Speaker 1: So the big question is this, how do investors like
Speaker 1: us get access to the ideas, information, and most importantly,
Speaker 1: the right people that give us the tools and information
Speaker 1: we need to make conformed and educated decisions to have success.
Speaker 1: That is the question, and this podcast will give us
Speaker 1: the answers. This is Mark Moss, your host. Let's get
Speaker 1: this started. Welcome to another episode of the Market Disruptors podcast.
Speaker 1: Today I am joined by Alex Maschinski, founder of Celsius.
Speaker 1: Now you've probably heard of Alex. He is going around
Speaker 1: talking and speaking everywhere. He's a big advocate of cryptocurrencies.
Speaker 1: He was original creator of void voice over Internet and
Speaker 1: now he is coining the term money over Internet. And
Speaker 1: so he really talks about what's going on with the banks,
Speaker 1: how they're taking advantage of us, why this is keeping
Speaker 1: people broke or poor, and what we can do about it.
Speaker 1: We talked about how cryptos changing this, the decentralization nature,
Speaker 1: and how the average person can get back with the
Speaker 1: banks have been taking them for a long time. It's
Speaker 1: a really good conversation. It's one that I've been wanting
Speaker 1: to have a long time. I really really looked forward
Speaker 1: to talking to Alex, and I think you're gonna enjoy
Speaker 1: it too, So let's go ahead and jump right in.
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 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 with 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
Speaker 1: know 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, decentralizing finance bringing kind of freedom and quality back. UM,
Speaker 1: the way that cryptocurrencies work. UM, we have the ability
Speaker 1: to holdle because it's it's a new technology that's gaining
Speaker 1: you know, it's growing super fast. Obviously, bitcoins kind of
Speaker 1: mooning again right now, and I know, you know a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't want to sell and that's a problem, um,
Speaker 1: and you have come up with a way to kind
Speaker 1: of help people do that. Before we dig into that,
Speaker 1: maybe why don't you just go back a little bit
Speaker 1: I should have done this is tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about what you're doing in the space and kind
Speaker 1: of how you got here before we jump into Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so first, you know, I think the context is
Speaker 1: very important because people it's more for people who understand, yeah,
Speaker 1: what I've done before and why it's relevant. So. So,
Speaker 1: I'm an immigrant that came to this country thirty years ago,
Speaker 1: and uh, I grew up in I was born in
Speaker 1: in communism in Russia and grew up in socialism in Israel.
Speaker 1: And came to America, and this was like just a
Speaker 1: dream come true. Right, Like, you can talk about all
Speaker 1: the ideas you want in other countries and no one
Speaker 1: is really gonna help you make them happen. And here
Speaker 1: you show up and you're like, I have this idea.
Speaker 1: You know, we're gonna put voice on the internet, you know,
Speaker 1: and and and people backed me in ours two fifty
Speaker 1: million dollars took the company public. You know, now Voice
Speaker 1: of I P s used by the majority of the
Speaker 1: people on the planet right road the original protocols, the
Speaker 1: patents build the first gateways. So that was just an
Speaker 1: amazing experience. I did that in my twenties, right, and
Speaker 1: and uh so very rarely you can do that kind
Speaker 1: of revolution twice, right, like going from yeah, going from
Speaker 1: um something that the phone companies who were the toll collectors,
Speaker 1: which used to charge us three dollars a minute, to
Speaker 1: something that is free, right, I mean that really changed
Speaker 1: the lives of people. They can talk to their friends,
Speaker 1: they can reach out to their family anytime they want.
Speaker 1: So now we're kind of moving from Voice of I
Speaker 1: P two money over and so October, I mean I
Speaker 1: filed the patents on my birthday October five. So I
Speaker 1: think you had an interesting background because one you're not
Speaker 1: from original from the United States, and so becaunderstand the
Speaker 1: issues that most people face. Right, So because of that,
Speaker 1: you probably saw your family having to do a lot
Speaker 1: of long distance calling, and long distance calling is very
Speaker 1: expensive at that time. It's also recognizing that like back then,
Speaker 1: it was very difficult to figure out which network is
Speaker 1: going to win. The phone company's bet on a T
Speaker 1: M ethernet was a big thing. Frame really was a
Speaker 1: big thing. So betting on T C P I P
Speaker 1: was actually like looked like crazy idea. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: not the norm like now all saying Internet Internet, but
Speaker 1: the Internet was an application on the phone network when
Speaker 1: 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 fast 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 by
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 the positive money in the bank or put it
Speaker 1: somewhere else where it will actually do good, it will
Speaker 1: act in our best interest. 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, so you were kind of taking a gamble.
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 and it was stupid. I started internet business in
Speaker 1: two thousand one, an e commerce business. Earlier, people told
Speaker 1: me no one will ever find anything. Brands refused to
Speaker 1: sell me products, no one will ever bu anything online.
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous. I can only imagine a But so I'm curious,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure you're hearing kind of the same things today, right,
Speaker 1: A lot of the tractors say it's a scam, it's
Speaker 1: never gonna work. How do you, um, how do you
Speaker 1: see that future? How did you know it was gonna work?
Speaker 1: How did you manage to stay strong and believe in
Speaker 1: yourself when everybody was telling you wrong? So, first look,
Speaker 1: I was kept in the beginning myself, right. I mean
Speaker 1: it's not like when I read Satoshia's paper, but the Internet, Right,
Speaker 1: with the Internet, you found a way to believe in
Speaker 1: yourself when other people were telling you wrong. Well, when
Speaker 1: you're in your twenties, you don't know any better. You know,
Speaker 1: like you think you're the smartest guy, and you think
Speaker 1: you have all the answers. And I was lucky to
Speaker 1: be right right, But but you know I was plenty
Speaker 1: time wrong in other ventures. It's not like, you know,
Speaker 1: like we we handed out of the park every time.
Speaker 1: But but they choose more about the focus was on disruption,
Speaker 1: The focus was on empowerment of the people. The focus
Speaker 1: wasn't doing good. I didn't do it for the money.
Speaker 1: I didn't like say, oh, where can I make the
Speaker 1: most money, Let's do voice of ip R. The idea was,
Speaker 1: here is a new set of rails, right that that
Speaker 1: bypasses the phone company and soon enough it's going to
Speaker 1: be powerful enough to take all of that business away
Speaker 1: from the phone companies. And today and lose his money
Speaker 1: on international voice because like basically all their customers left
Speaker 1: them and they're all using Skype and What's Up and
Speaker 1: Vibra and all kind of other apps. All right, So
Speaker 1: the banks are exactly the same thing about people don't understand.
Speaker 1: They look at me and the same. But the banks
Speaker 1: are so powerful and like, the banks are not powerful
Speaker 1: at all. The only reason their proful is because you
Speaker 1: give them your money for free every day. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about that. So you you founded a huge problem
Speaker 1: with international calling, and you fix that, and today you
Speaker 1: see another huge problem. And then in between I did
Speaker 1: a few other than seven startups in between, right, raised
Speaker 1: a billion dollars and three billion in exits. I I
Speaker 1: should be retired right now. I just don't have enough switch.
Speaker 1: Because you have so much energy I can. I do
Speaker 1: not have enough switch. I'm like this seven days a
Speaker 1: week because you see problems and you want to solve
Speaker 1: them and and that's and and I think when you're
Speaker 1: doing that, you have energy, right, So that's good. But
Speaker 1: so now there's another big problem that we have today.
Speaker 1: After I fixed that car, so yeah, yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: whole cars out here we are looking at. So. Um,
Speaker 1: we have a problem with the financial system today, which
Speaker 1: we're not going to get into all of that. I
Speaker 1: talked about it all the time, but one of the
Speaker 1: big problems is in the way to find its works
Speaker 1: and um, which no one understands really and most people, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: they don't teach us in school. They don't teach us
Speaker 1: in high school. You could graduate in PhD. In economics
Speaker 1: and you still would not know how to make money. Right.
Speaker 1: So if you think of how many people actually know
Speaker 1: how 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 and we were like
Speaker 1: struggling to finish our month and these guys make billions
Speaker 1: and profits every year. So so that talent, the talent
Speaker 1: of earning that return is a very rare talent. And
Speaker 1: and again still celebrating the scientists and the and our
Speaker 1: real heroes, we celebrated people who are making money, who
Speaker 1: who basically aggregate wealth. Right, So so it's just all
Speaker 1: upside down. So I try to create a new system
Speaker 1: in which you don't have to know anything, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: the whole idea about Salesa's network is like cost you
Speaker 1: become a member of course school, 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 fill 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 interests. Right,
Speaker 1: that's what we don't have. We don't have any institution
Speaker 1: acting in our best inch just not the brokers, not
Speaker 1: the insurance guys, not the banks, no one. So like
Speaker 1: a fidelity or like no one, none of them is
Speaker 1: acting in your best interests. I'll give you a simple example. Right,
Speaker 1: you think that fidelity charges you, that's a steel, right,
Speaker 1: it's nothing. Let me give you an example. You bought
Speaker 1: let's say Tesla stock, right, and you're deposited with Fidelity,
Speaker 1: and they charge you four the trade. They make thirty
Speaker 1: percent a year, lending your stock to short sellers thirty
Speaker 1: percent years. So if you give them ten thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: they made three thousand dollars a year for you just
Speaker 1: sitting there holding your stock in the Fidelity account. So
Speaker 1: the same way people make money on your Bitcoin or
Speaker 1: your Ether or your Dash. Right, The simplest example is
Speaker 1: Dash because Dash actually earns you without doing anything, but
Speaker 1: if you take exactly. But most people don't have eighty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars of Dash, so they bought ten thousand or
Speaker 1: five thousand, they hold it on Binance or somewhere else.
Speaker 1: Bindance steaks it, Bindance earn seven percent. They just don't
Speaker 1: give it to you. So all Celsius did it, said
Speaker 1: give us your Dash, we will immediately every week we
Speaker 1: will send you more Dash to your account, will stake
Speaker 1: it for you, no fees, no charges, just we're gonna
Speaker 1: do it for you. And people go like, there must
Speaker 1: be some hind in agenda. Why are you doing it?
Speaker 1: Gosh that's that's because there's no education in the way
Speaker 1: that exact works. And so you talk about there's no
Speaker 1: way for the average person to know what these rich
Speaker 1: rich how they make their money, but there is, and
Speaker 1: so there's clues, right, Warren Buffett tells us, um, if
Speaker 1: you don't learn to make money while you sleep, you'll
Speaker 1: work till the day that you die. Yes, And so
Speaker 1: 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 loving, hardy, and warm.
Speaker 1: Buffet says, we need to put to work. And that's
Speaker 1: essentially what you're talking about, right, putting our money to work.
Speaker 1: And most people unfortunately, again, half of Americans don't have
Speaker 1: four hundred dollars in case of emergency. I mean that
Speaker 1: of Americans the bottom of the same wealth as the
Speaker 1: top one percent. So I'm I'm part of that one percent.
Speaker 1: I'm not sitting here telling you all I'm poor. I'm
Speaker 1: fighting for the poor. No, I'm rich, but I'm fighting
Speaker 1: fighting for you giving the poor tools exactly, I'm not
Speaker 1: giving you the fish, I'm teaching you how to fish.
Speaker 1: So UM, what you're doing is you're allowing someone to
Speaker 1: use their cryptocurrency and uh and and use the value
Speaker 1: that's there without having to sell it, without them even
Speaker 1: knowing how to do it, without even knowing how. And
Speaker 1: maybe maybe we could say it's giving them passive income,
Speaker 1: right because they're passively income. There's other ways to make
Speaker 1: passive And I couldn't show you a dividend pain stock
Speaker 1: or something like that. UM. Bonds obviously have yield and
Speaker 1: 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 Wolby be similar
Speaker 1: to that bond, so a bond and the yields and
Speaker 1: bonds have been going down drastically, right, So, so what
Speaker 1: people have to understand is that like, for example, when
Speaker 1: I came to this country thirty years ago, I could
Speaker 1: take my dollars departlem in city bank and earn seven
Speaker 1: percent without doing anything right, try to earn seven percent
Speaker 1: on your money today right with low risks. So the
Speaker 1: banks I believe on average pay about zero. 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 accounts
Speaker 1: of the savings account Because they're saying I have a
Speaker 1: thousand dollars exactly, i'ms a hundred million, seven trillion dollars
Speaker 1: in deposits. Right, So, so JP Morgan makes thirty billion
Speaker 1: a year in profit just from that, right they make
Speaker 1: all the banks together made thirty four billion in fees
Speaker 1: from overdraft fees. Yeah. I mean that's taking money from
Speaker 1: the people that cannot finish the month, taking thirty dollars
Speaker 1: and then the person has to go and get a
Speaker 1: day loan because they can't pay their just it's all
Speaker 1: upside down. Why because they prey on the poor. There's
Speaker 1: just no other way to say it. Right, So again,
Speaker 1: why isn't there anyone acting in your best interests? Cost
Speaker 1: cocts in your best interests. Amazon acts in your best interest? Right?
Speaker 1: I can say that with the stray face. I know
Speaker 1: business wakes up every day and he's trying to do
Speaker 1: everything for his customers. Why isn't anyone doing it in
Speaker 1: their financial services? Well because they're they're not they're they're
Speaker 1: interests are not aligned with our interests. Right, And the
Speaker 1: number of banks that exist of was shrunk down to
Speaker 1: four or five, right, So so there's no reason there's
Speaker 1: no competition. Right, it's impossible since dog for it's impossible
Speaker 1: to open a your breath bank. You if you get
Speaker 1: a license, you have to be complying to eighty thou
Speaker 1: pages of regulation. So the rules that we're supposed to
Speaker 1: protect us are actually preventing competition from coming in. And
Speaker 1: then when these banks take too much risk, we have
Speaker 1: to bail them out with taxpayers. So all we're trying
Speaker 1: to do and again, our job is not Celsius is
Speaker 1: not here to play with your coins or create manipulation
Speaker 1: or anything like that. Our mission, we have only one
Speaker 1: mission to earn return on your assets. Your asset. You
Speaker 1: can go all the way crazy and take really risky assets, right,
Speaker 1: we have risky coins in our wallet, or you can
Speaker 1: go super safe and take stable coins. We're not we're
Speaker 1: not telling you which one you have to do your homework,
Speaker 1: and you have to decide. And I recommend to people
Speaker 1: say what should I do? And I'm like half of
Speaker 1: you asked. You're being stable coins, right, We pay eight
Speaker 1: point one percent on stable coins right now, Like you
Speaker 1: take your dollars, you convert them into stable coin. People
Speaker 1: 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 companies, their trust companies,
Speaker 1: the fiduciaries. So you know the dollar is actually sitting
Speaker 1: in that bank account and your token represents a dollar.
Speaker 1: And now you can deposit the token, earn eight point
Speaker 1: one percent at any time, twenty four hours a day.
Speaker 1: You can enjoy it and get your dollars back. For
Speaker 1: people to earn April one percent, that's a life changing event,
Speaker 1: right it can. We have a guy here who's paying
Speaker 1: his mortgage and his kids college just from the interest
Speaker 1: is earning from Celsius, right so, so, and that's what
Speaker 1: we're saying to people. Look, just create a nest egg
Speaker 1: that like you said, instead of you're working for the
Speaker 1: money the markets is wanting, working for you. Then take
Speaker 1: another put in bitcoin. Then take another put in I
Speaker 1: have 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 earn Oh so you
Speaker 1: pay that we pay bitcoin? Yes, Oh wow. So that's
Speaker 1: a big difference exact crisis going. So unless you only
Speaker 1: when you feel that when you open your wallet and
Speaker 1: you go, wait a second, I actually made five thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: I only put five thousand. If I put ten bitcoin in,
Speaker 1: I would get Yes, we only paying bitcoin. We're not
Speaker 1: allowed to pay in dollars because we're not a bank.
Speaker 1: We're not allowed to take dollars. We're not allowed to
Speaker 1: pay in dollars. So you have you so going back
Speaker 1: to this. So again, so there's there's options for people
Speaker 1: if they want to make interest on their money, like
Speaker 1: did it in paying stocks or bonds or whatever, which
Speaker 1: are all pegged in dollars, which are all pegged in
Speaker 1: and what there's an unseen force that is actually squeezing
Speaker 1: your money, right inflation. It's three percently your money every year,
Speaker 1: So three and am or more exactly, they tell you,
Speaker 1: we know it's a lot exactly. So so if you're
Speaker 1: only earning two percent, right, the average bond right now
Speaker 1: pays two percent, right government, but so you're actually losing
Speaker 1: one and a half to two percent a year. You
Speaker 1: think you're earning, but you're actually losing money. So you
Speaker 1: have to earn enough to at least exactly exactly. So
Speaker 1: for you to earn eight percent like we're paying unstable coins,
Speaker 1: you have to take a lot of risk, right, And
Speaker 1: that's what we're telling people. Look look at the risk
Speaker 1: you have to take to earn that in the stock
Speaker 1: market or somewhere else. And look at the risk we have.
Speaker 1: We have all of our loans asset backed. We only
Speaker 1: against I want to get into the risk. That's definitely
Speaker 1: what we want to dip into. But I want to
Speaker 1: just talk about this for a second. So that's on
Speaker 1: on usd The real where the real huge benefit is
Speaker 1: in is in the bitcoin, right or other cryptocurrencies, because
Speaker 1: I mean bitcoin's up over two like this year. We're
Speaker 1: also down before before, But it depends on what time
Speaker 1: period you look at it. But for the most part,
Speaker 1: most people in bitcoinn believe it's going to continue going up.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think over the next several years get
Speaker 1: into twenty thousand and fifty thousand is realistic. At least
Speaker 1: I'm hopeful that it is. And so I don't want
Speaker 1: to sell, and most people don't want to sell. However,
Speaker 1: that money is locked up, and if I could earn
Speaker 1: at least earn interest on top of what I'm earning,
Speaker 1: that's a huge opportunity. Um, And so that's part of it.
Speaker 1: But you also offer another type of product where I
Speaker 1: can borrow against that as well, right, And so then
Speaker 1: I 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, smoothing 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 followed all the rules.
Speaker 1: I borrowed dollars against my real estate. Right. 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, in New York, anywhere else.
Speaker 1: So exactly, so so you can avoid that, you can
Speaker 1: just borrow against the asset and then you don't have
Speaker 1: to 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 anything, and it's a 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 put but you have to be smart
Speaker 1: about it. Advanced strategy right and and and most people
Speaker 1: probably to watch the show say it too complicated for me.
Speaker 1: I don't know how to do it. So Celsias saying, look,
Speaker 1: you don't need to be a genius. We have like
Speaker 1: a hundred fifty different strategies that we automatically deployed to
Speaker 1: generate this yield. You don't have to choose them. You
Speaker 1: don't have to understand them. You we we have one
Speaker 1: bucket of BTC. We don't treat the guy with a
Speaker 1: ten million dollar and the guy with a ten dollars differently.
Speaker 1: You're both in the same bucket. It's a PROADA 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 dollar 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 which people any any real feest.
Speaker 1: I don't pay any fees from 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 feat to anyone. We have never charged
Speaker 1: the fee. All of our earnings, whatever we earned, eighty
Speaker 1: percent goes to our depositors. That's what no one has
Speaker 1: done in the history of mankind. No one was crazy
Speaker 1: enough to take real earnings that they can earn on
Speaker 1: other people's money and give it to the depositor. Who
Speaker 1: would do such? Who would do such a stupid thing?
Speaker 1: Who would do that? So when we started this, people
Speaker 1: are like, Oh, it's a scam, it's not for real.
Speaker 1: Then they started looking and we you know, we've we've
Speaker 1: unfortunately in this industry, we've seen a bunch of we've
Speaker 1: seen a bit connect they're going to pay one percent
Speaker 1: today or whatever they're gonna we're promising eight percent a year.
Speaker 1: I know, I get it. But we have three million
Speaker 1: in assets, We've done two billion in loans. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's some banks here in California that haven't done that
Speaker 1: this year. So we are moving very very quickly. Why
Speaker 1: because when people look at this, they do a little
Speaker 1: bit of homework on Alex Muschinsky. They're like, Yeah, this
Speaker 1: guy doesn't need to work. Yeah, why is it doing this?
Speaker 1: Maybe he is really maybe it really cares about us,
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that. So everything has risk. Doing
Speaker 1: something has risk. Doing nothing has us. Right, we all
Speaker 1: have risk, and we we we have to understand what
Speaker 1: those risks are. Um, if I if I leave my
Speaker 1: money under the mattress, there's risk that it's losing value,
Speaker 1: you get stolen if I put in the bank. And
Speaker 1: if everything has risk, we have to understand that. And
Speaker 1: it's just important to assess those risks. And so you said, um,
Speaker 1: the average person should do a little homework. So, um,
Speaker 1: you're not the only one doing this thing. But maybe
Speaker 1: we were the first one. You were the first one,
Speaker 1: but maybe you could tell people that we forced the
Speaker 1: other guys to do it. Right, So we forced the
Speaker 1: block fives and the sold and the next so and
Speaker 1: all these other people who paid nothing, they took all
Speaker 1: your coins and paid you nothing. Right, we showed up.
Speaker 1: You made them up their game a little. Let me
Speaker 1: remind everybody, right, last year, just a year ago, you
Speaker 1: wanted to do a margin loan against your bitcoin. You
Speaker 1: paid eight we paid, We charged five to nine. So
Speaker 1: we cut it by two thirds. Everybody, everybody hates us.
Speaker 1: Why why all these other companies hate us? Because we
Speaker 1: took this game that that basically they used to charge
Speaker 1: like a credit card, and we said, no, it's an
Speaker 1: asset back loan. You give me a bitcoin, I'm giving
Speaker 1: your dollars at fifty cents on the dollar. I shouldn't
Speaker 1: be charging you double digits. I should be charging a
Speaker 1: single digit, just like if you bore it against your
Speaker 1: home you would be paying. But people don't understand that.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing. They don't understand that. So what's
Speaker 1: the So we we broke the game and we said,
Speaker 1: not just that we're gonna charge you five percent, We're
Speaker 1: gonna pay you eight percent on your deposit. If you
Speaker 1: don't take a loan, you understand it's it's it's that's
Speaker 1: what it is. So so that because again for us,
Speaker 1: it's for me, success is a hundred million users. For
Speaker 1: the other guy's success is stealing as much as possible
Speaker 1: from your pod is a completely different game exactly. But
Speaker 1: but that's the question is what is your motive and
Speaker 1: why why are you doing this A you're doing it
Speaker 1: for the money? Are you doing it for profit? You know?
Speaker 1: So what I want I have to find out is
Speaker 1: what is the counterparty risk that we have as a
Speaker 1: risk As as an investor, I always wig risk and reward.
Speaker 1: Great question. Typically I want more upside the downside, and
Speaker 1: it's here it seems like maybe I'm risking a hundred percent.
Speaker 1: You're holding all my coins risking to make eight. So
Speaker 1: let's take a few examples. So it's a great question,
Speaker 1: and and it's very important that people spend time not
Speaker 1: just listening to me or you, but actually doing their
Speaker 1: own home word because they need to feel comfortable that
Speaker 1: they're taking their precious assets and they're putting them in
Speaker 1: a safe place. So, first of all, we use bidgo
Speaker 1: as a custodian. Right. It's one of the best custodians,
Speaker 1: a hundred million insurance from from Lloyd's. It's the same
Speaker 1: custodian that exchanges like Cracking and other people use. You
Speaker 1: put your coins and cracking they go to bid go, right,
Speaker 1: you put your coins and they have insurance. So if
Speaker 1: there was some sort of a hack or something. Have
Speaker 1: insurance that so so, but there's a big difference. For example,
Speaker 1: if you take that dash coin, we actually don't land
Speaker 1: it out. All we do is take it so it
Speaker 1: sits in bid go and you earn seven said, that's
Speaker 1: the lowest risk acid you can actually do. Now. Dash
Speaker 1: can move up and down value but lose value, but
Speaker 1: you will earn that yield. We don't even lend it out.
Speaker 1: It never leaves bidgo. Okay, so it's ensured, it's yielding,
Speaker 1: it's doing everything it's 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: big for free. I got the insurance for free, I
Speaker 1: got steaking for free, and I'm staking. It's not easy
Speaker 1: for those at homes, it's not easy. You're doing all
Speaker 1: the work of exactly. That's definitely exactly. And you needed
Speaker 1: minimum of eighty thou dollars for each note. So if
Speaker 1: you gave me five hundred dollars worth of Dash, I'm
Speaker 1: still paying you as if you had eight and you
Speaker 1: created your own staking note, then you check the computer
Speaker 1: every day. We're doing all that for free. Why are
Speaker 1: 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 at
Speaker 1: think in your best interests. Because we make enough money
Speaker 1: on your bitcoin and enough money on your dollar loans
Speaker 1: and everything else that we can give this away, you know,
Speaker 1: So then you have other assets. For example, if you
Speaker 1: deposit bitcoin with us, we don't earn money from bitcoinsidering
Speaker 1: in bitco, 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, So,
Speaker 1: if you remove your coins from binance and you put
Speaker 1: them with us, guess what not bynus does not have
Speaker 1: enough coins. They're like, hey, we need to do market making,
Speaker 1: we need to do shorting, we need to do front
Speaker 1: running of all of our customers. We need more coins.
Speaker 1: Can you lend us coins all the ship that they do.
Speaker 1: They do it with your coins, which you gave them
Speaker 1: for free. When you remove the coins. Then they have
Speaker 1: to pay eight nine for borrowing from us. So we
Speaker 1: collect it all from the exchanges and the hedge funds
Speaker 1: instead of them collecting tolls from you. So now you're
Speaker 1: loaning these coins out, and I don't know who that's
Speaker 1: going to. 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 lent to all
Speaker 1: the parties. And so you're lending into these exchanges or
Speaker 1: whoever institutions, and I don't have any control over that
Speaker 1: or what their credit worthiness or whatever. And so let's
Speaker 1: just say any of all something default. And as a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, a couple weeks Polonius had a problem
Speaker 1: and and violence are the problem. They stole forty eight
Speaker 1: million dollars from violence there 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, the
Speaker 1: socialize the loss right, everyone had to take a sixteen
Speaker 1: percent haircut. That's correct, and and so then how does
Speaker 1: that affect myint 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 inheritment. Yeah, we have an arrangement
Speaker 1: with Circle, which is the owner of Polonias, that guarantees
Speaker 1: of 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 of Circle or Poloniacs for
Speaker 1: them to basically say, oh, you're a little guy, here
Speaker 1: here is your socialized loss. Right. So but none of
Speaker 1: our customers are going to see any of that in
Speaker 1: any case. Right, So we have our own internal fund,
Speaker 1: some sort of reserve fund or something like that. Yes,
Speaker 1: you could. You're kind of prepared for anything, something like
Speaker 1: our job. Our job is Job number one is to
Speaker 1: always return all the coins to our depositors. Job number
Speaker 1: two is to remember job number one. Rule number one. Right,
Speaker 1: So there's no as soon as it falls apart, it
Speaker 1: falls apart pretty quickly, I would imagine. Well, so first
Speaker 1: any hedge funds will end to they have to give
Speaker 1: us collateral, right, so we don't. We never land without collateral.
Speaker 1: Any exchange that we trade with we usually have their
Speaker 1: assets in our deposit as well. So for example, Circle,
Speaker 1: we we have a lot of USDC coins on deposits
Speaker 1: as well, so we can always offset these things, meaning
Speaker 1: we don't have real exposure. So we manage the counterparty
Speaker 1: risk all the time against all of these two hundred
Speaker 1: different hedge funds and exchanges that we work with, and
Speaker 1: that's our job. We we represent only the depositors. We
Speaker 1: do not represent the exchanges or the hedge fund everybody else.
Speaker 1: Our responsibility is only for the depositors. Another thing is
Speaker 1: is like if you use our app, you can see
Speaker 1: like basically you can see how many users. You can
Speaker 1: see how much we have on deposit. So like right
Speaker 1: now we have three Yeah, I'm showing you my wallet,
Speaker 1: but if you have your wallet, you can see the
Speaker 1: same thing. So you can see like how much is
Speaker 1: on deposit. So you can see what is on deposit,
Speaker 1: you can see how much you're earning, you can see
Speaker 1: how much interest We just crossed three million in interests, right.
Speaker 1: So so the reason for this transparency is because none
Speaker 1: of these banks and pointing because Bank of Americans right
Speaker 1: behind us, none of these institutions ever shared anything with you.
Speaker 1: The only time you know there's a problem is when
Speaker 1: we have to bail them out. Right, So getting an
Speaker 1: ordered from Ernst a year and a half from now
Speaker 1: 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: have on deposit, how much did we land 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 you.
Speaker 1: Bitfinex socialized losses. Binance did not because they had enough
Speaker 1: cash to but but Polonia socialis losses. A lot of
Speaker 1: these people, some of them are total loss, like the
Speaker 1: guys in Canada, the guys in Australia. Right laws there
Speaker 1: was no recovery. So so it's a double jeopardy when
Speaker 1: you hold your coins on exchanges. You're helping them cheat you,
Speaker 1: You're helping them front run you, right, so at least
Speaker 1: remove them, right. I recommend to people to keep at
Speaker 1: least some coins in cold storage. I always tell that,
Speaker 1: but I can tell you our community is not going
Speaker 1: to grow If everybody has to learn the mastery of
Speaker 1: how to use a treasor or how to use UH
Speaker 1: and how to work with private keys and all that
Speaker 1: stuff and keep it in a safe place, We're not
Speaker 1: gonna grow and have a billion users. So what Celsius
Speaker 1: has done is done a half step. And basically we
Speaker 1: went to the community that doesn't understand anything technical and said, look,
Speaker 1: here's a way to come in and transact take benefit
Speaker 1: from all this stuff without knowing anything about bitcoin. You
Speaker 1: don't need to know anything to transact with us. And
Speaker 1: we have a service called sell pay that allows you
Speaker 1: to share the love with everybody without them having any wallets. Um.
Speaker 1: Can we talk about the Celsius coin cell coin token? Yeah? Um,
Speaker 1: and so I believe you were paying an extra percentage
Speaker 1: if you pay that's the utility of the cell TOKENA
Speaker 1: is there is that still actively working on? So we
Speaker 1: we so we launched the cell token. UM Obviously, we
Speaker 1: did an i CE a year ago and we raised
Speaker 1: thirties something million dollars. We used all that money to
Speaker 1: build a platform, and three weeks ago we went live,
Speaker 1: but with with the utility. Meaning, if you took a
Speaker 1: loan you wanted to pay interest, if you paid it
Speaker 1: with cell token, you pay less. If you want to
Speaker 1: earn on BTC, instead of getting paid in BTC, you
Speaker 1: can get paid in cell token. You earn more more.
Speaker 1: So instead of eight point one percent, you earned ten
Speaker 1: point one percent. Right, we issued that to everybody of
Speaker 1: our community. Came and said, we love you, grade I
Speaker 1: don't want to get paid in BTC, give me more
Speaker 1: cell token. Right. Lawyers jumped and said, wait a second.
Speaker 1: In the US, you may have a problem with us,
Speaker 1: So hold the US, let us figure out what's happening.
Speaker 1: Continue you paying everybody BTC on BTC. So we didn't
Speaker 1: stop anything. We just told the people that wanted BTC
Speaker 1: for now, you're getting BTC. You're not getting self talking, right,
Speaker 1: and then when we resolve all these issues again. There
Speaker 1: was no action from the SEC. There was no any
Speaker 1: any enforcement action or anything like that. Right, this is
Speaker 1: our lawyers telling us, let's do the right thing. Let's
Speaker 1: solve all these things. And again, our our job number
Speaker 1: one is to protect the community. So if we are
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 custodial 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: defied guys a compound of dharma 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 do you guys have plans to get
Speaker 1: into more. Yeah, so first we support DeFi, So we
Speaker 1: have the die token in our wallet. You can deposit
Speaker 1: die with us, you can give us ether and earned die.
Speaker 1: I mean there's we do all of that, so we
Speaker 1: don't see uh defies as as competition or as a
Speaker 1: bad actor or anything like that. It serves the purpose.
Speaker 1: A sophisticated guy that understands how the stuff works can
Speaker 1: either generate yield or generate leverage from these type of tools.
Speaker 1: But these are derivatives, right, I mean most people don't
Speaker 1: understand how stocks and bonds work forget about derivatives. So
Speaker 1: I would not recommend the average joe who's just finding
Speaker 1: their way around the stuff. We has a job and
Speaker 1: have kids and have a wife and all that stuff
Speaker 1: to get into this game, because that is a game
Speaker 1: for prose and we land, we make money. We we
Speaker 1: sit on the receiving side of dice if somebody gets
Speaker 1: liquid and we are the ones collecting and distributing it
Speaker 1: to our community. So you want to be taking the risk.
Speaker 1: We want to be the guy who collects. We give
Speaker 1: you a strategy. Whoever liquidates the contract, we sit there
Speaker 1: all day long and wait to liquid it. Why because
Speaker 1: it's an easy way to earn We just take to
Speaker 1: then give it to our coin holders automatically. So so
Speaker 1: that's one of those und fifty strategies. Right. So all
Speaker 1: I'm saying to people is, look, we're not hiding how
Speaker 1: we're making money. We just like Warren Buffett, Right, what
Speaker 1: if it tells you, look, I bought Where's Fargo? I
Speaker 1: have twenty billion dollars worth of else Fargo. They pay
Speaker 1: me six percent dividend every year. That's how I make
Speaker 1: my money. You can buy it also. It's the same
Speaker 1: thing here. We have many many strategies. They're all available
Speaker 1: to anyone. Right Like right now we are collecting on
Speaker 1: cash deposits. Right we're paying ten point to five ten
Speaker 1: point one on cash deposits. Were using the cell because
Speaker 1: we can deploy it at much higher rates. Right So
Speaker 1: now again it's not gonna be there forever. It goes
Speaker 1: up and down, and it's only available sometimes and but
Speaker 1: on average it returns that ten percent and we give
Speaker 1: eight point one percent back to the community. So so
Speaker 1: you want to you want to track all the exchanges
Speaker 1: and figure out where which one popped and go in
Speaker 1: there and open an account and manage they yield. And
Speaker 1: so we we we socialize the profit just like the
Speaker 1: other guys that socializing the laws. 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 have took advantage
Speaker 1: of it. But really, I say that a business owner
Speaker 1: is a servant. We're solving problems the only way to
Speaker 1: be good in business. I mean not obviously the banks
Speaker 1: is a different story. But there are ten million small
Speaker 1: business in America and they do everything you said, and
Speaker 1: they're solving problems. They all I agree with you, but
Speaker 1: the not the profits. If you take if you take
Speaker 1: the profits in America car right, then you take the
Speaker 1: top four or five companies. They make more than half
Speaker 1: of all the profits. So the problem is, why are
Speaker 1: those guys, like when when JP Morgan makes thirty billion
Speaker 1: a year in profit, why aren't they paying their deposit
Speaker 1: a little bit more? Just a little bit they can
Speaker 1: pay you. Understand, they make return on capital, so on
Speaker 1: average they can pay you seven seventeen on average in
Speaker 1: the state 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: You get one percent. Now, why is there such a gap?
Speaker 1: It didn't used to be that way, right, People used
Speaker 1: to actually get a I used to make seven percent
Speaker 1: by the positing money with Chase. And not only not
Speaker 1: only are they doing that, but they're fractionally reserving it exactly.
Speaker 1: They can tender one exact legally, they have a license
Speaker 1: to steal. Yeah, okay, so that's interesting. I know we're
Speaker 1: going super long. We can talk about this stuff wherever
Speaker 1: I love it. Um, we're at the bitcoin conference. Um,
Speaker 1: and so we're here with with a lot of bitcoiners. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're talking about that, and I really appreciate you getting
Speaker 1: into the risk and whatnot. Hopefully everybody learn from that.
Speaker 1: But I'm just curious looking out at the landscape over all.
Speaker 1: We talked about the DeFi space, but maybe what are
Speaker 1: being at the blog Bluction conference. What are you seeing
Speaker 1: right now happening in the industry that has you excited
Speaker 1: and kind of hopeful for the way I see it
Speaker 1: is again, Communism, socialism, capitalism. These are three experiments at
Speaker 1: bettering our lives right, and again, I'm thriving in capitalism, right,
Speaker 1: but most people are not. Most people cannot just start
Speaker 1: a business and whip it out of nowhere and raise
Speaker 1: all this money and do well. And it's not because
Speaker 1: they're not good people. It's not because they're not working hard.
Speaker 1: It's just they don't get in front of those opportunities.
Speaker 1: And decentralization is a fourth movement, it's like a fourth wave.
Speaker 1: It's an experiment, right, It's it's another experiment at bettering
Speaker 1: our lives, and all of us have to decide are
Speaker 1: we sticking with centralization, which is capitalism and centralization it's
Speaker 1: the same thing, right, And again I have that perspective
Speaker 1: because I'm one of the very few people that live
Speaker 1: through all those systems. It's pretty hard to live in
Speaker 1: in communism, right, So so so for me, decentralization is
Speaker 1: like again, it's like a beautiful, uh shiny day, right
Speaker 1: that it's obvious to me that that system is better
Speaker 1: than the other three experiments. But for most people they
Speaker 1: look at this a decentralization. I don't even know what
Speaker 1: that word means. Right, So again I invite your viewers
Speaker 1: to do the homework to understand just go on Wikipedia
Speaker 1: and read about it. Right, it's not a new idea,
Speaker 1: it's just an idea whose time has come. I actually
Speaker 1: I made a video I talked about it's the pendulum,
Speaker 1: and there's a cycle. And every every forty years we
Speaker 1: go from a week to a me cycle. And you
Speaker 1: can trace this back for thousands of years. And the
Speaker 1: last me individualisms decentralization was at the end of World
Speaker 1: War Two, and we've been going to a we a
Speaker 1: centralized cycle um with the U, N and the EU,
Speaker 1: and we're just topping out where we're maxed out. And
Speaker 1: now the pendulum will sting back to decentralization and we
Speaker 1: 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 work. 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, then 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 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. It is, and and and
Speaker 1: it's happening. Right. Since we went off the gold standard,
Speaker 1: we lost of the value of the of the dollar.
Speaker 1: People don't understand that. But you don't know why prices
Speaker 1: are getting more expensive, but their earnings are not. Their
Speaker 1: earnings have not moved in twenty years. So always saying
Speaker 1: is there is a different system, there's a different set
Speaker 1: of rails where all these rules of why you're held
Speaker 1: back don't apply. Right, you can join this revolution. It's here,
Speaker 1: The future is here. You just have to choose to
Speaker 1: stop being abused by the banks and the financial institution
Speaker 1: and switched to a different set of rails. And we're
Speaker 1: writing those rails and saying, hey, we'll act in your
Speaker 1: best interests. So that's so. Then what you're excited about
Speaker 1: is the technology that we have and the change. You know.
Speaker 1: I love writing the caboose on that thing, you know,
Speaker 1: that's all I'm doing. I'm just writing the caboose and
Speaker 1: I'm having the time of my life. Yeah, it's awesome.
Speaker 1: I put out a tweet I think two days ago,
Speaker 1: and I said, hey, I'm as happy to anyone to
Speaker 1: see bitcoin going up. Yes, but I'm here for the revolution. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's happening. It's happening anyway. You can't stop it. I
Speaker 1: mean again, Facebook trying to ride the same rails. But
Speaker 1: that's like a wolf in sheep clothing. You know, they're
Speaker 1: they're not part of this thing. You know, coming from communism.
Speaker 1: I know we're going to wrap it up. Coming from communism,
Speaker 1: you have that perspective, right, and other people in the
Speaker 1: world have that perspective where they understand why privacy or
Speaker 1: why censorship resistant. And the people in the US have
Speaker 1: a hard time understanding that. But I'm thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: with with the data breach that Facebook had, um, they're
Speaker 1: starting 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.
Speaker 1: Our operating system protects me, tells me how much I'm
Speaker 1: using the device every day, right, tells me if I'm
Speaker 1: sleeping or not. Like, so they're actually acting in my
Speaker 1: best interest. Right? And all I paid for it is
Speaker 1: nine hundred dollars, Right, I get all that stuff so
Speaker 1: tremendous value for what I'm doing. You can't say that
Speaker 1: about Google. You can't say that about Facebook. Ye. Their
Speaker 1: their model is the opposite, is to extract all your
Speaker 1: identity stuff sell it to as many people as possible.
Speaker 1: You don't notice that, You don't see that, right, it's happening.
Speaker 1: Then it's like the invisible hand. Hundreds of billions of dollars.
Speaker 1: These are the most profitable companies in the world. Right,
Speaker 1: These these companies so so pretending somehow that they're gonna
Speaker 1: again change their spots. I'm sorry, these guys are greedy, bastard.
Speaker 1: I mean, when was the last time you heard Google
Speaker 1: say do no evil? That was the slogans I met
Speaker 1: Sir gay Bryn when he was still in Stanford, right,
Speaker 1: and that was the slogan do no evil? Right, zook? Right,
Speaker 1: He's not. His job is not. He has to deliver
Speaker 1: that earnings for his shareholders. He cannot do anything for
Speaker 1: his customer. It's almost because the exactly just like the
Speaker 1: bank incentivize wrong just now there they have to produce.
Speaker 1: So if they said, hey, we're going to cut this
Speaker 1: data privacy out because it's it's wrong, you hit it
Speaker 1: on the head, hit the nail. So one one thing,
Speaker 1: one things, because it's very important. Right. So the issue
Speaker 1: is that when you're acting in the best interest of
Speaker 1: your shareholders, right, which is fine, you have to always
Speaker 1: extract it from somewhere else. The only place to take
Speaker 1: it is from your customers. Right. And unfortunately, again we
Speaker 1: as customers are just taking all that beating without doing
Speaker 1: anything about it. Right. Decentralization offers you a completely new world.
Speaker 1: It's like suddenly you can breathe oxygen again, right because
Speaker 1: the centralization. Look at Vitalic right with Etherorum, it values
Speaker 1: people based on their contribution to society. He created something beautiful.
Speaker 1: It was worth ninety billion out of nothing. Right. It's
Speaker 1: 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 pendulums swinging
Speaker 1: the other way, and we are doing all the right things.
Speaker 1: It's just most of the people insist on sticking with
Speaker 1: those pyramids, just like the Agian pyramids. That that time
Speaker 1: is over. You've gotta move on, guys. Awesome, awesome, good stuff.
Speaker 1: We can talk forever. I'm really so interested in your
Speaker 1: perspective because of your background, and I love the political
Speaker 1: side of things, in the philosophy side. But that's another time.
Speaker 1: That's another time. The next interviewers, we're doing it on
Speaker 1: the next time. Next time we'll be in Baja underbikes
Speaker 1: bringing the next you guys. All right, thanks for joining. Guys. Hey,
Speaker 1: if you like this episode of the Market Disruptors podcast,
Speaker 1: please help us take this to the top of the
Speaker 1: podcast charts. Just please do me a favor and rate,
Speaker 1: review and subscribe. Taking fifteen seconds to just leave a
Speaker 1: quick review goes a long way in helping us reach
Speaker 1: more people and disrupt more markets. I really appreciate you
Speaker 1: listening and I'll see you next time on the Market
Speaker 1: Disruptors podcast