you. So
Speaker 1: now you're loaning these coins out, and I don't know
Speaker 1: who that's going from. I would imagine they're all being commingled, right,
Speaker 1: And so there's a big btc um you know, omnibus account,
Speaker 1: meaning one giant account from there we lend to all
Speaker 1: the parties. And so you're lending to these exchanges or
Speaker 1: whoever institution, and I don't have any control over that,
Speaker 1: what their credit worthiness or whatever. And so let's just
Speaker 1: say any of all something default. And as a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, a couple weeks ago, Polonias had a problem,
Speaker 1: and and violence are the problem. They stole forty eight
Speaker 1: million dollars from violence just a few weeks ago. Yes,
Speaker 1: just the other day Polonias had a problem where one
Speaker 1: of their derivative clam or when we use poloniae of
Speaker 1: the socialize the loss right everyone had to take a
Speaker 1: sixtent haircut. That's correct, and and so then how does
Speaker 1: that affect my point? None of our customers got affected, okay,
Speaker 1: and Celsius covered that. So we we can't get into
Speaker 1: the details because of this legal stuff going on. But
Speaker 1: but we have an inhroment. Yeah, we have an arrangement
Speaker 1: with Circle, which is the owner of Polonias, that guarantees
Speaker 1: that all these people are going to get their money back.
Speaker 1: And we already started receiving all of that distribution. Why
Speaker 1: because we're big enough customers, all of Circle or polonia
Speaker 1: X for them to basically say, oh, you're a little guy.
Speaker 1: Here here is your socialized loss. Right. So, but none
Speaker 1: of our customers and see any of that in any case. Right,
Speaker 1: So we have our own internal fund, some sort of
Speaker 1: like a reserve fund or something like that. Yes, you could.
Speaker 1: You're kind of prepared for anything something. Our job. Our
Speaker 1: job is Job number one is to always return all
Speaker 1: the coins to our depositors. Job number two is to
Speaker 1: remember job number one, rule number one. Right, So there's
Speaker 1: no soon as it falls apart, it falls apart pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: I would imagine. Well, so first any hedge funds well
Speaker 1: leend to they have to give us collateral, right, so
Speaker 1: we don't. We never land without collateral. Any exchange that
Speaker 1: we trade with we usually have their assets in our
Speaker 1: deposits as well. So for example, Circle, we we have
Speaker 1: a lot of USDC coins on deposits as well, so
Speaker 1: we can always offset these things, meaning we don't have
Speaker 1: real exposure. So we manage the counterparty risk all the
Speaker 1: time against all of these two hundred different hedge funds
Speaker 1: and exchanges that we work with, and that's our job.
Speaker 1: We we represent only the depositors. We do not represent
Speaker 1: the exchanges or the hedge fund everybody else. Our responsibility
Speaker 1: is only for the depositors. Another thing is is like
Speaker 1: if you use our app, you can see like basically
Speaker 1: you can see how many users. You can see how
Speaker 1: much we have on deposit. So like right now we
Speaker 1: have three Yeah, I'm showing you my wallet, but if
Speaker 1: you have your wallet, you can see the same thing.
Speaker 1: So you can see like how much is on deposit.
Speaker 1: So you can see what is on deposit, you can
Speaker 1: see how much you're earning. You can see how much
Speaker 1: interest We just crossed three million in interests, right. So
Speaker 1: so the reason for this transparency is because none of
Speaker 1: these banks and pointing because Bank of Americans right behind us,
Speaker 1: none of these institutions ever shared anything with you. The
Speaker 1: only time you know there's a problem is when we
Speaker 1: have to bail them out, right, So getting an order
Speaker 1: from arts and yard a year and a half from
Speaker 1: now that that everything is fine. Right now, it's completely useless.
Speaker 1: We're talking about real time on the blockchain. You can
Speaker 1: order us on the blockchain and verify how much we
Speaker 1: of the deposit, how much did we lend out, did
Speaker 1: we collect that interest? Did I give you eighty percent
Speaker 1: of what you were supposed to earn? So all these
Speaker 1: things are not things we were required to do by law.
Speaker 1: There's no law. Obviously, Binance coin based, none of these
Speaker 1: people do any of the stuff I just talked about
Speaker 1: because they're not acting in your best interests. So so
Speaker 1: the average person needs to know that if they leave
Speaker 1: their coins on an exchange, they're probably subject to as much,
Speaker 1: if not more risk than they would be working with
Speaker 1: your bitfinex. Socialized losses byans did not because they had
Speaker 1: enough cash to but but Polonia social losses. A lot
Speaker 1: of these people, some of them are total loss, like
Speaker 1: the guys in Canada, the guys in Australia. Right laws
Speaker 1: there was no recovery. So so it's a double jeopardy.
Speaker 1: When you hold your coins on exchanges, you're helping them
Speaker 1: cheat you, You're helping them front on you. Right, So
Speaker 1: at least remove them, right. I recommend to people to
Speaker 1: keep at least some coins in whole storage. I always
Speaker 1: tell that, But I can tell you our community is
Speaker 1: not going to grow If everybody has to learn the
Speaker 1: mastery of how to use a treasury or how to
Speaker 1: use UH and how to work with private keys and
Speaker 1: all that stuff and keep it in a safe place,
Speaker 1: We're not gonna grow and have a billion users. So
Speaker 1: what Celsius has done is done a half step it. Basically,
Speaker 1: we went to the community that doesn't understand anything technical
Speaker 1: and said, look, here's a way to come in and
Speaker 1: transact take benefit from all this stuff without knowing anything
Speaker 1: about bitcoin. You don't need to know anything to transact
Speaker 1: with us. And we have a service called sell pay
Speaker 1: that allows you to share the love with everybody without
Speaker 1: them having any wallets. Yeah. Um, can we talk about
Speaker 1: the Celsius coin, the cell coinn um and so I
Speaker 1: believe you were paying an extra percentage if you pay
Speaker 1: that's the utility of the celtici is there is that
Speaker 1: still actively working on? So we we So we launched
Speaker 1: the cell token um. Obviously we didn't I see a
Speaker 1: year ago we raised thirty something million dollars. We used
Speaker 1: all that money to build a platform, and three weeks
Speaker 1: ago we went live, but with with the utility, meaning,
Speaker 1: if you took a loan you wanted to pay interest,
Speaker 1: if you paid it with sell talken, you pay less.
Speaker 1: If you want to earn on BTC, instead of getting
Speaker 1: paid in BTC, you can get paid in self talken,
Speaker 1: you earn more more. Instead of eight point one percent,
Speaker 1: you earned ten point one percent. Right, we issued that
Speaker 1: to everybody of our community. Came and said, we love
Speaker 1: you great, I don't want to get paid in BTC,
Speaker 1: give me more self talken. Right. Lawyers jumped and said,
Speaker 1: wait a second. In the US, you may have a
Speaker 1: problem with us, So hold the US, let us figure
Speaker 1: out what's happening. Continue paying everybody BTC on BTC. So
Speaker 1: we didn't stop anything. We just told the people that
Speaker 1: wanted BTC for now, you're getting BTC, you're not getting
Speaker 1: self talken Right. And then when we resolve all these issues. Again,
Speaker 1: there was no action from the SEC. There was no
Speaker 1: any any enforcement action or anything like that. Right, this
Speaker 1: is our lawyers telling us, let's do the right thing.
Speaker 1: Let's solve all these things. And again, our our job
Speaker 1: number one is to protect the community. So if we're
Speaker 1: doing something that may endanger the community, may may cause
Speaker 1: a regulator or one of our competitors are coming focus
Speaker 1: in the eye. That is not good for our community.
Speaker 1: We're doing exceptionally well. What about the rest of the
Speaker 1: decentralized finance space. So you're in like a custodio type
Speaker 1: asset back loan type, and we're centralized you can use
Speaker 1: that word, where we are a centralized version of decentralized.
Speaker 1: And then there's then there's protocol bases, right, so the
Speaker 1: de five guys a compounded darma or something like that,
Speaker 1: but those have their own risk as well. Sometimes the
Speaker 1: protocol doesn't work good like we saw, I mean dharma.
Speaker 1: If you got liquidated, you've got seventy six cents on
Speaker 1: the doll So so the cost of like if you
Speaker 1: get to the point where you get caught in the
Speaker 1: margin call, or you get caught because you were asleep
Speaker 1: and suddenly there was a flash crash, you're gonna you're
Speaker 1: gonna eat all of your assets without having any recourse.
Speaker 1: There's nothing, no one to talk to. It's a smart
Speaker 1: contract than eight your coins. So it's curious where you
Speaker 1: see being someone who's been a step ahead of the game,
Speaker 1: pushing the envelope um where you see the DeFi space
Speaker 1: going and you you guys have plans to get into more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so first we support DeFi. So we have the die
Speaker 1: token in our wallet. You can deposit die with us,
Speaker 1: you can give us ether and earn die. I mean
Speaker 1: there's we do all of that, so we don't see
Speaker 1: uh defies as as competition or as a bad actor
Speaker 1: or anything like that. It serves the purpose. A sophisticated
Speaker 1: guy that understands how the stuff works can either generate
Speaker 1: yield or generate leverage from these type of tools. But
Speaker 1: these are derivatives, right, I mean most people don't understand
Speaker 1: how stocks and bonds work forget about derivatives. So I
Speaker 1: would not recommend the average joe who's just finding their
Speaker 1: way around the stuff. We has a job and have
Speaker 1: kids and have a wife and all stuff to get
Speaker 1: into this game, because that is a game for prose
Speaker 1: and we land, we make money. We we sit on
Speaker 1: the receiving side of dice if somebody gets liquid, and
Speaker 1: we are the ones collecting and distributing into our community.
Speaker 1: So you want to be taking the risk We want
Speaker 1: to be the guy who collects. We give you a strategy.
Speaker 1: Whoever liquidates the contract, we sit there all day long
Speaker 1: and wait to liquid it. Why because it's an easy
Speaker 1: way to earn We just take then give it to
Speaker 1: our coin holders automatically. So so that's one of those
Speaker 1: hundred fifty strategies. Right. So, all I'm saying to people is, look,
Speaker 1: we're not hiding how we're making money. We just like
Speaker 1: Warren Buffett, right if it tells you, look, I bought
Speaker 1: Where's Fargo? I have twenty billion dollars worth of else Fargo.
Speaker 1: They pay me six percent dividend every year. That's how
Speaker 1: I make my money. You can buy it. Also, it's
Speaker 1: the same thing here. We have many, many strategies. They're
Speaker 1: all available to anyone, right Like, right now we are
Speaker 1: collecting on cash deposits. Right we're paying ten point to
Speaker 1: five ten on cash deposits. Were using the cell because
Speaker 1: we can deploy it at much higher rates. Right So now,
Speaker 1: again it's not gonna be there forever. It goes up
Speaker 1: and down, and it's only available sometimes, and but on
Speaker 1: average it returns that ten percent and we give eight
Speaker 1: point one percent back to the community. So so you
Speaker 1: want to, you want to track all the exchanges and
Speaker 1: figure out where which one popped and go in there
Speaker 1: and open an account and manage they yield. So we
Speaker 1: we we socialize the profit just like the other guys
Speaker 1: are socializing the laws. It right, So it's it's now.
Speaker 1: The issue is trust. The issue is that most people don't. Again,
Speaker 1: they get screwed so many times in their lives that
Speaker 1: when they listen to this they go and say, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: you know lex Yeah, this guy, this immigrant guy from
Speaker 1: New York who lives in a fancy apartment on Lexington Avenue,
Speaker 1: really cares about me and he's doing it for me. Yeah, right, right,
Speaker 1: And that's the issue. The issue is that we get
Speaker 1: conditions so badly by the banks not to earn anything
Speaker 1: on our money that when we see a good thing,
Speaker 1: we don't know it's a good thing. The other thing
Speaker 1: is that and this is a little bit off topic,
Speaker 1: but another thing is that, you know, today we're seeing
Speaker 1: society kind of paint capitalism or entrepreneurship or business owners
Speaker 1: as bad and greedy because we all dook advantage of it.
Speaker 1: But really, I say that a business owner is a servant.
Speaker 1: We're solving problems the only way to be good in business.
Speaker 1: I mean not obviously the banks is a different story.
Speaker 1: But there are ten million small business in America and
Speaker 1: they do everything you said, and they're solving problems. They
Speaker 1: all I agree with you, but the not the profits.
Speaker 1: If you take if you take the profits in America, right,
Speaker 1: then you take the top four or five companies, they
Speaker 1: make more than half of all the profits. Story. So
Speaker 1: the problem is, why are those guys, like when when
Speaker 1: JP Morgan makes thirty billion a year in profit, why
Speaker 1: are under paying their deposit a little bit more? Just
Speaker 1: a little bit. They can pay you. Understand, they make
Speaker 1: return on capital, so on average they can pay you
Speaker 1: seven sevent average. They're bragging about exactly they're stealing from you.
Speaker 1: Let's go through the scenario. They're certainly not they're certainly
Speaker 1: not paying. It's stealing. Okay, you make a deposit to
Speaker 1: the bank, right, they pay you one percent or less.
Speaker 1: They then turn around lend me your money. It's not
Speaker 1: their money. Most people think that when I use the
Speaker 1: credit card, the Chase Manhattan credit card, the Chase lends
Speaker 1: me the money. No, it's not their money, it's your money.
Speaker 1: So you get one percent Now, why is there such
Speaker 1: a gap? It didn't used to be that way, right,
Speaker 1: People used to actually get I used to make seven
Speaker 1: percent by the positing money with Chase. Yes, and not
Speaker 1: only not only are they doing that, but they're fractionally
Speaker 1: reserving it exactly they can they can depend to one
Speaker 1: exact legally, they have a license to steal. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so that's estay. I know we're going super long. We
Speaker 1: can talk about this stuff wherever I love it. Um,
Speaker 1: we're at the bitcoin conference. Um, and so we're here
Speaker 1: with with a lot of bitcoiners. Uh, we're talking about that,
Speaker 1: and I really appreciate you getting into the risk and whatnot.
Speaker 1: Hopefully everybody learned from that. But I'm just curious looking
Speaker 1: out at the landscape over all. We talked about the
Speaker 1: DeFi space, but maybe what are being at the blog
Speaker 1: Bluction conference. What are you seeing right now happening in
Speaker 1: the industry that has you excited and kind of hopeful
Speaker 1: for the way I see it is again, communism, socialism, capitalism.
Speaker 1: These are three experiments at bettering our lives, right and again,
Speaker 1: I'm thriving in capitalism, right, but most people are not.
Speaker 1: Most people cannot just start a business and whip it
Speaker 1: out of nowhere and raise all this money and do well.
Speaker 1: And it's not because they're not good people. It's not
Speaker 1: because they're not working hard. It's just they don't get
Speaker 1: in front of those opportunities. And decentralization is a fourth movement,
Speaker 1: it's like a fourth wave. It's an experiment, right, it's
Speaker 1: it's another experiment at bettering our times, and all of
Speaker 1: us have to decide are we sticking with centralization, which
Speaker 1: is capitalism and centralization it's the same thing, right, And
Speaker 1: again I have that perspective because I'm one of the
Speaker 1: very few people that lived through all those systems. It's
Speaker 1: pretty hard to live in in communism, right, So so
Speaker 1: so for me, decentralization is like again, it's like a beautiful,
Speaker 1: uh shiny day, right that it's obvious to me that
Speaker 1: that system is better than the other three experiments. But
Speaker 1: for most people they look at this decentralization, I don't
Speaker 1: even know what that word means. Right, So again I
Speaker 1: invite your viewers to do the homework to understand. Just
Speaker 1: go on Wikipedia and read about it. Right, it's not
Speaker 1: a new idea, it's just an idea whose time has come.
Speaker 1: I Actually I made a video I talked about it's
Speaker 1: the pendulum, and there's a cycle and every every forty
Speaker 1: years we go from a week to a ME cycle
Speaker 1: and you can trace this back for thousands of years.
Speaker 1: And the last me individualisms decentralization was at the end
Speaker 1: of World War Two, and we've been going to a
Speaker 1: we a centralized cycle um with the U, N and
Speaker 1: the EU, and we're just topping out where we're maxed out.
Speaker 1: And now the pendulum will sting back to decentralization and
Speaker 1: we have a people are tired. They're tired all that, right,
Speaker 1: They don't they can't put their finger on where it's
Speaker 1: not working. I don't know why. They don't know why.
Speaker 1: They don't understand why their money is not working. They
Speaker 1: don't understand why they can't pay off the mortgage. They
Speaker 1: don't understand why they cannot move ahead in their in
Speaker 1: their life and their careers and everything else. So it's
Speaker 1: like the invisible hand is slowing them down instead of
Speaker 1: speeding them up. Right, if you don't know what the
Speaker 1: invisible hand is, then research it, yes, the researchers, and
Speaker 1: so it's again it's going from that, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: Adam Smith idea of invisible hand to Austrian economics, where
Speaker 1: it's all about deflationary powers. The bitcoin is a deflationary power.
Speaker 1: There's less and less bitcoin every day because people lose coins,
Speaker 1: lose keys, and there's less and less mining with the
Speaker 1: halfing and everything else. So if you understand that, you
Speaker 1: go and say, wow, it's more powerful than goal. It's
Speaker 1: more powerful than anything ever created. Right, I brought a
Speaker 1: prop for that. Actually, you see, so you know I'm
Speaker 1: a trillionaire. You've never met a trillionaire. Right, So this
Speaker 1: is one hundred trillion dollars from Zimbabwe. But now the
Speaker 1: reason I have this is it's a it's a visceral
Speaker 1: reminder that the Zimbabwe dollar used to be worth one
Speaker 1: and a half years dollars and now a hundred trillion
Speaker 1: is worth less than one dollar. And that's the power
Speaker 1: of inflation. Right. This is a country that just went
Speaker 1: through craziness and basically get completely devalued its currency because
Speaker 1: they didn't have a choice. Right, So the same thing
Speaker 1: could happen to the dollar, and and and it's happening. Right.
Speaker 1: Since we went off the gold standard, we lost of
Speaker 1: the value of the of the dollar. People don't understand that,
Speaker 1: but you know why prices are getting more expensive, but
Speaker 1: their earnings are not. The things have not moved in
Speaker 1: twenty years. So always saying is there is a different system,
Speaker 1: there's a different set of rails where all these rules
Speaker 1: of why you're held back don't apply. Right, you can
Speaker 1: join this revolution. It's here, The future is here. You
Speaker 1: just have to choose to stop being abused by the
Speaker 1: banks and the financial institution and switched to a different
Speaker 1: set of rails. And we're writing those rails and saying, hey,
Speaker 1: we'll act in your best interests. Yeah, so that's so.
Speaker 1: Then what you're excited about is the technology that we
Speaker 1: have and the change. You know. I love writing the
Speaker 1: caboose on that thing, you know, that's all I'm doing.
Speaker 1: I'm just writing the caboose and I'm having the time
Speaker 1: of my life. Yeah, it's awesome. I put out a
Speaker 1: tweet I think two days ago, and I said, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm as happy to anyone to see bitcoin going up. Yes,
Speaker 1: but I'm here for the revolution. Yes. And then it's happening.
Speaker 1: It's happening anyway, like you can't stop it. I mean, again,
Speaker 1: Facebook trying to ride the same rails, but that's like
Speaker 1: a wolf in sheep clothing. You know, they're they're not
Speaker 1: part of this thing, you know, coming from communism. I
Speaker 1: know we're gonna wrap it up. It from communism. You
Speaker 1: have that perspective, right, and other people in the world
Speaker 1: have that perspective where they understand why privacy or why
Speaker 1: censorship resistant. And the people in the US have a
Speaker 1: hard time understanding that. But I'm thinking, you know, with
Speaker 1: with the data breach that Facebook had, um, they're starting
Speaker 1: to make the case as to why we need privacy.
Speaker 1: And maybe maybe with Microsoft announcing a new identity thing
Speaker 1: and whatnot, maybe companies might start optimizing for privacy and
Speaker 1: making that a feature and helping to put you know,
Speaker 1: kind of push Yeah, you're you're an optimist, an optimist
Speaker 1: too much of an optimist. Maybe something I would say
Speaker 1: that Apple, Right, I use Apple? Why do example, because
Speaker 1: everything Apple does is actually trying to better my life? Right, faster, cheaper, better, better,
Speaker 1: operating system protects me, tells me how much I'm using
Speaker 1: the device every day, right, tells me if I'm sleeping
Speaker 1: or not. Like, so they're actually acting in my best interest. Right,
Speaker 1: and all that paid for it is nine dollars I
Speaker 1: get all that stuff so tremendous value for what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: You can't say that about Google. You can't say that
Speaker 1: about Facebook friend Yea. Their their model is the opposite,
Speaker 1: is to extract all your identity stuff sell it to
Speaker 1: as many people as possible. You don't notice that, You
Speaker 1: don't see that, right, it's happening. Then it's like the
Speaker 1: invisible head. Hundreds of billions of dollars. These are the
Speaker 1: most profitable companies in the world. Right, These these companies
Speaker 1: so so pretending somehow that they're gonna again change their spots.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. These guys are greedy bastard. I mean, when
Speaker 1: was the last time you heard Google say do no evil?
Speaker 1: That was the slogan I met Sir gay Bryn when
Speaker 1: he was still in Stanford, right, and that was the
Speaker 1: slogan do no evil? Right zook? Right, He's not. His
Speaker 1: job is not. He has to deliver that earnings for
Speaker 1: his shareholders. He cannot do anything for his customer. It's
Speaker 1: almost because exactly just like the bank incentivize wrong justw
Speaker 1: there they have to produce. So if they said, hey,
Speaker 1: we're going to cut this data privacy out because it's
Speaker 1: it's wrong. You hit it on the head, hit the nail.
Speaker 1: So one one thing, one things, because it's very important. Right.
Speaker 1: So the issue is that when you're acting in the
Speaker 1: best interest of your shareholders, right, which is fine, you
Speaker 1: have to always extract it from somewhere else. The only
Speaker 1: place to take it is from your customers, right. And unfortunately, again,
Speaker 1: we as customers are just taking all that beating without
Speaker 1: doing anything about it. Right. Decentralization offers you a completely
Speaker 1: new world. It's like suddenly you can breede oxygen again.
Speaker 1: Right because the centralization. Look at Vitalic right with Ethereum,
Speaker 1: it values people based on their contribution to society. He
Speaker 1: created something beautiful, it was worth ninety billion out of nothing. Right.
Speaker 1: It's not based on profits. There's no profit in Ethereum, right,
Speaker 1: it doesn't generate anything. But that's what we're going through.
Speaker 1: We're going for a pyramid where everything is measured based
Speaker 1: on profit generation to a place where it's about the
Speaker 1: network effect. Did you create a big enough network and
Speaker 1: did it provide value? And didn't provide value? And it's
Speaker 1: your contribution to society that matters. Right, We're celebrating the
Speaker 1: people who contributed the most to achieved. Italic people like that.
Speaker 1: So so I think, like you said, the pendulum is
Speaker 1: swinging the other way and we are doing all the
Speaker 1: right things. It's just most of the people insist on
Speaker 1: sticking with those pyramids, just like the Agian pyramids. It's
Speaker 1: that that time is over. You've gotta move on, guys. Awesome, awesome,
Speaker 1: good stuff. We can talk forever. I'm really so interested
Speaker 1: in your perspective because of your background, and I love
Speaker 1: the political side of things, in the philosophy side. But
Speaker 1: that's another time. That's another time. You next interviewers. We're
Speaker 1: doing it on the next time. Next time we'll be
Speaker 1: in bajand bikes and bringing the next to you guys.
Speaker 1: All right, thanks for joining, guys,