Crypto
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Transcript

Note: This transcript was automatically generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and therefore typos may be present.
Rob McNealy
Hey guys, Rob McNealy here. And today I am excited. So I am talking to a new our he is the host of the cigars and crypto podcast. And he is a really cool dude. So we’re just gonna gonna hang it up a little bit tonight and see what’s happening on his side of the country. So new are welcome to the show. How are you today?
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
Well, my friend, thank you so much for having me. How about you?
Rob McNealy
Oh, good. You know, it’s a it’s been interesting with this little pen demick. Like, adjusting but not adjusting. So like a lot of times, people are like freaking out because they’re, you know, home with their kids and they’re working remote and like, my wife and I work have been working out of the house forever. And we’ve been homeschooling our kids for 10 years. So our kids are like, not really, it’s funny because our kids are like, what’s going on? Because to them, this is like normal life. And they’re just like, I thought everybody to freak it out, but that’s no big deal. Like cuz your life is already kind of like this. But it’s been interesting. My wife for her company she telecommute to Washington, DC. And she’s like one of the only people in our country she a company that works remote and she’s uh, she’s at the director, Deputy Director level for a big company out there. And it’s funny because her entire company went remote, and they’re all freaking out. And it’s funny because I listened to her like conference call sometime and I’m just sitting there laughing and they’re like, her HR department is like saying sending memos around to help support the troops with their new like staying home from you know, the office kind of thing and telling them, make sure you get up in the morning and put on your dress clothes like normal and my wife’s like, dude, I’ve been wearing pajamas to work for seven years with this company. I am not getting dressed now. So it’s kind of funny, right? So Todd Flynn, let’s get into it. Tell us a little bit of our podcast.
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
Well, I’m I am the host of cigars and crypto. It started out as guys sitting in a cigar lounge and me sitting in there with a tablet and my MacBook and people asking me, what are you always staring at, you know, talk to us? And I’m like, I’m looking at Bitcoin charts. And, of course, the next question is, what’s Bitcoin? And so I explained to them, you know, what this magical internet money was, and how it’s both money and an asset all rolled into one. And so then they kind of looked at me like, well, how does that work? And so down the rabbit hole we went, I explained it to one person in three, and five. And then I found myself explaining it over and over and over again for about maybe seven months. And I said, You know what, there’s got to be an easier way to do this. So I said, I’m just going to start recording things. I have a background in radio. I did Country radio for a couple years and gospel radio as well. So I’m was familiar with the recording aspect. But I never thought about doing a podcast and so I just said, Well, I’ll just give it a shot. And here I am Episode 96 later, and I’m like, maybe I’m onto something here.
Rob McNealy
So well part of this, what part of the country you out of you don’t have to give an exact location but
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
I’m just outside of Philadelphia,
Rob McNealy
Just outside Philly. So what do you what do you find is the response to you go into these What do they call them hops or herps or whatever at the cigar bar kind of thing? Yeah. What’s their response? When you kind of explain what internet money is and stuff like that? They into it, they in denial, they they hate it, what do you what do you seeing?
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
They look at it from a speculative point of view. Um, the thing about cigar smokers is it’s not a cheap hobby. So a lot of the guys Smoke with already investors. But because they don’t understand cryptocurrency, they tend to shy away from it. But they like to ask a lot of questions about it. So they have lots of questions about custody. Volatility not so much where to get it, how to get it. They’re not hung up on the criminal aspects, potential criminal aspects of cryptocurrency they’re really hung up on you know, what is this? How does it work? How do I see it? How do I own it? What can I do with it? That type of thing, you know? So that’s kind of interesting. Some of my friends are libertarians. So they’ve always looked at like, this is money bro. This is like the best money bro. You know, it’s and I agree with him because for me Bitcoin is sound money. And so then there are just some people who just like Oh, Bitcoin crashed it won’t ever be anything. And then they’ll see it go up $100 and then they’ll say, What’s Coinbase? How do I get onto that? If I if I spend $100 will it be 1000 next week? And I’m like, come on, man, you gotta do your homework. You got to do your research.
Rob McNealy
So have you converted a lot of people then?
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
A lot? No, maybe ten?
Rob McNealy
That’s, that’s a good fair amount, though. I mean, I don’t think I’ve covered it. You know, really? It’s been interesting. Seeing where people are with crypto. Yeah. So where do you Where do you see it going over the next year or two? Do you think the the havening is going to make a big difference for Bitcoin? I mean, I think there is the is it priced in is the pandemic priced in. That’s what I’d like to know.
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
I think the havening is priced in but I do not I think the pandemic is priced in, I think all of this printing of money is going to inflate the value of Bitcoin. Not monetary value, but source of wealth value. And I say that because people will be looking for something that is stable, that can’t be manipulated. When people start going to the gas stations, and it’s cost seven bucks to get a gallon of gas, or they go to buy a loaf of bread and cost $3 because there’s so much money that’s been printed. People will start to look for things that they can use to conduct commerce and trade and buy things. And when people look at cryptocurrency, they’ll begin to ask the same questions I asked in 2014. What is money? What is the difference between hard and soft money and when Why’s hard money better? What is sound monetary policy? In principle? They won’t ask it that way. But they’ll have very basic questions. Why doesn’t this work?
Rob McNealy
You know, I think that’s an excellent point, right? And then you can say the same thing about the pandemic. And I think part of the problem is, I think a lot of people have a hard time abstracting things that they can’t physically see or physically touch. Right. And so when the money situation when they start seeing, oh, the price of this is going bananas. And I think that loaf of bread is going to go up regardless of what the dollar is doing, because I have concerns about the supply chain anyway. But but I think it’s the same thing with the the pandemic. People on the east coast. You know, three weeks ago, four weeks ago, I have a lot of friends in New York City. And when I was telling them to get the hell out in New York City four weeks ago, they’re like, it’s no big deal. There’s been a few and no Now there’s like 1000 bodies today stacking up in New York City right now with COVID. They’re like, yeah, this is serious. I’m like, okay, but I was telling you that a month ago, and I think, you know, and I don’t want to be that guy, because this is not the thing I want to be right about. But I think you’re right. I think when it starts hitting people in the checkout line, I think that’s when they’re gonna start looking for alternatives to the dollar.
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
Yeah. Because for right now, everything is abstract to them. It doesn’t impact me, it’s not affecting me. They look around and they see gas at $1 89. And they’re like, Oh, this is the best it’s been in decades. You know, but they’re not understanding what’s coming on the other side of that, because the amount of money that we’ve pumped into the economy because of the backroom deals by politicians and bureaucrats, that we’re not privy to the information that we’re not privy to, how it will directly impact us, even though we don’t have directly knowledge of what’s happening. I prefer to stay prepared as best I can. I try to make sure that my family is prepared as well. Not just in terms of defense, but understanding knowledge and information as well.
Rob McNealy
You know, I think preparedness is one of those things that is going to get more important going forward on all fronts both, I think, I mean, I don’t know if you’ve ever really listened to the show very much but I read a lot at least on Twitter about financial literacy being an important thing. And and part of that is crypto and and i believe investing in other asset classes and diversification. I’m old so I don’t have all my eggs in one basket. But, you know, and I just think that sound investing, right? You don’t want to put everything in one place but but what I tell people is, you know, you got to prepare yourself in other places, too. It’s like it’s great if you got some investment in Bitcoin, but if you’re carrying, you know, 100 grand in credit card debt, student loan debt, you know, why don’t you you need to focus on that and get that get your house in order. Because to me long term Yeah, you can gamble on crypto and really a lot of crypto is gambling right now. And I’m not bad mouthing any crypto, I run a, you know, or I’m involved in a crypto project, I found a co founder to crypto project. So, you know, I, you know, I still see, even our project is high risk investing if you’re viewing it as a speculative asset because it’s so early on right now, and it’s just the nature of the beast. But that doesn’t mean that you know, I would like to see. Well, I’d like to see people have an awakening from the pandemic.
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
I want..I want that to happen. But I don’t think people can keep their eyes off the television. keep their eyes out. Their ears off the radio and their ears out of the echo chambers that surround them every day. When you have and it doesn’t matter, your political persuasion, when you exist in an echo chamber, you suffer from cognitive dissonance. You look for thoughts and ideas that reinforce your own. And the act of doing that prevents or prohibit you from receiving new information or looking at things differently, and making your own decisions and your own determinations on what your reality is and what’s going on around you. And that’s why we have these people kind of falling into these camps. You know, and not really looking out for their neighbor the way they should be, you know, because of like tribalism. You know, I don’t really Subscribe to that, um, you know, I like people who are different than me. Because it’s an opportunity for me to learn and experience new things. I am different from everyone that I live around. But I found out in the last three weeks that I’m really not, because now Well, I mean, of course, we maintain our social distance, but I see my neighbors every day now. And I talk to them every day now. And my neighbors are really cool. Like really cool. And I didn’t know that because we’re so caught up in the rat race to nine to five, every day that you don’t really stop and have an opportunity to talk to people. So the awakening the potential and possibility for an awakening is there. But people have to get away from the noise and just get to know the person to the left in the writing.
Rob McNealy
I think there was an event point was brought up in a book I read a long time ago. And it says it was it was there’s an old book, and it was talking about the internet age and, and it says, people can talk to people around the world now, but they don’t talk to their neighbor kind of thing. Right? And, and I think with social media and online communities, we now have that option to just pick and choose that echo chamber of everybody we like results with, you know, without having to necessarily, you know, it’s easy to filter out the crap you don’t want to see the block and mute months for and I’m just as guilty of using those buttons as anybody else’s. But I think you’re right, I think, you know, I think that some good things are going to come out of this pandemic and the economic fallout from now, I’ll be the first to say and I’d like to get your opinion on this. I don’t believe COVID is causing the problem with the economy I think it’s a trigger exposing an existing problem with our financial systems and I believe a problem with American culture and I want to get your I’ll go into explain what I mean by that, but I want to hear your take on it. I know that’s a loaded questions. Okay. We’re just gonna go we’re just gonna skim the surface right off
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
the surface, right? Okay. Um, As Americans, we are greedy. We consume more than we need. We spend more than we should. We take on debt, instead of saving. We have very high timeframes for life instead of thinking about the future that affects businesses that affects commerce, trade, our spending habits. We are to blame for what happened to the economy. I don’t blame politicians because we put them in office. We listened to what they had to say. And we put them in office anyway. And we keep putting the same people in office over and over and over again. And they’re not doing things in our best interest. So I don’t blame them. COVID did not cause what’s happening to the economy. The economy was on its way down. Anyway. The economy has been down since 2007. Don’t right, go ahead.
Rob McNealy
I was gonna say you’re my echo chamber now. But I agree with you and you’re hitting on all the points that I hit on and people hate me when I talk about about this, and I say it’s like this. Really, if the entire country is destitute with two weeks of not getting a paycheck, we’re so much more fucked than whatever this virus is going to do to us.
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
Exactly.
Rob McNealy
I you know, the I Am. I think humans can adapt to all sorts of good things and and can adapt to shit. And I am utterly dismayed that our country is so how do I say fragile? And look we all live paycheck to paycheck all right? Well, here’s the problem. Maybe you shouldn’t live paycheck to paycheck. Why are you living paycheck to paycheck, but there’s that many people don’t get me wrong. Now one of the things I did as an entrepreneur Believe it or not, I owned a get a liquor store in Denver in the worst neighborhood in Denver. We opened carried pistols in the store. It was everything was behind the counter bars on the window. I’m originally from Detroit. trade area too. So, but I grew up in Michigan, but when I lived in Denver and we had our store, it was interesting to me because the people coming into the store were low income people. And these people had $300 shoes. Every one of them had big screen TVs, because they talked about it. Every one of them had the latest and greatest, most expensive iPhone. Now at the time, I was running a cricket phone. You know, flip phone kind of, Oh, looks an awful lot like this one. You know, but, but to me, it was like shocking, because I mean, I we weren’t living paycheck to paycheck at that time. Like we had some money in the bank and some savings and we’re trying hard to, you know, get rid of the little debt we had at the time and things like that was like time ago, but it’s interesting to me that the one of the things about our poor people in this country Is that our poor people are all obese, and they have every possible consumer electronic gadget and consumer luxury good, you can imagine. And having traveled a little bit, it’s amazing to see that. And to me, I believe it’s a cultural flaw in the United States, and I think it’s part of our downfall.
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
I think it’s a byproduct of advertisement in communication. folks don’t do better if they don’t know how to do better. If you are surrounded by images of $300, tennis shoes and iPhones and big TVs in flashy cars, those are the things that you strive to obtain. If you’re never taught about sound money, or what a checkbook is, or How to invest or the proper way to budget, you won’t do it. And some cases, some people learn differently. life experience changes them in a way that they have to learn. But if everything around you is moving at the same pace, there’s no need for you to slow down or speed up. And so people emulate what they see. And I think about, you know, one of the books that really changed my life man was the Bitcoin standard. And it really changed the way I look at money, and how I view what money is and what money should be. No one taught me that I asked questions, who became curious because I didn’t expect The answers I got. So I wanted to validate what I was hearing and what I was reading. So I read something else and I read something else and I read something else. Then I looked at my decisions and was like, yo, like, I had to change some things. If I want something 20 years from now, I can’t keep doing this today. I’ve got to learn how to put money away. I’ve got to learn how to start looking for assets, appreciating assets, not depreciating assets. I don’t want to go out and buy even though I can afford I don’t want to go out and buy 2020. Lexus now, I will go out and buy a 1964 Ford F 100 pickup truck and never drive it. You see what I mean? And then wait 10 years and sell it for five or 10,000 more than what I paid for.
Rob McNealy
Those fleet sides are going up in value. Aren’t they?
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
I am trying to tell you baby?
Rob McNealy
I watch Barrett Jackson.
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
Yeah, my wife looks at me like I’m crazy. She’s like, he’s such an old man. I’m like, No, I’m trying to tell you there’s something to this. Not only is it beautiful, but it will appreciate your value over time.
Rob McNealy
I think one of the things you’re hitting on is really good. And I think a really good primer of this, this thinking as well as Rich Dad, Poor Dad. You know, it’s a very clear, it’s a very cliche book. But it really lines out the basics is the fact is, were you even even outside of sound money though, you know? Robert Kiyosaki is now on the Bitcoin bandwagon and crypto bandwagon as well now, but the whole point is, is getting your financial ducks in a row and i and i think you know, Dave Ramsey, that’s a great place to start Financial Peace University. Right? And and so I grew up I grew up in a fairly poor family. And I came from people that were the poor dads in that book, my family that was that that was my family. And so I had learned really bad money management behaviors from my family. You know, and and when I, when I’m bad bashing financial literacy in this country, it’s not even demographic specific. It crosses every income, every ethnic, you know, demographic, every education level in this country. Almost everybody falls down into the same problems of living paycheck to paycheck, spending more than they make not saving money, getting into a lot of debt that is normal in the United States today. And, and the reason I’m talking about is not because I want to rub it in people’s faces. When they’re struggling. That’s not what I’m trying to do. What I’m hoping is that once we get through this name, mer that’s unfolding in like, slow motion because it is in slow motion for a lot of people is I hope that they come out of this going Holy crap, I need to do something different because I only had I could only last two weeks. Right? And and basic financial literacy is three to six months or at least a year’s worth of emergency fund. Now think of it this way you are think of it what happens if 75% of the country had a six month emergency fund right now. D things would be very different right now.
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
Very different.
Rob McNealy
But this pandemic..
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
..is very different. Because then if we had six months of savings, if if 75% of us had six months of savings, we will be able to see the difference between the Sham economy and the real economy. Because the stock market is not the economy. And I try to tell people that all the time and they don’t get it. But businesses may be hurting But the economy will be fine. Because people will have saved and prepared and will be able to take care of their needs. Not just saving money, but saving food, saving ammo, saving the things that are important when these folks are going out buying toilet paper, Bro, I was buying bullets. Because I knew.
Rob McNealy
Yeah, you know, actually, I think both are a good investment right now. And I finally figured out why the toilet paper actually makes a lot more sense and why that’s not being stocked but we can go into that offline. But no, I actually we’ve been I’ve been trying to dig into the supply chain stuff. It’s pretty fascinating. I learned a lot more about toilet paper than I ever thought I would want to know about toilet paper in the last three weeks. But But I think what’s happened what I’m seeing out there is is that Americans not only are monetarily not prepared, they’re not prepared from a personal On the fence standpoint, they’re not prepared for retirement either is that we’re inherently a really weak nation now. We’re fragile and psychologically. I’m not sure that the I’m not sure in the next two years, what the country is going to look like, on the other side of those two years. What do you think? Do you think there’s gonna be big changes culturally in this country from this?
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
I think culturally, and economically, there’ll be massive changes from this. We fall victim to propaganda. And other countries for the last what 10 years specifically, the BRICS nations have been preparing for a calamity BRICS being Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. They have been buying, stockpiling, stockpiling gold, platinum palladium rhodium. They are preparing to trade with each other for oil and other goods and services in gold, bypassing the Petro dollar. They’ve been preparing. We’ve been blustering. And as powerful as our military is, and I’m in no way shitting on our military, I’m a seven year army vet. So I am not shitting on the military. But as powerful as our military is a military cannot function if it is not financed. And we have depressed the dollar so much. I am actually scared of external threats, less internal threats. You know what I mean?
Rob McNealy
You Yep. You know, it’s interesting, you know, you know, it’s a good exercise. You don’t know me that well, but I tend to go down some really deep rabbit holes when I want to know information. Again, and and, and I have a pretty I have a really big network and I know a lot of interesting and resourceful people and a lot of interesting positions all over the place. So if I really want to have a question, I have enough people in my Rolodex that are worth, you know, eight, nine digits and have lots of connections. So if I have a weird question, I can pick up the phone and they’ll take my calls. And one of those things that I I’ve gone down that rabbit hole about the military, and they started looking at, you know, okay, how was the United States poised for a war? So it’s interesting right now. And I’m going down this rabbit hole right now, but what happens if we can’t make ammunition and there’s a war or even just more war than we have right now? Do you so I don’t know if you’ve been to any kind of store. Now. We all know that. Been a lot of FOMO buying guns and ammo. But I have a lot of connections into the arms industries and from I’m going to confirm some of these things. But I’ve been talking to quite a few people and I have a bunch of wholesale accounts as well. There’s no ammunition in the distributor network or the retail network at this point. There’s nothing you can order from RSR you can order from CRO shooting supply. And these are the biggest distributors that distribute to all the retailers nationwide in the gun world. They don’t have any ammo either. They don’t have any way to backward the ammo. And so I started going down rabbit holes, and I’m like, what’s the problem? So here’s an interesting thing that no one’s talking about. And I’ve been talking about this since January. So China’s been offline since January. They make everything and people don’t even know the extent that we’re dependent on China. Like we’re not like, Oh, we could just ignore them more like we’re they’re like holding up, we’re walking down the street kind of dependent on them. So, so the interesting thing, I started looking at the supply chain because I’m like, Okay, I’m gonna get, I’m gonna move up here because I’m getting all excited now. But so I started looking at the supply chain stuff. Do you know there’s this thing called buffer inventory? So I said, Okay, if ships stop moving cargo from China, to the United States, how long before we run out of stuff? And no one’s talking about that question. No one not in the mainstream media. I have her I have a hard time even finding information about people who would ask that question. So in my day job, I got a lot of people that bring manufacturer stuff in China, and I just started picking up the phone. And they said, if we don’t get shipments By May, we’re out of our our inventory by June, and they don’t have any firm dates from China. And then I started saying, Okay, well, how long what’s the buffer inventory in the United States? Well, for most things, and I’m talking about everything, it’s one to four months of buffer inventory in the United States for almost anything. China’s not back online yet. So another way to so I go down this other rabbit hole, right? And I’m just like I’m really interested in like, Okay, well, how do we confirm that there’s a problem with the amount of stuff moving? Well, there’s this thing called the dry Baltic index, which is the marketplace where people buy shipping containers to move raw goods, not necessarily finished goods. It’s fell off a cliff. No one’s buying shipping from China to the US. And so, I’ve started talking to people and you know, I started looking at what are the things that we need in the United States to live not talking TVs at Walmart, we got plenty of those right. And everybody’s gonna buy in with their stimulus. Trump bucks. But they make 90% of our drugs and drug precursors in China. Now. Yes, he Here’s a couple other things they make. They also make all the ingredients and food processing chemicals for our food supply. Not not, and then on top of that, most of our seafood comes from China. So just on that alone, it’s like, wow. And no one’s talking about this. And then the toilet paper thing. So I always think ahead, right? I always stocked up on stuff and I said, you know, all the things that’s not back in inventory right now at any grocery store out here is toilet paper and paper goods. Still gone. totally gone. And so I went down this rabbit hole, new era of like, how like how much toilet paper? Do you know how much toilet paper we buy in the United States every year? You’re not big the market is
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
Probably massive.
Rob McNealy
Massive – $6 billion a year. So what we spend, but here’s the word, but do you know what most of it’s actually made in the United States. Actually, we Don’t actually import much toilet paper we employed about $500 million a year in toilet paper. Most of it doesn’t even come from China comes from Indonesia. So it’s really interesting to me I’m like okay, so why are these shelves empty? This just can’t all be FOMO buying. Well we found two problems though. And the thing that I just uncovered the other day is all like what what’s the problem? Well guess what? Even though we make the toilet paper here, the recycled paper that makes the toilet paper is like the cheapest pulp comes from China. I think they’re out because China’s not back in line yet. And in fact, that dug into that rabbit hole. Most of the so we said whole cargo ships have you know all that recycled cardboard and plastic and or paper that you know gets bundled up goes to China. They turn it into pulp and ship it back and then we make it into toilet paper. The other problem with the supply chain we got a couple points. With the supply chain in the country, but that’s one of those external threats. Here’s another interesting thing. You know, I started looking at all these other countries with COVID now we’re getting into a whole prepper weird, crazy conversation. But I started talking to people and you know, what happens when India and you know, and some of these other countries start having a problem with COVID? How would that affect the supply chain and how could that affect us? Well, it’s interesting, you know, India’s a big country and they’re not they’re having they’re gonna have a big problem, I think with this pandemic, and they’re just starting, they’re just getting started. You know, they’re like the number two rice exporter in the planet. So what happens if because of absenteeism from illness and lockdowns and fear? They don’t produce let’s just say they produce less rice, not no rice but less rice. They feed a lot of countries and one of those other countries going to do here’s another thing so We’ve had four meatpacking plants in the United States go down because of COVID in the last week and a half, for in the last week and a half. And we’re talking one plant alone does 5% of the pork for the entire United States just went down in the last week. So, two, so a meat and a beef plant in Iowa, one of the biggest beef slaughterhouses in northern Colorado in Greeley. And then a port processing plant up in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, all went down the last 10 days because COVID they don’t know when they’re coming back online. So you have this absenteeism. So there’s food and pigs and cows in the United States. But if you can’t get them processed, what’s that gonna do to people in Philly at the grocery store? Right. Right. What does that do the so we’re talking about that loaf of bread getting more expensive just because of inflation for money. What what happens when that price goes up two or three times? Because there’s no one to process as much, or what happens if the truck drivers are too afraid to drive truck across country to a pandemic zone, which you’re already seeing in New York City now. And it’s gonna get worse through the summer I predict from all the major cities, especially I think every major city east of the Mississippi is gonna have a problem with COVID bad. And so that’s my prediction. You can call me out on it by August we’ll have a conversation as car over it. But these are the things that I am getting concerned about. Now, here’s the thing, where did we get a lot of our produce from in the wintertime?
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
Mexico.
Rob McNealy
China, Mexico. So what happens if they have absenteeism from fear and illness? Now right now you can’t cross the border to Mexico. Well, all those workers that work our field come from Mexico. Regardless of what the conservatives want to believe about rural America and farmers, they’re all run by Mexicans. That’s just a fact. So the workers can’t get here. But what happens if Mexico’s farms have the same problem we do? What if their processing plants go down because of fear and illness? COVID in the wintertime, you know, this fall, what does that do to the price of food? Now, you know, I’ve spent a lot of time in inner cities now. And you know, I know I come from a poor family. So what happens to people that are dependent on EBT? And now that price of hamburger went from $4 a pound to $15 a pound or $20 a pound? How are those people going to react when their food stamps don’t go very far now. And those are the things that keep me concerned. But, you know, then you get into the International, you know, incidents with like, Okay, well, if countries don’t have enough food now to feed their people, what are they going to do? And put put your military thinking hat on. What does that look like in a year from now? And, and so I think we have multiple problems happening. And I think COVID is the trigger to basically say, look, this Emperor has completely naked now. And you guys got a lot of problems. Right? Right ranting but those are the things they have me concerned right now.
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
I’d have to agree with all of those assessments but I if I could convince my wife man, we will be out of here. My my family immigrated here from the Bahamas in the 20s. And I still have family there and if I could convince my wife man, we will be out. Like to
Rob McNealy
To the Bahamas?
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
Damn right, right now.
Rob McNealy
I’m not sure I’d want to go to an island right now to be honest. Because they’re actually all the all the people Caribbean islands right now are having problems with COVID. Yeah, so and so the question is on an island, you’re completely dependent on outside logistics for your support. If those logistics chains start getting broken, you’re really kind of on an island.
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
Just eat fish every day.
Rob McNealy
You if you can. I love the Caribbean man, I, you know, I’ve been to a lot of Caribbean islands and, man, I would be all about at least having a second house there. I’m not sure I’d want to write out this there. Right now. You know, we moved to Salt Lake City now six years ago now, and I think was a smart move because as far as urban or suburban areas were one of the most prepared states on the planet, like part of the the LDS culture, the Mormon culture, and is that, you know, they’re supposed to have a year supply of food. A lot of people don’t know that but like the whole morning A church is one giant prepper organization. And in fact, the Mormon Church has its own grain silos all over the place. And they have their own food processing, canneries and everything. I mean, they’re really dialed in. And so people in Utah are pretty, pretty resilient and self reliant. And that was one of the things that attracted me to the Utah in general. Was that self reliance? so far with COVID? We’re one of the only states that’s not locked down. We’re we’re in a semi we’re in a voluntary soft lockdown. Like the governor comes on the you know, every day at you know, lunchtime and says, Please, please, please, please, please don’t make me become a tyrant. Before she’s like, just do the right thing. Right. But but we haven’t had many cases here. So we’ve had 20 deaths in the whole state, but it’s picking up space. It’s picking up pace now. So you know, I think we’re gonna be one of the last to go if it goes bad, just because one more small population and we’re facing fairly isolated compared to, you know, the, you know, east of the Mississippi. It’s just so much more crowded in the east coast in the Midwest that it’s just a lot harder I think with this, I mean, so what does your wife Think about all this? You mean you sound like you’re a preparedness guy too, right?
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
But she’s she’s now four that she thinks I’m overreacting.
Rob McNealy
What does she think you’re overreacting?
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
Because she’s never seen me act like this before.
Rob McNealy
Really? How are you acting?
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
Like, I need to be prepared.
Rob McNealy
Gotcha. But were you prepared before or is this something more recent or is this kind of like, ongoing thing without divulging any opsec Right, right, right. You know, I don’t need to know what you have or don’t have but, you know, I just like to understand where people are coming from because.
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
I’ve, I’ve always believed in having Little more than what’s absolutely necessary. I think we need to go all in. We need to be really putting we really need to be the squirrel and story a cause for real bad weather.
Rob McNealy
I agree with you now I have no OPSEC because I run a prepper crypto crypto conference every year called Off Chain: http://OffChain.events. So it’s kind of obvious that I do put things away. And that’s kind of part of, it’s just part of who we are. We don’t even think about it. It’s just like, but it’s funny because we just opened up pinto beans from 2011 the other day. And they were fine, by the way, right? Is it really good? But you’re like, I don’t you know, it’s one of those things like I hope I never have to open this five gallon bucket of pinto beans. But I’m glad I had the pinto beans. Kind of great. But I think yeah, I think what What I’ve been telling people right now it’s like cuz there’s a lot of people that are waking up. You know, I’m a gun guy. And sounds like you’re a gun guy as well. Yeah. Have you had a lot of people ask you about that? Guns recently?
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
What do you mean. asked me what?
Rob McNealy
Like people that are non gun people getting interested in wanting information about guns.
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
No. Everyone who knows me knows that I’m a gun guy. But they don’t ask me about it.
Rob McNealy
Now, because it’s interesting because I’ve had four people in the last two weeks three were first time gun buyers wanting to know what to buy, where to buy that kind of thing, and that one person was looking for food. And I’m like, Of course I’m and I’m like, Oh, of course. I’m the guy you call. But it’s just it’s been interesting seeing like people’s getting concerned now and I tell people right now if you haven’t prepped, you got one last opportunity right now. Do to get as much As you can get and but but I tell people, first thing you need to do is mentally prepare yourself for change. Probably drastic change, yes. Probably tough times, yes. A mentally prepare yourself that life is not going to be the same and get okay with that.
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
Right. And it’s going to happen quickly.
Rob McNealy
It’s good. It’s not happening quickly enough.
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
Because I don’t I don’t think we I don’t think we’re where we need to be.
Rob McNealy
Well, I think I was telling someone the other day that I think there’s people don’t have a sense of urgency in outside of the East Coast right now at all about this. All they want to do is they’re they’re healthy, they don’t see a problem. There’s not body stacking up. And so I think what’s happening is they can’t abstract what’s happening. I think it’s a combination of normalcy bias. Time preference. I think it’s like, there’s a glacier coming of really big freakin glacier. And it’s gonna run over your town. Right? But everybody’s like, well, I don’t see the glacier move, but it’s gonna run over the town. Well, I don’t see it moving. So I’m not going to do anything. And I think a lot of people are struggling with them because of it. And then they see the more immediate I’m not working, I don’t have money coming in and do those are all valid concerns, especially if you don’t have any savings. Right? So I don’t have a good answer to that. But this is not just a COVID Glacier. This is a supply chain glacier that’s affecting the entire planet in a slow moving wave like a glacier. Right? And it’s going to take a year before you know it’s gonna take months I would bet it’s gonna be a very scary summer is what I predict. Because I think you’re going to see a lot of cities all flaring up at the same time. I think you’re going to have the the buffer inventories from China burn through, I think you’re gonna have a lot of absenteeism. And you know, shortages because of this plants going down and this plant is going down and, and I think all that stuff is going to be rolling. So you’re, it’s like you’re gonna, you know, New York will be starting to be through its peak and then Chicago is going to be hitting its peak. Right, you know, or just starting in Detroit and St. Louis. And it’s just going to go on and on and on. And it’s going to take all right, well, I’ll be you know, New York hasn’t peaked yet. So understand this, right. Like, it’s been six weeks we had no, I mean, it’s like, stayed in New York, like, what 20 some thousand now or something. I mean, six weeks ago, they had zero need, it’s like, so it’s like gradually but you know, and that’s just one major city with it. But what happens when you have four cropping up in six more weeks. What does that look like? And right now most of the resources to handle COVID have been redirected to New York from other places. So I don’t I think we’re going to be I think the, the response to COVID is going to be scary. And I think there’s going to be a, I mean, there’s going to be a lot of people that are gonna, you know, not make it through this. Right. But I think what’s going to affect all of us is the supply chain failures domestically and internationally. And I think that and how people react to them. The question is, how do people react and you know, you know, I so are you from Philly your whole life? You said your family came from Bahamas, where are you? Where were you raised?
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
I was, I was born in New York, but I was raised in DC.
Rob McNealy
Okay. So, you know, and I’ve lived all over but I’ve been out west about 20 years, but I grew up in the Midwest. So I spent 20 years in the Detroit area for 28 years, actually, in the Detroit area. I know this that people Americans have never had to deal with empty shelves. Think about that.
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
Never.
Rob McNealy
Never. Now I’ve traveled a little bit, you probably traveled a little bit, you go to other places. Well, I don’t have any there’s nothing on the shelf for a month, but next month will be something on that shelf. And people are okay with that because that’s the system. Right? That’s what they’re used to. And the more third world or developing nations that’s that’s common, right? Well, we’ll get something pretty soon. You know, they don’t know. Americans have never had to deal with that. I’m 48 I’ll be 48 this summer. I’ve never seen that my lifetime.
Unknown Speaker
Now, add to that, that we are the nation with the most guns per person on the planet.
Rob McNealy
Yep.
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
It’s good to be MadMax in the Thunderdome.
Rob McNealy
You know it It’s I don’t know where this is gonna go. You know, I’m just saying is if you’re like imagine if you’re like around a bit I think like a big pot. You’re in the kitchen right? You got a big giant pot is thrown in, you’re just gonna make the most worst meal ever. And you’re gonna just throw in some like, throw it’s a Molotov cocktail, a little gasoline, a little acid, gunpowder, TNT, nuclear weapons, throw into pathogens, turn it all up and, and let it launch in the middle of the summertime in the Midwest, like Detroit and Philly in Chicago, and then tell people, they got to be locked in their house because there’s a pandemic and they don’t have air conditioning. Right. Just like, you know, but I think but I even think about the air conditioning piece, right? I mean, I’ve been around a lot of inner cities growing up and where I’ve worked and stuff and I’m not this is not a stereotype. It’s a fact a lot of people don’t have central air. in inner cities in the Midwest, Detroit area, every summer when there’s a heatwave in Detroit, there’s people dying because they don’t have air conditioning. And, and think about it so and part of the response to that is people hang out outside, they get barbecue, they hang out the friends that hang out late at night instead of during the day, because they don’t want to be in their house. So what happens if you stir all that in top of that? Oh, man, I am not. I am not looking forward to this summer at all with this. And and i think that i think the COVID is just exposing all sorts of problems that already were there. And I think a lot of people are gonna get mad. A lot of people are going to get frustrated. There’s not things on the shelves. I think people are going to be pissed that things cost a lot more. I think people are going to be pissed because they’re told to stay in the house. They don’t want to stay in the house. Let’s just be honest, people don’t like being told what to do. Right? Anyways, I’m ranting. I’m sorry man. I I don’t know, man. I think it’s gonna be I think it’s gonna be wack. That’s what I think it’s gonna be a wack time.
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
It’s gonna be interesting.
Rob McNealy
And so what do you think people should be doing? So, alright, so people here like, you know they’re not on the East Coast not in the Midwest. They’re just like doo dee doo dee doo. What would be your saying what would be your advice right now to those people?
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
Move out, move out of debt, move out of credit. Start putting away a little cash. start, stop putting away things that you can trade and start thinking about how you defend yourself and your family. Start thinking about how you feed yourself and your family. Make those things a priority because when the time comes and you realize that you need to do it, it’s already too late. Because other people are realizing at the exact same time that they need to do it. And then it becomes survival of the fittest. And the question is, how fit are you?
Rob McNealy
I couldn’t disagree with any of that? And, man, I’m usually a lot more uplifting than this.
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
Me too man.
Rob McNealy
No, but but seriously, though, I mean, I think that’s a good point is cover your frickin bases right now you’re sitting home. Don’t look at Pornhub all day, don’t play video games all day. start figuring out what you need to do to get past six months from now. Right? What’s that gonna look like? Right? You know, I don’t have a crystal ball. And I sure as hell hope that all the stuff we talked about doesn’t happen. I really hope it doesn’t happen. And you know what? I’ve been wrong before. You know I would I thought that shit was gonna meltdown in 2013. I’ll tell you that. That was I thought 20 13 if I had to put like, you know, the crystal ball on it, I was you know, my tea leaves are telling me 2013 it’s all it’s all over with. That’s gonna go mad max. That’s what I thought didn’t happen. They pumped up the housing market again. And now the housing markets way crazier now than it wasn’t you know 2007 2008 and I think that’s another I think that’s another shoe that’s gonna drop. And what do you what do you think about that? What do you think is gonna happen and how..
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
People out of work, they won’t be able to pay their mortgages.
Rob McNealy
Yeah. And the banks already tightening their credit lines again, and they’re already in get. My wife is super smart. I’m the dumb one of the family. My wife’s really smart. And we were walking around the neighborhood and there was a house that same size as mine, but they remodeled it. And they sold it for two and a half times my house. There’s a Worth right now. And it’s just a brick ranch house. Okay. I mean, this is not a fancy neighborhood or anything like that. But the numbers on the house, I mean, I look it up I like I like to look at real estate like to see what’s happening and and I was like, there’s no way in hell, I mean, we could afford that. But there’s no way I could pay that. I think we overpaid for my house when we bought it, and how my house has doubled in the last five years. And I said, there’s no way I would buy my house for what it’s valued at right now. I would not spend it. It’s not worth it. To me. It’s just, you know, it’s ridiculous. My wife made a good point, though. She’s like, because, you know, we were growing up with the house during the last housing crash, and she’s like, this housing crash is gonna be a lot faster to bottom and I go, what do you mean by that? Just to think about it, you know, in 2007, the price of a house was about a third what it is now, for the same house, even our old house. It’s funny, it’s like you look back on what our old House was in Colorado. And we’re like, holy crap. It’s ridiculous what that house costs, it’s that it’s ridiculous. So she’s like, think about this house. So she’s like, if a house has an $800,000 a month mortgage, it’s going to take two people working full time probably pay for that mortgage, and it’s probably like a 5000 $6,000 a month mortgage. She’s like, what if one of those people lose their job? Just one. Now this is before COVID head. So this was like last, you know, this is several months ago. And she’s she had a great point. She says, they can’t go and just liquidate their 401k out or go do Uber part time to come up with that nut every month. While they’re hoping they get another big boy job. She should so she says that housing markets probably going to hit bottom a lot faster because people are going to run out of money much faster because the mortgages are a lot bigger now. And I thought that was a really interesting point. That hadn’t heard anybody else make? Yeah. So, you know, I’m worried my brother I am, I’m so worried about where people are. And, and I’ve been in agony because I see so many people that are destitute so quickly. You know, I knew it was bad. I mean, it wasn’t ignorant to the savings rates and stuff, but the fact that I see people like so depressed and miserable, and they’re, I mean, I would bet that at the end of the year, you’re gonna see that the suicide rates probably gonna go crazy this year. And that makes me sad. Because, you know, you know, the regardless, we can get through all this shit. You know, I lived in a van behind a grocery store one summer as an adult, you know, and, and I would and I, and that’s no bullshit, okay? I mean, I’ve really came from a hard life growing up, and, you know, it’s like, I’m like, and you know what, none of that shit scares me. I’ve lost it all. And I’ve had an thing and I grew up with nothing so you know money and all that kind of stuff I you know, being broke like, whatever, you know figure the shit out, right that’s my attitude on it not that I want to be poor because being poor sucks but what I’m saying is but for people who have never experienced that right now because they grew up in this debt fueled really upper middle class you know lifestyle I think there’s gonna be a reckoning and I think those people are gonna have a very hard time adjusting to what the future holds.
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
I think those people will be prey.
Rob McNealy
Yeah. Especially the ones that don’t like guns. And what do you think about precious metals? Are you a pro so book, silver bug, why silver over boom.
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
It’s in every phone. So most of our electronics, the price has been depressed even more than gold. So once the banks get their film off the paper Silver supply and the real value of silver is able to be discovered by the market. Got a pretty good feeling about it.
Rob McNealy
What is that? 50 is it 50 times now?
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
I thought it was 75?
Rob McNealy
I haven’t looked in a couple weeks. So you really are you know like you are definitely my echo chamber right now. I like I like silver more than gold for the seasons. That’s an interesting thing. The the precious metals markets have been really bizarre, haven’t they? Yes. Tell me about what are you seeing out there?
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
Ah, I dollar cost average precious metals the same way I do crypto and over the last month, actually six to eight weeks. The premium over spot for silver is Bananas. I recently purchased from admix $7 30 cent premium over spot. Now considering considering silver is like 14 $15 an ounce, so that’s 30 to 50% 50. Premium on an ounce.
Rob McNealy
So what does that mean?
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
Something that we don’t know.
Rob McNealy
So explain that. So for people that are not gold or silver or precious metal bugs, what does that mean? It’s good to go into a little bit.
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
Sure. Spot price is how much the market recognizes an ounce of silver for let’s say it’s $15 Okay. The premium is charged by the retailer to the consumer, because of various reasons, one of which is the difficulty in getting in Or the supply levels, how easy and how much there is to be sold at any given time, how much the mid releases at any given time, or how much silver was mined at any given time. When the supply starts to dry up, the premium on silver goes up, because they identify that more people want it, there’s less of it. So it becomes a law of supply and demand. So the less silver there is in the market to be sold and or the less silver has been mined in a month or six months or a year, the higher the price of silver will be and the higher the premium will probably be as well. And so when I went out to buy to do my regular DCA You know, I’m like damn, like $7 36 like This is like 50% like, really? Like believe what I was seeing when I saw it. And I mean, at max Providence on money metals, JM bullion, it didn’t matter where you win the premium was in that range of 50% premium.
Rob McNealy
Yeah, well, what what I think is interesting is that just based on the markets tanking, just based on global supply chain threats, the spot price of gold and silver should be off the charts. They should be off the chain they should be going nuts agree they’re not good. Not this the and usually in Newtown. I mean, typically, you might spend a buck you know even less depending for for the premium. If there is one, it’s not anywhere near you know, seven bucks, right, you make 1050 cents more for Well, I want this round and it’s got 20 Well design on it or whatever, you know. But what’s happened and what it looks like to me that for a long time in precious metals, a lot of the precious metal bugs out there have been saying that precious metal markets have been artificially depressed. And it’s, it’s easy to write that off as conspiracy, right? You see that a lot of times too with crypto, the crypto whales are suppressing the bitcoin price, whatever, you know, you hear that there too. But it’s interesting. Is that what there’s what it looks like it’s happening because right now, I don’t know how much physical delivery what lead times are you getting out there for the physical delivery, two weeks, we’re getting four to six new top. And so it’s interesting. And what so what they’re saying is, is that the the conspiracy theory that I’ve heard is that that there’s these paper gold and paper silver, and that they’ve oversold it, meaning that they’ll say this one, you know, this security is is worth so many ounces of silver, and they sell it, then treat it like a stock like an equity. And there’s a lot of people have alleged for a long time that they’ve sold those times more than once, maybe dozens of times. And so what’s happening and why the supply is all janky is that people now want physical delivery, and there’s not enough to go around. And so that premium that’s skyrocket. So what should be happening is the spot price should be skyrocketing to reflect market changes and conditions because this is exactly what precious metals are designed for a hedge against. And that’s not functioning right. But then, but what happens is since it looks like the markets not being allowed to actually, well, it looks to me that the market is not being allowed to do true price discovery on precious metals for whatever reason, right? That retail premium is where the market is finding the price.
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
Right, you’re starting to see a real decoupling in precious on hand metals versus precious paper metals. So I see a real decoupling,
Rob McNealy
Which then would support that there’s been some corruption and maybe some manipulation for the suppression of those prices. And it’s like, wow, and it’s funny because it’s like this goes back to COVID the trigger, but it’s only exposing this ID Oh, there’s this other problem. This this this rot, right. That’s been there for a long time. The rot comes from consumerist mentality among Americans that come from the lack of we don’t save money. We’re not providing to literacy that’s rot in my opinion. And then you have you know, all this just crazy amounts of US dollars being printed. That’s right. And then you have the precious metals markets, being rigged, apparently, or oversold, and that’s a rot it, all this stuff and all this outsourcing to China for the last three decades and how great it was, you know, and I’m from Detroit. So I know all I mean, I grew up in I went through high school in the 80s. And and I grew up through all that outsourcing happened in the 80s in the 90s. And then NAFTA happened in the mid 90s. Thank you, Bill Clinton. And so I mean, I, I saw what it did to Detroit one because I grew up in I was living there in that and I used to work in the auto industry. And it’s like, there’s rot from all the outsourcing and it’s like, so it’s like, there’s all this immense amount of shit of rot that’s just pile up for decades and decades and decades and, you know, go back to, you know, getting off the gold standard A long time ago, and I mean, this started probably before I was born really, but it’s all coming to head from this goddamn virus. It’s like, and then the housing market, the student loan bubble, the housing bubble again, it’s all just right all at once, and it’s happening around the planet all at once. Right? And it’s and it’s not, but it’s not happening overnight. It’s gonna take a year, probably the next year as this this pandemic goes through all those different major population centers. It’s gonna and so it’s like it’s gonna get good in one spot and then just pop up into more like crazy whack a mole. And so I don’t know man if this is probably going to be the most historically speaking, yeah, good or bad. It’s going to be a fucking ride. Yeah, and and you know what and why need to connect with smart people like you they get it? Because, you know, if the ones that are slightly prepared, are also going to be targets. That’s a fact. Right? You know, I like to read history. And I actually like to read about Russian history, and Ukrainian history and things. And I don’t know if you know much about what happened in Ukraine. But when the Soviets invaded the Ukraine, they had like, two levels of peasants, right? They had the peasants and the peasants that could hire somebody to work for them. They’re only slightly better off peasants. They call them coup locks. And what the Russians did is they said that every they they created all these policies, the Soviets create all sorts of quotas and stuff and they said, all these failures are because of the coup locks because they’re rich. They weren’t rich. They were just slightly less poor than the average peasant, but they might have you know, a little bigger farm and employ two people or something. That’s how the locks work. But the Soviets through propaganda whipped up, so much froth and hate and envy between The Super poor peasants and the cool locks. And they blamed every government failure on the cool locks into the point where they basically either killed center gulags or exiled they confiscated all the property, the cool locks the entire country. And that was that’s the that’s what the whole Ukrainian genocide was about in they blame, they call them coup locks. And I tell people now that, you know, we joke around about toilet paper envy and things like that. But we’re already starting to see the signs that there’s going to be people that the preppers the people that are self reliant the people that aren’t in debt, the people that you know, have some savings are probably going to be targets. And it’s going to be propagandize much like cool locks were and I do believe this is going to be a true threat over the next year or more. Friend of mine down in Texas. He has he’s a prepper and his wife and him you know, we talked a lot And she says they have like, they actually have some decent, you know, kind of, you know, and 95 reusable and 95 mass that look kind of stylish and I have if you look at my profile picture, I have one too. And because I bought them a long time. And, and it was funny because he told and I talked to him yesterday. And he said, because the damnedest thing just happened I go Why? Because my wife was at the store and somebody started calling her out for having a good mask not a homemade one. Wow, she’s got she’s got you know, she’s got a real nice mask and we just got these, you know, homemade ones. I’m like, holy shit. It’s like just I mean, I know I my mind just going like crazy places when I hear stuff like that. Yeah. Where’s it gonna go? You know, and you know, that’s that’s the stuff that kind of gets me worried about you know, protecting my family and stuff. Stuff like that is like, you know, you work very hard and save and you don’t go on that family vacation or you don’t go on that big trip because you want to buy, you know, some extra supplies or buy, you know, you don’t buy the nice steak but you buy a couple extra cans of beans or something, you know, you do that long enough. And you know, because you feel it’s an insurance policy and then you know, so you can ride these things out. And then and then somebody says or acts like you did something wrong. It’s like, you know, I just thought ahead. I was a boy scout too. By the way, I was also a firefighter and EMT, so I think about this stuff. But I don’t know man. This is a really a downer. Thanks. So what can we do? Well, what can we do to get people to wake up more? often can we help? How can people say how can we help people say it themselves? Is it too late?
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
I hate to go I really mean, but I’m really not worried about other people.
Rob McNealy
Fair enough.
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
Right now I’m just worried about me and my family, I’ll help my neighbor, if I have to help my neighbor, but not at the expense of helping my family.
Rob McNealy
I think there will be a lot of people that will have to make those choices in the future. You know, and my wife and I, we have these kind of conversations too. You know, it’s like, what do you do? And, you know, because people know, we have, you know, we have some emergency supplies and stuff. I mean, I don’t hide that. I never hide it because I tried to help people and get them excited about it and say, Hey, this is an important thing. So I know those I know those decisions I’m gonna have to make at some point, because I’m the guy they call it ready. So looking for advice, right? So it just is what it is. But we knew that that we always knew that that was a risk. So you know, there’s nothing I can do about that now, but I don’t Want to be I want you know, I always say this is that I wear a mask. And my families have been wearing masks when we’re in public and things. Because I don’t want to be part of the problem. Because if you’re not part of the problem, you can be part of the solution. You know, what I’m saying is don’t be a victim first, right? Protect your family. Protect your what you got. Because if you’re in that position, then you do have the option to help other people. Right. And, you know, maybe I can’t help the whole neighborhood, but maybe I can help one person, you know, and, and that’s what I hope to do. And like, you know, we’re putting in a big garden this year, like a really big garden, like nuts. you’d laugh it’s like a farm. And I told my wife I go, you know, I don’t know where things are going. And and she’s about 98% where I am. I’m a little more like, no, buy everything we can possibly buy right now. You know, I’m a little more, you know, let’s just do we got this one last chance is how I see it. And I said, you know, let’s just put in more, let’s fill up some more lawn, put in some more plants and she’s like, why do we need more? I go, because we can help other people if we need. That’s why. And that’s how I think you know, and you know it doesn’t hurt me to buy you know, by the way you can buy seeds at the dollar store for for $1 everybody’s freaking out about seeds. Go to the dollar store dollar store has the cheapest seeds anywhere in the country. Nobody knows that. I don’t know why they don’t know that. But did you plant a garden? Are you planning a garden this year? Can you plant a garden?
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
I can but I won’t be this year.
Rob McNealy
You need to plant a garden. I’m gonna give you some shit about that. I think you should plant a garden. I really do. Please, little garden. Do this for me. Put your wife on. I’m just giving you shit. So Noir, where can people find out more?
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
About? Oh um yeah, we would way down the rabbit hole man, I thought we were going somewhere else. You can find me on Twitter: @InvestNoir, I N V E S T N O I R or you can check me out on Instagram at @CigarsandCrypto. Or you can listen to me on any of your podcast platforms of choice. Just search for Cigars and Crypto, or CigarsandCrypto.com.
Rob McNealy
You have the best radio voice ever. So, guys, you gotta listen to his podcast. He’s got some really, really great points out there. I really like where he’s coming from because he is my echo chamber. Thank you so much for listening this Robin Neely. Check us out on the web at Rob McNealy calm.
Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Podcast
Thanks for having me.
Episode Links
Brad Kam – Unstoppable Domains Transcript

Note: This transcript was automatically generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and therefore typos may be present.
Rob McNealy
Hey folks today Rob McNealy here. And I am talking to the co founder of unstoppable domains, Brad cams. Brad, welcome to the show. How are you today?
Brad Kam – Unstoppable Domains
Great. Thanks for having me.
Rob McNealy
Well, I appreciate you coming on. I’ve been a big fan of what you’ve been doing now for. I don’t know, I heard about you guys probably about a couple months back. And I actually got to talk to you offline, because I actually think I want to buy one of your domains. But you’re going to educate me and the audience today about what your domains are doing. And what I’m, before we not kind of get into all that. Let’s talk about you a little bit. Give me a little bit of history about you. What’s your background?
Brad Kam – Unstoppable Domains
Yes, I’m from Atlanta. I’ve been starting companies since college days, started out in the real estate world and actually after the last economic crash started buying up homes during this period where they dropped by like 80 90% in Atlanta, so it was pretty, pretty wild, pretty wild, pretty wild situation, but eventually kind of realized I needed to, I needed to get into the software game needed to get to San Francisco needed to get into startups. That’s really where the big change was happening. So I moved to San Francisco in 2012. And I moved into this house called 20 mission, which has been referred to as a house that Bitcoin built in various publications. Because it was a Bitcoin hacker house where the second Bitcoin exchange in the US launched in our basement of Vitalik came and gave a talk before Ethereum launched in the courtyard, pretty much everybody there was doing something Bitcoin related. So I kind of moved to San Francisco and at the same time, just kind of completely dove into crypto related things and kind of haven’t looked back since then. But in general, been doing startups.
Rob McNealy
Very cool. So tell me what is Unstoppable Domains all about?
Brad Kam – Unstoppable Domains
So it’s about free speech tech, it’s about creating a censorship resistant internet and we’ll We do is we build domain names on blockchains. So we have a domain registry similar to like a.com. Except for it’s part of a smart contract on a blockchain. So we’ve got crypto Ethereum. And the way it works is is every domain is stored by you in your cryptocurrency wallet, a traditional domain would be stored by like GoDaddy or your registrar or something like that. And because you have this mandatory custodian, they can move the domain around, they can take it away. So a blockchain domain is is one that you can that you control, it’s a self custody. ERC 721. And you use the domains. For websites for censorship resistant websites, you store your website content on IPFS or another decentralized storage network. And you can also use them for payments. And this is kind of weird. This is different than a traditional domain. The same domain can work for both websites and payments. So I’ve got Brad crypto, you could type that into a browser and see my website or you could type that into a cryptocurrency wallet, and you can send me Bitcoin or Ethereum or whatever you can send any currency essentially to one domain. Okay,
Rob McNealy
so how does that work is how does it work? So how do you make money? How do I get a domain?
Brad Kam – Unstoppable Domains
Yeah, so the way it works is is you can go to unstoppable domains calm, it’s gonna look similar. It’s kind of like our version of a GoDaddy, you can type in domains into the search bar, you can check out you can pay with credit card or crypto. After you do that you can manage your domain meaning that you add your crypto addresses so you can receive money to it and launch a website, a website on decentralized storage. So we’ve got a bunch of little tools in there kind of like a decentralized Wix where it’s really easy with a few clicks to go and build your website and launch.
Rob McNealy
So is this a one time payment one and done thing or is this like a subscription model like an annual model like a lot of much of the other registrar’s that are out there?
Brad Kam – Unstoppable Domains
Yeah. This is a one time fee. And the reason why is because it should just be something that you control and feel like you can control forever. If you have a subscription, you have these risks where the registry could just jack up the price on you. And there was a really kind of crazy thing that’s been going on in the traditional domain world around.org, where they’re selling the what was previously a nonprofit to a for profit company and talking about jacking the prices by three x. And all of these essentially, most nonprofits in the world are using.org. And now they’re all kind of at risk, where they’re under the you know, they’re under the under the thumb of this, of this registry that can just change prices whenever. So a once simple, easier, safer for the user.
Rob McNealy
So do you so the I guess the question I would have, and I’m just trying to understand because I’m actually kind of interested in this project for Tosca, actually. And so if you go away, Does it still work?
Brad Kam – Unstoppable Domains
Yeah. Yeah, you’re relying on a theorem and you’re relying On the ipfs protocol, which is a decentralized storage network, although Pretty soon, you’ll be able to rely on many different decentralized storage networks. So I would say that’s a little bit less of a risk, because you can always just put your website on multiple networks. For aetherium, though you are relying on on a theory and still being there and stable, so doesn’t doesn’t rely on unstoppable domains. Once you have the domain, it’s yours doesn’t really matter what happens to us you already control it.
Rob McNealy
So essentially, when you say it’s on a theory, does that mean that that’s where the DNS is located? So I’m hitting, that’s where the I type in POS network and then all or whatever it would be on your protocol. I’m hitting the Ethereum network and that’s just a permanent DNS record through a theorem.
Brad Kam – Unstoppable Domains
Yeah, so if any of your any of your your community has ever used like my ether wallet, for example, which is a theorem wallet, so there, they have my ether wallet, crypto, and so you can type it into it. browser and you go there and when the browser when you type in my ether wallet crypto the browser goes and reads the Ethereum blockchain, finds the my ether wallet crypto domain, and then goes and looks for the hash where the content is located at the ipfs. Hash, and then it shows you the shows you the website.
Rob McNealy
So you said you can put it on multiple networks. How does that work?
Brad Kam – Unstoppable Domains
Well, I said that I don’t want to maybe over complicate something, I said that purely to say that you don’t need to bet on any one storage network. Right now we’re using ipfs, because that’s the one that’s the most mature and has, you know, great tools and a lot of developers already using it. And so what the way that works is I upload ipfs and then people anywhere can store and share my website to the network. So instead of having my website stored on Amazon Web Services, where if they decide they don’t like what I’m doing, they can just flip me off. I can just turn me off. Instead, I have dozens or hundreds or maybe even thousands of different people all storing a copy of my website and unlikely they’re all just going to decide to turn me off all at once.
Rob McNealy
Exactly. So for this way, do you notice any kind of lag time or speed difference between DNS on a traditional registrar or a DNS on unstoppable
Brad Kam – Unstoppable Domains
so the theory of look apart is quite good, quite easy, quite fast. The IP Fs the how fast website content loads is based on to things it’s based on how many people you’ve got, that are storing and sharing your website. And you it’s also based on how like close they are geographically to you. So what this leads to is, if your website’s popular, then it’s also performance. It also works well, which is kind of like in a weird way. It’s kind of like the opposite of a lot of traditional web systems where you like get DDoS like you get too much traffic. And things go down. Whereas here, if you have a whole bunch of demand, you’re probably also going to have a whole bunch of supply of websites of copies of your website being stored around. So I guess that’s the long answer. The short answer is right now because it’s early. It doesn’t work that well. But the moment something gets popular, it’ll work quite well. So it has this kind of like opposite of the regular internet approach. As it scales as it scales, it gets better.
Rob McNealy
Is there a way to then to use unstoppable for the DNS, and then just pointed to a normal web server host somewhere?
Brad Kam – Unstoppable Domains
Sure, you could do that I think you would lose, lose a little bit of the advantage, though, because what we’re really the purpose of all this is to have a censorship resistant internet is to have essentially self custody of both your domain and your website so that neither of those can be points of failure where you have to rely on other companies like you control that stuff. And no one can really stop you from publishing A browser might say, like, Hey, this is a really, you know, you know, this is illegal, what you’re doing, and we don’t want to show this record. So there’s always like that level of place where somebody could try to, you know, block you from being seen. But that’s different than somebody just being able to take you down. Like right now, registrar can just say, we don’t like what you’re doing, we’re going to, we’re going to, we’re going to take the domain away, you know, right now, Amazon Web Services can just switch you off. And, you know, of course, you know, in the US, I don’t think this is, you know, as big of a problem, although there are certainly issues here as well, but around the world, there’s, you know, all kinds of issues with these tools. So,
Rob McNealy
so do you think that going forward, especially with crypto, do you expect that there’s gonna be actual censorship of different types of cryptocurrencies now, and I’m not trying to argue with you, I’m trying to play devil’s advocate a little bit because, you know, I’m involved with a crypto project as well. And the one thing you hear about everything from all these kryptos essentially censorship resistance censorship resistance, the most important thing, blah, blah, blah. The question is, you don’t really hear about too many kryptos actually being censored. Yet, do you expect that that will change in the future?
Brad Kam – Unstoppable Domains
Well, I think the very nature of it is censorship resistant, like so for example, like Bitcoin and aetherium, do not require permission in order to get an account from anyone, they’re able to be sent anywhere to anyone. So they’ve already proven their censorship resistant use case in the market very early on. And this was very controversial. One of the early use cases of Bitcoin was sending money to WikiLeaks when they got shut off. And regardless of how you feel about them, the fact that there was no way for anyone to stop that was, in a sense of first the first time that somebody was ever able to publicly fundraise for a lot of money completely against the will of the United States and various other countries. And they had no way to stop because of its censorship resistance. So it’s really about like, how do the tools work? And I think you can do the same thing that you can do for currency with domain names. Right now. domain names On the sort of fundamental level, they get taken away, they can get taken away. And if you change the power structure, then you kind of change the entire ecosystem. So that’s that’s the idea is like cryptocurrency is like a safe, open source permissionless space to build tools on top of where everybody can, everybody can join in, everybody can be a part of it. And that’s part of the reason why I, it’s important on the fundamental layer. It’s not like every single person is getting censored, they’re not. But we all benefit from the open source, the open source tech because of this, like social, social, you know, social cooperation thing. We’re all working on the same stuff. We’re all building stuff that’s more and more interoperable. There’s innovation all over the world, like so. It’s not just about the people getting censored, although they matter. And I think in the on the website side, it’s a pretty big deal. Like there’s, you know, a law in Turkey that says that a read that a hosting service is not allowed to happen. Have the word gay on any website content automatically pre banned naked as well. You see a lot of this in particular, there’s been some pretty weird cases with startups using l y dot L y. And when the Islamic in Libya came, took over, they started taking down some websites, including porn websites and things like that. Your basic internet infrastructure should not have those kinds of random points of failure, where people can its problem is people, like people that you shouldn’t have anyone in charge of what’s okay to say. Applications can still create an experience where they, you know, remove the harshest or the most offensive voices if they choose, but it’s still a better internet for everybody. If I can then go choose a different browser. If I don’t like what they do, and I think that makes a lot of sense.
Rob McNealy
Do you feel that Going forward, as demand starts increasing that, that the speed to deliver these on, you know, unsensible website, do you think that’s going to improve over time? And you said, there’s gonna be more options? What options are there going to be for? You know, besides IPFS?
Brad Kam – Unstoppable Domains
Yeah, well, so there’s there are, you know, several in the works that are, you know, advancing very quickly. ipfs is a couple of years ahead. But there’s there’s several that are advancing very quickly. And I think the idea is, is that you’re going to want to have your content on maybe three to five, just a sort of like an extra, an extra safety layer. But in regards to kind of the speed and performance, it’s really about how many people are storing and sharing that website. And so that’s about, in part how popular the website is. And so I think right now, the only problem is, is is not so much the way the tools work, it’s that there aren’t enough popular websites yet. And those are coming And I think the tools are just getting Easy enough where people are starting non technical people are starting to build stuff all over the place. And that’s been kind of one of the new steps. That’s happened really just in 2020. I would say, even before now it wasn’t. And now we’ve got this thing with browsers. So Opera browser, which 80 million users on their Android app can now just type in a dark crypto domain, just like they would a.com. And that just happened today. That was kind of the big, big, decentralized web news for us today. So I think it’s really just that there aren’t enough. There aren’t enough websites yet. But the stuff the stuff actually works, you would just need a lot of people storing it in order to get really, really good censorship resistance and really good uptime.
Rob McNealy
So what do you see about protecting websites from denial of service attacks? does this affect that in any way or help with that at all?
Brad Kam – Unstoppable Domains
I yeah. Because essentially what happens is if you get a whole bunch of traffic, it as long as that well, so It doesn’t, it doesn’t automatically prevent malicious actors. But you can do things like say, I will only permission these wallets or wallets with these criteria to visit a website in the first place. So you can create like easy kind of locks on your website if you don’t want to, if you if you’re at risk of those types of things. Ultimately, I would just say that, in general, if you think about, like, what’s really happening if Amazon Web Services, you know, used to store essentially all the website data on their servers, and now all of a sudden, we allow anybody in the world who has extra storage space to offer it up to anybody in the world. We’re going to get a marketplace and it’s going to be a lot more efficient than what we’ve got over here. So I think it’s just that like this model of open source marketplace, you know, peer to peer marketplace for storage space, just I think it just makes the internet better and basically every way over the long term. You know, if we’re talking if we’re saying like, you know how performant is it over the next year, I would say, you know, it’s going to be a little, it’s going to be a little inconsistent, depending on geography, depending on the specific website, some websites are going to work far better than others, because they have more, they have more nodes sharing them. So you’re going to have these kinds of clunky things. So it’s kinda like 1990s level internet. But the point is, is that it works like it does work. We do have a decentralized web, that functions, it’s going to need all the tools and it’s not it’s going to need a lot of love before it, you know, it can really, you know, migrate over the previous, you know, the previous kind of internet infrastructure stuff. But it does work for the censorship resistant use cases. And it does work for daps you know, cryptocurrency applications that, you know, are trying to remove all the points of failure in their applications, but they still have the domain name problem, and they still have the website on Amazon Web Services problem. So it solves, you know, these these two key problems for them. And then we’ve also got the youtubers so the crypto YouTubers have you know been getting their videos taken down. And you just put up those videos on decentralized web and then no one can take them down. Now we’re going to need aggregators to make it easy for, you know, for everybody to find that stuff, YouTube’s great at the discovery part. So obviously we have some work to do. It’s not going to work tomorrow, but you can go ahead and put them there. Especially if YouTube takes him down. Definitely go put them up. And you can do new things like you can charge for them, you charge 25 cents for them. You could have a tip button in case you don’t want to charge but it’d be great if it’s easy when someone likes your video that they can just easily tip you crypto. There’s all kinds of new stuff you can do.
Rob McNealy
So are your unstoppable domains, would you are they compatible with things like NginX and CloudFlare
Brad Kam – Unstoppable Domains
CloudFlare has done a lot of has done a lot of things to integrate with Etherum and IPFS. So CloudFlare is is kind of very far along I would need to look a little closer at what engine x is doing. I just don’t have I don’t, I don’t actually have enough personal knowledge. They’re
Rob McNealy
very cool. So where would you say you are in your roadmap? What’s next for you? You got the opera integration done now, which is a huge thing. Where what’s the next big thing you guys are working on?
Brad Kam – Unstoppable Domains
Yeah. So we’ve got, you know, we’ve got our registries out, we’ve got crypto and dot zil. We’ve got over 200,000 domains registered. So they’ve been started. That process started about a year ago. So there’s domains that have been being being registered unclaimed ever since then. We have been mostly focused on the wallets so there’s like my ether wallet, trust wallet, my crypto coin Oh, me atomic, several others coming soon, where you can send money using the domains. There’s also a Chrome extension. So it’s a unstoppable Chrome extension. So if you prefer to use Chrome you can use it also works in brave and then opera. So that’s the that’s the that’s the native announcement of the first browser. The first major browser to ever support a non DNS domain name. Attention so far as we know because it’s pretty much been all DNS before this it’s not just about blockchain domain you know blockchain Domain Name System they’ve never supported anything that wasn’t you know just part of this this one kind of I can I can control DNS system now it’s all about making the tool is easier to build build websites. So that’s a that’s a big focus there’s templates like I mentioned for decentralized Wix there’s people at Cairo crypto you can easily launch your own decks there’s a bunch more stuff like that that are that are coming tools just to make it easy to build websites.
Rob McNealy
Very cool stuff. Bradley cams. Where can people find out more about your domains unstoppable?
Brad Kam – Unstoppable Domains
Well, you can do UnstoppableDomains.cam. or check us out on Twitter, UnstoppableWeb or Telegram UnstoppableDomains. There’s always a conversation going on in there.
Rob McNealy
Very good. Bradley, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I really enjoyed our conversation.
Brad Kam – Unstoppable Domains
Thanks a bunch.
Episode Links
Joe Vezzani – LunarCRUSH Transcript

Note: This transcript was automatically generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and therefore typos may be present.
Rob McNealy 0:01
Okay, today we’re talking to Jove a Zani. He is the CEO and founder of lunar crush, which is right now the app that I have the biggest crush on for the crypto world. I’m really, really excited to talk to him about that. So, welcome to the show. Joe, how are you today?
Joe Vezzani – Lunar Crush 0:18
I’m doing well. Rob, thank you so much for having me.
Rob McNealy 0:22
Well, I appreciate taking time. You know, as someone who’s been in the crypto space for a little while, I always like to see the people doing something different in the space. And the other thing that’s really interesting about what I what you’re doing here is that you kind of care about UI and UX, which seems to be the wall in the crypto sphere. So before we jump in, why don’t we just go and you know, let’s learn a little bit about you. How Who are you? How’d you get into this space?
Joe Vezzani – Lunar Crush 0:51
Yeah, for sure. You know, got started pretty similarly. I feel like to a lot of other people that I hear you You know, talk about crypto is, you know, at some point, you know, someone that you know, or, you know, you kind of just run across Bitcoin. And, you know, I was at the time it was, you know, probably like late 2014, early 2015, and my now co founder, john, as he just kind of came up to me and we were working together at the time, he’s like, hey, do you know what Bitcoin is? And I was like, I don’t know. And it was like, his eyes lit up, like he got to tell someone new and learned a little bit about Bitcoin. And, you know, for me, you know, kind of coming out of school with a finance degree, worked in technology and startups before it was kind of this intersection of finance and tech that I was just like, I need to be a part of this somehow. And then, you know, started looking a little bit more at everything else, and you start to kind of go down the ladder a little bit and you’re like, you know, at the time, it was just mostly just Bitcoin. That was some other stuff. But you start to figure out like, what’s this ethereal thing and Litecoin and you start to learn a little bit more and you’re like, Wow, there. There is a lot down this rabbit hole, and I need to learn more about it. And so, at that time, we were just kind of going back and forth. And you know, we were the people that everyone was like, you know, hey, what do I buy? What’s the next hot tip? And what do I do next? And, you know, just kind of got deeper and deeper from there.
Rob McNealy 2:17
Well, I think that’s a lot how a lot of us kind of get started with this. I actually haven’t been in crypto that long. And people always like how long you been in here? Like two years, two and a half years or like, well, how long is your old your project? Two years. So we kind of just like jumped right in. But one of the things that I kind of interesting is your app. And I have been like glued to this thing, like every day, like I used to go to like coin market cap and coin Gecko and keep hitting refresh and refresh. And I don’t even go there anymore. I go to lunar crush. So let’s talk about lunar crash. What is lunar crash and why am I personally so addicted to it?
Joe Vezzani – Lunar Crush 3:01
Well, first off, thank you, that’s a huge compliment. I appreciate that. And you know that, you know, the kind of the addictiveness a little bit is is the way we kind of design this and the way we think about, you know, experience and people coming onto our site and looking at everything is we’re very focused on that design and, and getting people to understand what’s happening very easily, even for people that aren’t into the crypto space yet, but are kind of, you know, like, we’d like to say crypto curious. And they’re starting to dive in, we wanted it to be simple. And inherently the market is our market in this space is very community driven. And a lot of these projects that, you know, especially in the all coin, they’re very, it’s kind of tribal, and people out there posting and they’re talking about what’s happening in the community. And, you know, we capture that, you know, and we’re looking at across the entire market, we’re looking at things like Twitter, Reddit, any sort of news URL that’s out there any link and we’re pulling all that together, and so your You’re really feeling what’s happening in real time when you’re when you’re on our site and you’re in your understanding, not just Bitcoin but everything else and what the community is saying at this exact moment. And so it’s a really amazing kind of feeling to get out there and really kind of see the heart and the pulse of the market. And I think it’s what people have kind of been waiting for it for a while.
Rob McNealy 4:21
Well, I agree with that. And not only do you have like, you know, normal, you know, statistics about and, you know, measurements about what a coin might be doing from a price perspective and things like that. But you’re pulling in all these measurements about in metrics about what the community is saying almost like sentiment and engagement, that kind of monitoring and And to me, that’s pretty fascinating. What what what made you think to do that, no one else is doing it that I’m seeing out there. So yeah, why go there?
Joe Vezzani – Lunar Crush 4:54
Well, you know, we look at when you look at kind of the stock markets, and you look at equities, and you Look at what drives value and the prices of these of these things. It’s it’s really earnings. You know, obviously there’s speculative, you know, you can look at Tesla and what’s happening right now. And, you know, as we record this February 4 2020, it’s kind of parabolic right now, and it’s moving. And that’s, that’s speculation, and it’s, it’s about the future growth of that company. And that’s what’s driving the value. And, but when you’re looking at the broader when we’re talking stock market, its earnings. I mean, it’s literally earnings beats over time is really what pushes these stocks up over time. And that’s why those big companies are so focused on that, where crypto is, is not like that. Its supply and demand driven. What is the social discourse that’s happening? Who’s talking about it? How are the communities being grown, it’s very different. And so you know, when we’re, we wanted to look at what the community is saying we wanted to see it in real time, and we wanted to put it, you know, over time, and you kind of see it on our site as more of a graphical time series representation and so you’re really seen it One place, you know, how is how did the, you know, the tehsils community do over the last two months? Is it growing? Is it shrinking? You know, when you’re looking at maybe some projects that are a little bit smaller that are up and coming, and you get a tip from a friend and you’re like, hey, check this project out, you know, you’re going to know real fast, whether or not that’s kind of a viable project? Or is it kind of the beginning or the end of it? By looking at our site?
Rob McNealy 6:24
So how did you come up with some of these algorithms are the best guests or did you benchmark against something? Because you got some interesting, you know, analysis that you have that, you know, these algorithms that are built into it? Where did that come from?
Joe Vezzani – Lunar Crush 6:38
Which ones are you talking about specifically?
Rob McNealy 6:42
I don’t have it up in front of me now. See, now you’re catching me off guard. I’m gonna have to like look it up. Like…
Joe Vezzani – Lunar Crush 6:48
Like, so we have a couple of proprietary metrics that we’ve designed. One’s called the galaxy score, and the other one’s called vault rank.
Rob McNealy 6:54
That’s it right there. See you called it that was the one I didn’t know the name of it. So yes, that’s The Galaxy score that was it was on the top of my, my, my tongue there.
Joe Vezzani – Lunar Crush 7:05
Yeah, we’ve got a very space themed over here. But so galaxy score I can start with first and, you know, we wanted to kind of create a metric and it’s it’s a real time metric and we’re looking at things that are coming in constantly we’re not, you know, we’re not Moody’s you know, or s&p out here and saying that, you know, it’s a by rating or, you know, it’s a, you know, from a B to A B plus, or whatever it is, and, you know, over the next couple of months, this is what’s going to happen, we, you know, crypto moves too quick for that. And so, with galaxy score, we’re looking at each individual project, and we’re looking at it’s a performance against itself over time. And so we’re looking at things like we’re doing some technical analysis and some price, you know, analysis on each project, but then we’re also incorporating that projects community and the social that has happened around that project and how quickly it’s happening. And so, galaxy score, you know, like, I like to say it’s kind of like coffee. More advanced traders only where, you know, that’s going to move pretty rapidly. And so we’ve got people like, you know, bot traders, and we’ve got, you know, professional traders and people that are using that to look in real time at what’s happening. And so it’s, you know, zero to 100 score and you know, 100 would be the best. And so it means that there’s a lot of kind of social that’s happening at that moment, along with Bryce. And then the other one is called alt rank. And so alt rank is looking at a project’s performance against the rest of the market. And so it’s ranking everything from a one to you know, I think, right now, we’ve got about 1700 that we’re looking at across the entire market. And so we’re pulling in and saying, hey, what is, you know, a theory of price versus something like Bitcoin over time? And is it beating that is it losing against that? And then what is the kind of the social that’s happening at the same time, and so when you kind of put all that in correlate it together, you really get this kind of cool understanding of the market and so at any given time, time if you’re looking at lunar crash and you go to our markets page, and you’re seeing things, you know, ranked one to 25 that means that something’s happening right now. Prices moving, socialist moving, things are happening, volume is high market volume is high. And it’s somewhere as a trader or someone that’s looking at the market, you should really be paying attention to that.
Rob McNealy 9:18
So I’m looking at the you know, I’m bias. I’m looking at the Tusk page on lunar crash. So my Galaxy score for our project went down since yesterday. It was in the 50s yesterday, which said neutral but now it’s down and it says bearish. So what did we do that went from neutral yesterday to bearish today on the galaxy’s score for task.
Joe Vezzani – Lunar Crush 9:38
I’m not looking at it right here. But, you know, my guess would be that, you know, if there was a decline in market volume, or if there was a decline in price, correlated with also some social volume that’s going down then, at least at this moment, you know, in the galaxy scores updating continuously, that it’s a little bit lower now. You know, if there’s some buys that come through at the Some social action that happens if things start to kind of move, that galaxy score is going to jump pretty quickly. And so, you know, a move from something like in the 40s to something in the 80s, per se is gonna, that should be a blip on the radar to say that something’s happening with with Tusk.
Rob McNealy 10:15
Gotcha. So and I know, we didn’t have any volume yesterday, because we’re still new, and we’re only on one exchange, and, but I’m just curious on how, you know, I’m looking at my own stuff. So, but are all drank here says we’re 864 out of 2046. So, it’s got a little trophy thing, what does that mean?
Joe Vezzani – Lunar Crush 10:33
So 864 I mean, you know, again, this is this is looking at test performance against Bitcoin. So if it’s underperforming against something like Bitcoin, and then also, you know, maybe social volume or social engagement is is lower than the alt rank is going to kind of rank there but, you know, hey, 864 to 2000 you know, you’re still better than than 50%. But, you know, if if test starts to outperform bit coin and there starts to be some social that’s happening in real time, then you would see that rank move up really quickly. And, you know, I just want to caveat that we also put we as also assign an alt rank to Bitcoin. And the way that you could kind of look at that, look at that is if Bitcoin is rallying and is the number one all coin, our alt rank and lunar garage, it means that you know, you you might want to be in Bitcoin right now, because there’s rally happening, things are moving.
Rob McNealy 11:27
So there’s another section that says about the task. It’s over on the right side where it’s about the Messari. The Messari section, sorry.
Joe Vezzani – Lunar Crush 11:39
Yep.
Rob McNealy 11:40
So with is that section, we don’t have anything there. How would I get stuff there?
Joe Vezzani – Lunar Crush 11:44
So we, you know, we’re focused at Luna crush on all the social and the real time data, and then we’re partnering and we utilize miscarries data for some of the more about section I think mizar does an amazing job of kind of aggregating kind of the you know, more long Form kind of project oriented data around the why and what’s happening. And so, you know, they we pull in some of their data to kind of showcase on our site, if people want to kind of dive more into the, you know, who are the some of the founders of the project, you know, what is the, you know, what’s the blockchain? Like? What’s the out of their algorithm? Like, how is it working? And so they’re, they’re kind of focused on that. And so we pull in the data from there to, to kind of showcase on our site because they do such a good job.
Rob McNealy 12:27
So we need to get on their radar, if we want that box filled. So it also says here that our social sentiment is 60% of 3.3%, then bullish, so that’s a good thing right? Under the alt right box.
Joe Vezzani – Lunar Crush 12:43
Social sentiment, you’re saying?
Rob McNealy 12:45
Yeah, that’s right under the alt rank box,
Joe Vezzani – Lunar Crush 12:48
Yep. Yep. So social sentiment, anything that is, you know, probably over 50%, we start to kind of categorize as more of a bullish and so we’re looking at some of the some of the data that’s out there, and You know, we’ve actually trained our own machine learning to look at, specifically crypto language out there in the web. And so, you know, when people talk about different projects in our space, you know, they, they speak about it differently, you know, when someone says, whether they’re right or wrong, that you know, monero is going to the moon. That’s a bullish sentiment. But, you know, a traditionally trained library is not going to pick that up. And so we’ve actually gone in and as the data comes in, we’re training it and we’re looking at it specifically and kind of hand tailoring all the data to understand, you know, what is the sentiment across some of this?
Rob McNealy 13:37
So it’s not just hashtags, you’re looking at the whole key words and different terms and how they’re used in conjunction with other maybe adjectives or things like that.
Joe Vezzani – Lunar Crush 13:47
Yeah, I mean, we’re looking at you know, any news that’s out there or any, any social that’s out there, and if there’s links that are posted within that, we’re kind of going in spidering that and looking at the different articles and trying to figure out, you know, was this was this meant to be Something that was a more positive or more as more of a negative occurrence.
Rob McNealy 14:05
So where do you see this would apply to other assets? Perhaps even like So you mentioned earlier with like Tesla, it seems like it’d be really interesting now to see some of the sentiment around Tesla, because everybody seems to be phone via phone going around it right now. Do you think this would apply in the same way to traditional assets like that?
Joe Vezzani – Lunar Crush 14:26
Man, I mean, the FOMO is so high in Tesla, I don’t think you even need ludicrous to identify the sentiment on that one. But yes, I mean, in in a short answer would be that, yes, absolutely. We can take in and pull in kind of traditional asset classes and look at it, our focus has, you know, we’re passionate about the crypto space and we want it to grow and we’re very focused on it. And so our, you know, our roadmap right now, at least for the foreseeable future is focused on cryptocurrency and we want to see this space grow and we want to see the you know, the people and the projects and the company’s growing So we’re completely focused on growing and, and maintain our space here.
Rob McNealy 15:05
So how are you guys funded? How did you guys? Are you bootstrapping this? Or did you get some VC money?
Joe Vezzani – Lunar Crush 15:11
We we originally bootstrapped this thing from the beginning. You know, we were, you know, like, like anyone else you want to build something from scratch and you want it, want it to be yours, and so we bootstrapped it. We did. In 2019. We joined a tech stars program, so I’m not sure if any of your listeners know but tech stars is, you know, one of the you know, best accelerator startup accelerator.
Rob McNealy 15:36
David Cohen.
Joe Vezzani – Lunar Crush 15:37
Yep, absolutely. Yeah. So tech stars. We joined the LA program here and did that from July to October. And then we have, you know, some other some other partnerships with some local venture capitalists here in in Los Angeles. One is Draper Goran home. So they just founded new venture firm called Jake record home, which is Tim Draper, along Goran and Joseph home here who are kind of local, well known kind of entrepreneurs in the blockchain space.
Rob McNealy 16:11
So what is your revenue model? How you gonna make money with this?
Joe Vezzani – Lunar Crush 16:16
Well, right now we’re just growing our business and getting as many people to use it as humanly possible. We’re focused on user growth and and getting this out to the community. Right now. It’s free to get into lunar crash login and kind of see what’s happening on there. We also have an API and and we’re very shortly going to be coming out with a real time API. So anyone that’s, you know, a traitor, anyone that’s a little bit more advanced quant funds that are out there. We’re excited to partner with them and see kind of how they want to utilize some of the data. And so we’re just trying to understand the marketplace right now and kind of be out there and see where we have the where we have the best fit.
Rob McNealy 16:55
I think that’s really good, the way you’re kind of pulling the data together in a very visual way. And I think with crypto, that’s been such a problem. And I think it’s, I think it’s part of the the fact that so much of crypto is just developer LED and which is, you know, a hardcore command line kind of community, right. And so I think a lot of these guys out there and what as far as the developers go, they just don’t really think of UI and graphical user interfaces of things that important sometimes, or at least they, you know, underscore or plug down play. You know how important that is. But the one thing that I like what you’re doing, because I’m a very visual person, but visual representations of data can present patterns, that in trends that you cannot see with just normal tablature type of data scenarios. And I think that’s why you’re going to be successful with this because you’re lightyears ahead on your UI UX, compared to anything else that I’m seeing in crypto right now. And I’m excited It about where this is going. Because to me, this is how you get to adoption in because you’re recognizing, at least it seems like you’re recognizing how the design element is important here.
Joe Vezzani – Lunar Crush 18:12
Appreciate that, yeah, we spend a lot of time and, you know, a lot of thought and strategy and, you know, just going through and trying to put ourselves in our users shoes. And, you know, we, you know, I think it’s like when we went to one of those kind of first block stack summits at like, the Computer History Museum a couple years ago, and, you know, we were looking around at some of the different projects and we just kind of said to ourselves, it was like, you know, we need to focus on design and we need to focus on usability. You know, and it’s such a, you know, a slight usability change in any industry can have a profound effect. You know, look at look at Uber, you know, taxis existed, and, you know, people didn’t take them and it was because they didn’t want to call didn’t know who to call, they didn’t want to pay, they didn’t have cash. And so they felt bad to get into a cab and not pay and they get yelled at. And, you know, the simple, you know, design change of, you know, now I just put my credit card in and it shows up and I can, it’s really cool, I see it coming on this little map. That’s a, that’s an extremely, you know, amazing design disruption. And it’s simple. And so I think with the crypto, it’s the same thing where, you know, you’ve got these, these blockchains, and you’ve got these projects out there. And, you know, I think coin base has done an amazing job, you know, kind of building that first kind of use use case out and that on ramp that she had on ramp especially in the US. And now it’s kind of opening the door to these other tools that are out there and getting people deeper. And now it’s not just a professional trader that’s going to be on here. It’s going to be people that are a little bit more novice that don’t want to be intimidated. And so if you’re not focused on you know, helping people understand very simply how some of this stuff works, then it’s Not gonna it’s not going to work. And, you know, even when we originally started, it was, you know, we had 40 different charts on a page. And it was, you know, infinite scroll, and it just kept going and going, and it wasn’t working. And it’s not until you kind of simplify things and make it make it easy it is to where people start actually using it and understanding.
Rob McNealy 20:19
Well, it’s kind of funny the way even web design has changed over the past, you know, five years, 10 years ago, you’re trying to keep everything above the fold. And then I don’t know what happened because I stopped doing web development A long time ago, and then all of a sudden, now everything’s infinite scroll. And I’m like, didn’t we try to keep everything above the fold for a reason where people didn’t have to scroll for usability. So I don’t know what changed there. But it seems to me that usability is still important and you want to make people have to work the least amount when they’re using your site to get around. And I think you do that and I really do like the fact that you spent so much time in design and I think that is going to make this very Very useful. And it can’t believe that, you know, some of the big players as far as the trackers go, how awful their UI czar or how primitive they are. From the design standpoint, considering how much some of these trackers are bringing in revenue, you think they could bring in some design folks and fix that, but maybe they need to bring you in to fix it for them. Joe, where can people find out more about your project?
Joe Vezzani – Lunar Crush 21:28
Linda crush calm is the easiest way. You can also find us on Twitter, we’re really active on Twitter. It’s just at Luna crush. We’re posting you know, all sorts of insights all day, we have a coin of the day that we post on each day. And that’s kind of our way to get people in and get people understanding the data for free. So that I would say go to Luna crush calm or just follow us at at Luna crush.
Rob McNealy 21:52
So thank you so much. And I do appreciate you coming on the show today. And I wish you all the luck in the future.
Joe Vezzani – Lunar Crush 21:58
And thank you my man. Appreciate it.
Episode Links
Paul McNeal – The Crypto Curator Transcript

Note: This transcript was automatically generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and therefore typos may be present.
Rob McNealy
Today I am talking to Paul McNeal. He is The Crypto Curator and an evangelist about Bitcoin. We’ve been connected on social media for some time now and I find his tweets are very interesting and sometimes even a little bit controversial. So I’d like to welcome the show. How are you today, Paul?
Paul McNeal -The Crypto Curator
I’m doing well. How are you?
Rob McNealy
Good. What’s going on today?
Paul McNeal -The Crypto Curator
Yeah, you know, it’s just another wonderful day in the world of Bitcoin.
Rob McNealy
Seems like every day something’s happening in Bitcoin and crypto in general. So for kind of jump into all that stuff. Tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you get into crypto
Paul McNeal -The Crypto Curator
Sure, um, well, I won’t go back too far but I served in the military for 10 years, served onboard submarines, three of them enjoyed that left that and then I went to work for the government as a government contractor did that for a little bit left that went and started a business with a friend of mine. That’s what got me into the world of entrepreneurship. built that with him for a little while, then made an exit out of that and then started selling it consulting and it was during IT consulting where I learned about Bitcoin Of course it was across Twitter believe it was trace Mayor that I came across and after hearing about it I was just fascinated and so I kept following kept following it and the more you follow it The deeper the down the rabbit hole you go. And so after that I was hooked.
Rob McNealy
So did you when you were working in submarines did you work with cryptography in any way?
Paul McNeal -The Crypto Curator
Actually, I did. I was a submarine radium and onboard three nuclear power subs and as a radium in our communications person we encrypted All of our communication so little different than the crypto most people here today in Bitcoin but as these little strips of pieces of paper that we would pull through devices that would encrypt the communication. And so I was familiar with encryption from that perspective when I was in the military.
Rob McNealy
So would you say the most interesting thing about crypto is for you personally?
Paul McNeal -The Crypto Curator
Yeah, the most interesting thing I found about it is and I had come across this actually didn’t realize it back in the day when PGP first came around and understanding how to do the PGP on email and things like that. But what I’ve come to find out and learn about and that I appreciate is that it allows us to have control over our information and our communication, which in today’s world, because it is so much of it is done online. There’s a need a deep need for that type of encryption privacy. So I’ve learned that you know, it allows me to take control back over my information.
Rob McNealy
And you know, you’ve been doing some interesting experiments with that recently yourself. And you and I talked about this a little bit before, you know, off the air. But you’ve recently done something very interesting that I can’t fathom how you’re doing it. So tell us a little bit about that.
Paul McNeal -The Crypto Curator
Yes. So it happened late, late last year, a couple months before the year ended, I got to paying attention to just my normal activities online and things and I was noticing that I was communicating more on messaging platforms than I was email, I would check in on emails and I have like three or four email accounts and I’ve logged in and I was delete, delete, delete, delete, and I was like, why am I even logging an email anymore? And then it dawned on me and it’s probably some back subliminal messaging I Alex machine ski is voices in my head. And he was talking about doing for money, what he did for voice Voice over IP money becoming money over IP, and then he used the term streaming money and then I got to thinking, wow, streaming communication. And I was like, why are we still using email when we could be using messaging. And so I’ve made the decision to stop using email. And then at 2020. I said, I don’t want to use email at all I really want to check in. I just want to use messaging. So I’ve been in that process right now.
Rob McNealy
So how’s it going so far?
Paul McNeal -The Crypto Curator
So far, there are bumps, I learned a big bump, and I found it interesting. And again, this is what really sets off the spidey senses for you can’t have a mobile device without an email. I tried deleting my Gmail off my Android phone and it went berserk and I was like, whoa, wait a minute. So I’m starting to find out now same thing goes for iPhone. I’m certain if you were to pull your Apple ID your which is your email address away from your phone. I think your phone would not allow you to do certain things. So I’m starting to find that that’s going to be a major hurdle in completely disconnecting those accounts, so I can’t complain. Disconnect mom to check them, but I can’t disconnect them for that reason.
Rob McNealy
Well, I can tell you the one Apple device that I currently still have when I don’t have that user ID and and it freaks out. So yeah, I think you’re right on that. There is a new phone supposedly coming out, I think pretty soon Have you heard of it called the Libra phone. And it’s a new, completely supposedly privacy oriented type of hardware device that’s supposed to be coming out on the market. And I’m actually very interested in some of that new technology where people are allowing people to, you know, create devices that are taking away that power back from you know, basically it’s Google and Apple at this point. And so it’s something I’m very interested in. And though I don’t understand how you can completely delete yourself from email because I would have a very difficult time with it. I can tell you I’ve recently gone through this purging process. process where I noticed just in the last six weeks or so I started paying attention to my ad my own, you know mailboxes in some of my accounts. And I had over 50,000 emails that I deleted out of my various email accounts. And now I’m going through this process where I’m unsubscribing to every single mailing list that I’m on and my inbox is away quiet or now, and not as annoying because I was getting I was getting about 100 different messages a day that weren’t spam. But they were updates from this mailing list to that mailing list, and it did start becoming overwhelming to me. And so I can understand where you’re coming from with this wanting to delete email altogether, because I swear if I think I could get rid of that I would.
Paul McNeal -The Crypto Curator
Yeah, I think a lot of people would have talked to a lot of people and they’ve told me the same thing, and I do you know, I’m I’m not trying to pretend like this is going to be an easy process because this is going to be difficult. Because I was talking to a friend of mine, he has a system that he uses emails and it follows emails, high retrieves information, his whole workflow is built around and I get it, right, mine is a little bit easier because I’m an independent guy work for myself, I don’t have to, and I don’t per se have clients. So I found that most people that I interact with, are open to interacting on these messaging platforms via email. So I found though a lot of people when I tell them not using email, and can you use one of the messaging platforms, most people have them already. So it’s not a big stretch for me to ask them to communicate via telegram or a messenger or, you know, whatever the platform is.
Rob McNealy
Have you found one particular messaging app that at least gives you more control over your privacy than say over something offered by Facebook or Google?
Paul McNeal -The Crypto Curator
Yeah, there’s three of them in particular, the fourth ones, you have to do a trick. So key based IO, which A lot of people, they check it out. I know it’s another platform, but it’s it’s a cross between like a slack, a telegram and a Venmo. That messaging app allows me to do text, voice or even video and I began to use that platform a lot. And that’s a blockchain based platform, completely decentralized. It does have a central authority that built the platform, but it is private and all the information is yours. signal is another great one. That one is actually endorsed by Edward Snowden. And that one doesn’t have any back doors to the NSA. It’s actually not based in the US is based in Sweden, I believe are Switzerland, sorry that Sweden, Switzerland. And then wire is another and then telegram and of course telegram is private has encryption, but you have to do a secret chat in order for it to be completely encrypted from NSA.
Rob McNealy
Well, I’m on multiple of the platforms that you just mentioned before and I am kind of looking at some of the other different platforms that I’m not using right now what I find the problem is, is that is not just me, if I move over, I got to take a whole lot of other people with me to get on one platform and, and you know, running, you know, or at least helping run now, a crypto project, you kind of have to be in the same place, you got to get kind of a critical mass of people and you gotta like, hey, drive them here and say, Hey, we’re all on five different platforms. Now you gotta sign up for all five of these platforms, it kind of gets a little unruly. So I’m not sure the best way at this point to like, deal with all of that. But we are kind of looking at different options that are a little more secure.
Paul McNeal -The Crypto Curator
I agree. And that is going to be one of the headaches as we move forward. And I’m wondering if someone’s going to build some type of a standard that allows you to have a unified platform that allows you to do and pull in all the other ones. I’m trying to think back. I remember back in the day with the web and when the web first started, people would build these platforms that you could plug several different things into one and eight pulls it all into one. So I don’t know if we’re going to see that with communication, but it is going to be an issue with some people been on so many different platforms.
Rob McNealy
Well, there was one called I think back in the day from the social media side of things called friendfeed. And what ultimately happened they got bought out and they kind of killed it. But one of the things that it was the point of it was that it was trying to consolidate all the feeds from the different social media accounts in one place. Because everybody’s got multiple footprints right? But what ultimately killed that I think that concept of these you know, social media aggregators is that all the platforms didn’t want to give API access the the platforms want people on their platform, they want to hold those eyeballs because their their revenue models are dependent on those eyeballs staying on their platforms. So in one thing and or one perspective, it’s a really great idea to maybe open those API’s up and allow people to, you know, be off your platform, but On the other hand, they don’t want to give up that power. So I think it’s interesting going forward where these things will end up panning out. You know, in social media, at least network effects are real thing. There’s all sorts of alternative meet, you know, there’s all sorts of alternative platforms out there for all the different social media platforms. But none of them are really getting any traction, just from the standpoint is that the eyeballs aren’t there? And what do you think about that? Where do you think the future is going to be with these different platforms and the way the social media world and tech world has treated privacy and free speech? issues like that?
Paul McNeal -The Crypto Curator
Yeah, you know, I definitely agree with you. That’s part of the challenge. Everybody wants access. Now, what I think could change that is if we do shift to platforms, and unfortunately I mentioned this earlier in the periscope, the idea on Twitter, free has really damaged us because things are free. We Use them. And we don’t realize free doesn’t mean free free means free for you to use, but you’re doing it at a price. And that price that you’re paying currently is much higher than it would be if you paid dollars for it. So unfortunately, I think these platforms will have to monetize by charging people to use them. And I think that’s going to help with some of the consolidation of which platforms people choose to use. But in addition to that, I think once we do that, then hopefully we can get strong enough encryption put in place that if you’re interacting with these platforms, those platforms really don’t care if you stay on their platform, because you’re either paying for it, but they’re really not getting access to any of your information. Anyway, the only reason people want you on their platform so they can monetize it, by your being free. But if it’s not free, and they’re paying and you’re paying to use it, it really doesn’t matter at that point, I’m assuming.
Rob McNealy
I think there’s going to be a tipping point probably in the next five years. About people wanting to either have more control over their data, their privacy, but I think there’s going to be more of a push, especially from social media content creators about getting bigger revenue shares. And I think that’s going to open up. I think it’s going to open up an opportunity, as the big tech giants keep basically cutting out and ostracizing and alienating certain communities on their platforms, and D monetizing people that will start putting pushing more and more people to other platforms. And I think there’s going to be a point where the tech industry in Silicon Valley basically makes itself irrelevant. If they keep going in the direction they’re going right now, what do you think?
Paul McNeal -The Crypto Curator
Yeah, exactly. And, and I think we’re going to see and I’m early on this, but I think that Facebook has done a good job at putting its tentacles in several areas, and it’s smart for them because that means that they have a better chance of surviving. Facebook, I’ve noticed I’m moving myself off of Facebook, I sent out messages to my entire network at about like 1400. Folks, most of those people I hadn’t really interacted with in a long time. And I told him I had several criteria for people that I would unfriend and get rid of people that have I hadn’t spoken to you in over a year, right. And that means literally haven’t spoken to you on the phone in person a message I like or something, then you were gone because it didn’t make any sense. And I kept whittling that down. Once I got down to the core, I sent them all a message says, Hey, listen, I’m going to stop using Facebook in 2020. But here’s how you can get in contact with me. Here’s my phone number. And I’ll be on these other platforms if you like to communicate. I think you’re going to see these large platforms like a Google like Facebook slowly dwindle down and usage because people will wake up hopefully more to privacy and that or they will have to try to try and shift their models and trying to shift that model from where they are now can be very hard to So it’s going to be interesting. I don’t have any definitive, but I know for myself and I know many others are slowly making that transition off of some of these platforms. And if that continues, it’ll be a slow progression, but I think they’ll have to change.
Rob McNealy
Yeah, I don’t think it’s going to be abrupt. Just because the networking effect and the inertia that they have, it’s going to take time. What I do think, though, is that when they get they’re so locked into having that power, that centralized control, and I view it a lot like government, these big massive corporations, once they go down a path, they won’t stop even though they know what they’re doing isn’t going to last they can see the handwriting on the wall, but because of their inertia, and they’re kind of blinded almost by it, that they won’t adapt. And and I believe over time, it will be the downfall of a lot of those large mega corporations and it won’t be overnight. It They’ll be, you know, they’ll lose a different community here in another community there. And, and, and they’ll just kind of kind of dwindled down to my space at some point. You know, it’s just I don’t think it’s going to be abrupt. It but I do think it’s going to happen. And I think it’s like this. You know, you’ve seen recently, you know, jack Dorsey from Twitter talking about how he wants to create, you know, some kind of standard, and he wants to pick and choose who’s on this little, you know, basically, committee project. And I tell people look, if he wanted to make Twitter for a bastion of free space or free speech, he would do it in a minute. He could he has the power to do that. Now, the problem is, he has no incentive to do it. And in fact, I don’t believe that people give up power willingly, typically. And I think for things like Twitter or some of these other platforms for them to adapt, they have to give up power. But I think ultimately, if they are not willing to give up our they’re not going to survive.
Paul McNeal -The Crypto Curator
Correct, and I think jack Dorsey is a great example. Because what he’s currently doing and if he is successful, and I think he’s forward thinking enough that he created his square crypto group, and that they want to work on Bitcoin, and he’s trying to move into the decentralized realm, he will definitely be ahead of the pack. And I think we’re going to see the rest of these big behemoths have to make the same type of a shift. It is definitely going to be tricky for them to do so. And what you said is true. Are people willing to give up power? That’s something that spans across everything, and I agree with you, people are not willing to give up power. But I think that, unfortunately, the more they try to hold on to that power, the more they’re going to lose it. The way you keep power is that you got to give it away. If you don’t give it away, you will lose it.
Rob McNealy
Yeah, I think that’s going to be an issue and it’ll be interesting to see how it pans out and it’ll be also in Interesting to see how the crypto space pans out long term. You know, I’m not a maximalist on any project. I’m a maximalist on my project, from the standpoint that I really believe in what I’m working on. But I think it’s going to be interesting how things shift out in crypto over the next couple of years. I think that the big players in crypto, there’s a good shot that a lot of the big players currently are going to lose their standing over the next couple of years because I think how people are going to evaluate crypto products is going to change dramatically.
Paul McNeal -The Crypto Curator
Yeah, you know, that’s interesting. I haven’t done it. I probably should have done it before this call but I think it was maybe last year middle of last year. I was curious, I said, I want to know and I’m sure you might have heard this website is called wayback machine. You go back in time. So I did that with coin market cap and I was shocked to find four assets remain at the top. That’s 10 years for assets remain the top some of these projects I agree with Few they won’t but I’m seeing that even through time and that’s years upon years upon years they remain. bitcoins remain number one a theorem for the most part remains number two repple remains number three there was one point where ripple flipped a theorem, but it was briefly and then number four of course now it’s be cash or at the time and be cash wasn’t in existence I forget, which was like the main one that stayed number four, but the Litecoin
Rob McNealy
Hmm, I think it was like Litecoin.
Paul McNeal -The Crypto Curator
I thank you. Thank you. You’re absolutely right. It was like when Litecoin has now shifted because of tether and because of the cash those two supplanted like coin into like coins. But But yeah, I mean, it’s so some of these other projects. And even if we look at the top 10 and I might even do that after this call. Go back and look at the top 10 take a screenshot and see where those assets are. I tell somebody if the project’s have a pretty solid team, if they have a good development of the actual product. And they’ve started to get adoption, I think those projects will remain. But if you have zero adoption, your product is not really even built out and your team is feres, you’re not going to stay.
Rob McNealy
I think going forward, what we’re going to find is the kryptos that actually have customers. And what I mean by customers is not what most people mean when they say users. I’m a heretic when it comes to crypto because I don’t believe that investors are users. And most of the people in the big project say, well, we have this many users and I’m like, No, you don’t you have investors, you have speculators. And guess what, right now? No, kryptos actually have people really in any large amounts, people using their crypto for buying and selling goods or services, any of them not Bitcoin, Litecoin none of them. And to me, whoever cracks that nut, whoever gets it, their crypto actually being used for buying and selling goods and services will unleash on massive change in how crypto products are evaluated. And I believe when that happens, the kryptos that actually have customers are the ones are going to be winning.
Paul McNeal -The Crypto Curator
I agree. I can’t I can’t. I was like you said, No, no mass adoption. But there are several projects where people do use them here in the US, probably not much around the world in developing countries. I think they do dash has got a very user user user base down in Venezuela. I think they’ve done some projects there. I know the Iota project is working. And I know some big auto manufacturers are beginning to use Iota with their cars. And I think we’re going to see the automobile industry become one of the leading adopters of digital assets because they’re going to use it for car to car payment. And that’s being built out and I think we’re going to start to see some adoption in that going forward. So but I agree with you, until you get actual customers using it paying with it. You can forget it. It’s not
Rob McNealy
Yeah, yeah, that’s what’s going to happen and and i look at projects not even because of their market cap, though most people look at market cap is the number one indicator of how successful project is. And unfortunately, market cap can change very rapidly, because it’s all based on emotion. It’s not being based on fundamentals. And I think things are going to change a lot in the next two years in crypto. That’s what I take. So that’s my take. And I think what you’re going to see is a lot of these crypto products, we still that we’re part of that Ico kind of nonsense from two years ago, there’s still a lot of those Ico tokens that are dead that are still on the top 100 coin market cap. And you start going down the list of these projects, there’s still a lot of dead tokens, essentially, are dead projects still all over the trackers that still have large market caps, but they’re completely dead. And I think what’s going to end up happening is at some point, someone’s going to have to stick a fork in and say it’s done, get it off the list. And that’s going to happened at some point. But I think the projects that customers that are actually using buying and selling goods or services are going to, they’re going to shatter and skyrocket when people start going, Hey, you know what? having actual people using this for its intended purpose is kind of a big deal and kind of important, why we look at that. And I, you know, I was looking down the list of some big projects recently, I do a lot of research and other projects. Because I want to know, what makes them tick. Why are they considered popular when they don’t even have customers? And it’s interesting, if you go look at almost every major project out there, they don’t have anybody in a way on the team that can get out there project and they’re not even structured to sales, marketing or business development. None of them. There’s pretty much none of you look at any of the team pages on the top 100 Top 200 a queen market cap or queen Gecko and look at the team pages for the projects and show me how many people are on that team. have sales, marketing, business development, not even authority, but that’s their, that’s their task. And they don’t have it. So tell me this, I don’t believe as as an entrepreneur and someone who’s done a lot of sales and business development marketing, I don’t believe you’re going to get mass adoption of any crypto unless you have a marketing business development strategy to put your crypto in the hands of end users.
Paul McNeal -The Crypto Curator
Yep. Again, I would I would agree with you the only thing that I think that might change that might alter that is the geopolitical area and the economy, the global economy. I think those two things if things heat up and we saw a little bit of it with Bitcoin, but again, it’s still speculation. It’s not anything about adoption. But I think that if there comes a point to where privacy is really again, being hampered and people are looking for a way out and they’re looking for escape out, they will adopt these techniques. Jeez to help them and I watched to their watched one interview and listen to another one. The CEO of beam with Jeffrey from uptrend and bad crypto with fluffy pony. And again, they’re talking about privacy in these privacy coins. Is there a true application for them other than nefarious reasons? And right now today, like I said, No, but if you let things blow up on the geopolitical stage, or you let the economy begin to really tank hard, that I think we might see some adoption.
Rob McNealy
Well, I would say that privacy is a very big deal. And it will be a very big deal when people start realizing that it’s easy to figure out how much someone how much money someone has, or if you’re a retailer how much money your competitor and your competitor has. So I absolutely think that privacy coins will be an issue and they’re not an issue now, because no one’s actually using them. And or using crypto and I would say the same thing goes for taxes. I think the Number one objective retailers will have when it comes to accepting crypto will be the tax implications and the accounting nightmare associated with the currently under US law. However, you don’t hear that objection really being brought up very much because no one’s accepting crypto. Yet it’s not happening. And I can tell you, I used to own brick and mortar store, I’ve set up my own point of sale. And I can tell you, I understand the accounting and the tax nightmare of dealing with it. And I can tell you, that will be one of the biggest objectives or objections that retailers have, but you don’t hear that complaint out there because people aren’t using crypto yet. And and I know that’s a heretic, or heretical statement that I’m making, but it’s a fact. And I think once the retailer’s start getting wind of understanding how much of a pain in the ass it is, they’re not going to want to use it unless crypto solves a really, really big problem. For them, and for most retailers, right now crypto does not solve a problem for them, it actually gives them a lot of problems.
Paul McNeal -The Crypto Curator
Right? Now what will change the game, it’ll be interesting to see will be backed, right. So backed has a very robust roadmap that they are going to implement the first they’ve already implemented, which was the warehousing of digital assets. The next one, of course, there’s the options and the futures and the ETF features. And then after that, I think we will see them begin to shift their attention toward commerce, and that’s where the Starbucks and Microsoft their partnerships are going to be key. And what are they working on that they’re going to roll out? And I told people listen back was under the radar for 15 months. No one brings a word of that project. No one knew they were working on no one had been out of the blue. They came out and they said, we’re working on a platform that’s going to do XYZ and everyone was caught off guard by the people. been working on this for months, probably over a year now, on this Starbucks, Microsoft, whatever platform they’re going to roll out, we will hear an announcement come out soon, indicating that they’re going to roll out a actual product that will accept digital assets at Starbucks, and that I think will be a game changer.
Rob McNealy
I think it will, I think it will be too I think it’s going to be someone who’s actually engaging with retailers and create a situation or product or, you know, present crypto in a way to those retailers that it solves a problem for them, or they think they can make more money from it to overcome the problems associated with implementing crypto right now. And there’s very few projects out there that do that the way we structured today, we structured tossed around that principle to understand that if you’re going to onboard people for mass adoption, you’re going to have to have a sales component marketing component and a customer service component to help bring these people onto the platform. And you got to present crypto to the people where crypto solves a big problem for them. That’s the only place you’re going to get adoption. I don’t think it’s an accident or coincidence that mass adoption hasn’t happened. And the The fact is most crypto products are run by developers that hate sales, marketing, business development. And so to me, if your project is instruction to do those activities and embracing doing those activities, you’re not going to be successful even if your market cap has a lot of investors. I think that’s going to change over the next few years is that once some crypto star King actual customers, whatever those projects are going to quickly upset the apple cart when it comes to market cap.
Paul McNeal -The Crypto Curator
Yep. And you know, the news that they add, I found it interesting and and I think it was in Lw on the value that Daniel Whitmore that posted a tweet about Kelly lafleur. I find it very interesting. She’s now in Congress, and she’s now going to be head of the committee that actually deals with the CFTC and he Asked if that was a conflict of interest. Is that good for the crypto space or all of the above? I find it very interesting that they’ve allowed her Nick Kelly lafleur was the CEO of backed, and she gave up that title and gave it over to and I forgot the gentleman’s name that that replaced her. I know Adam White is going to become, I think President or CEO. But Adam white came from Coinbase. But the reality is, you’re putting some of that stature at the head of the committee that oversees the CFTC. Come on, seriously. I don’t know. I smell something cooking. I don’t know what’s cooking, but something’s cooking.
Rob McNealy
Yeah, I think it’s going to be interesting in the United States, especially with the regulatory stuff that’s coming out. The good thing is where we’re going to be falling out in the as far as I can tell, by definition and the way we launch we’re got we’re going to be a commodity we’re not actually going to be considered and regulated as a crypto under what the CFTC and the SEC are coming up with four definitions and they’re defining the city. Based on basically how they were launched if something security or commodity or what have you. So it’ll it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out from a regulatory perspective. Right now, though, I think the IRS is a much bigger issue than the securities exchange commission when it comes to crypto. And again, that goes back to I don’t believe people are complaining about the head because it’s not creating the problem for most people, because most retailers don’t accept crypto yet. But I do believe that the IRS rules are a worse fit for digital assets than the SEC rules are.
Paul McNeal -The Crypto Curator
I agree, and that’s why the token taxonomy act is moving to Congress right now. And I think that once that gets moved to Congress, if it gets approved, and I think it has a good shot at getting approved, because I think there’s members of Congress that have an interest to make sure it gets approved, because they’re part of it as well. That has a de minimis rule that says that, hey, listen, you can spend six 700 bucks of crypto a day and you don’t have to report that as taxes. You can use it as Currency when that happens, like I actually had an interview last week, and I told them the exact same thing. They were like, why don’t you use crypto in your daily life? I’m like, because I’m not gonna pay the taxes on spending crypto makes no sense. But the moment that rule comes out and I can now use it, heck, I’ll use crypto to spend for everything. I’ll pay utilities with it, how buy things in the store with that I’ll do everything with it, because I can without getting taxed. But right now, you’re not going to tax me. You know, capital gains tax on crypto, my use on purposes doesn’t make sense.
Rob McNealy
Absolutely. And I think that’s something needs to be addressed. And what bothers me a little bit is that the organization’s these crypto projects that did illegal Icos and got a slap on the wrist, the ones that have the tremendous amount of money in the bank, right now, are not hiring the lobbyists to make this happen.
Paul McNeal -The Crypto Curator
Right.
Rob McNealy
And that doesn’t make any sense to me if they really believe in the crypto future and they really believe that these things will happen. Do they can spend a few minutes bucks in get every vote, they need to pass some legislation, like the token taxonomy act, but you’re not seeing that. And that, to me is surprising, because those projects, the ones that have a lot to benefit, you know, if people, you know, can get the regulations change there, it will absolutely help adoption. But if you go look at even the biggest projects, they don’t have sales and marketing people, you know, go look at a theorem, who’s their sales and marketing people, they don’t have them. So, you know, they’re not really thinking about it. But the problem is, they’re not talking to customers. And ultimately, if you talk to customers like I do, where I go talk to retailers, because I view the retailer’s as our customer, and you go talk to those retailers about their pain points and the things that they are interested in or the things that they’re not interested in, you have a very clear picture of what you need to do with crypto to make it so those retailers will adopt it. And I don’t see any of that happening from the big major products out there like a theory of EOS or blockstream or any of those organizations.
Paul McNeal -The Crypto Curator
Yeah, the only organization I think that might be putting the lobbying arm in place is the digital Chamber of Commerce. I think they published something maybe middle of last year, maybe early last year talking about putting in a lobbying arm and I don’t know if Queen center teamed them with them and coin base or whatever. But I know for a fact i think i think they did. I’ll look that up. But I think that the digital Chamber of Commerce has put in place a lobbying arm to work with Congress on this, but I’m not. I don’t know that for certain I think they’re, well.
Rob McNealy
I hope they do and I hope they deal with the IRS thing more so than the SEC thing. Because if you look at so far, all the people that are talking about crypto and the regulations, everything stemmed around securities offerings, rather than taxing and to me the taxing issues more important and far more important, and I’m, I’m not a securities attorney, but I’ve looked at a lot of securities laws and a lot of rules and regulations. And to me, the security last mostly fit, to be honest. And that’s why we launched the way we did. We didn’t Do an Ico we didn’t do a token sale. We never sold tokens or coins. We didn’t collect personal information when when people went to our faucets and got our supply, and we did so so we weren’t a security. And you know what, it only took me a couple weeks of reading up on things and talking to a few attorneys to figure out that the utility token thing was nonsense. And so, but the IRS, that’s a bigger problem, because I know a lot about taxes too, because I do a lot of my own bookkeeping and stuff. And so yeah, I think the tax thing is the much bigger problem. And I can tell you this, I’m reading right now. taxation and I don’t even understand how the miners deal with it, you know, we just set up block producers for task, and it gets it pays out, like every day a little bit, you know, and it’s like, oh, I don’t even want to deal with the taxes. I’m dealing with this because it’s a big thing. It’s a big pain and and then you get into retailers, and then trying to figure out all that kind of stuff with how the retailers have to track this stuff. That’s a big pain too. And so if you We’re not going and trying to hold the hand of a retailer and you want them to use your project. I just don’t see a doubt. I don’t see any desire for retailers to go through all the headache, because there’s no really no upside for, because for the most part, there’s not that many people that want to pay in crypto at this point, either.
Paul McNeal -The Crypto Curator
No, there’s not. And that is chicken with chicken in the egg situation. You know, I think if there are more places that they would and it was an tax on it, then you would be there. But at the same time, I think that if you know, if the users really there, then the retailers would be motivated to do it and the users not there. So chicken take
Rob McNealy
that. Absolutely. So what do you think’s going to happen by the end of 2020? What would be your big predictions for the industry going forward this year?
Paul McNeal -The Crypto Curator
Yeah, couple of them. So of course price and everybody’s, you know, wondering what’s going to happen with price I think this having coming up in April of May. It’s going to have an impact and I think that impact will be like the two previous Things that we had, I think we will see a surge in the price of digital assets across the board. I think there will be an old season that will happen. And I think that that’s going to also push up. And I think bitcoins dominance, of course, is approaching 70%. But I think that we will see that equalize out. And I think it will lose dominance to some of the old coins moving up as this old season happens. So direct prices on it, who knows? I mean, I’ve seen now I’ll tell you because I collect all the news. And I look at all the news all the time, both technical analysis, price analysis, I think most people who are fair minded trying to look at this right, you know, getting back to all time highs 20 K, by the end of the year, reasonable. You know, maybe we’ll get to 4050 K, maybe Maybe, maybe not. Anything above that out of the out of the question, if you asked me. When you look at the technology itself, blockchain technology, I think you’re going to see a lot of development happen with a lot of the projects and the ones that I’m seeing again in the news all the time, they’re always there. And I even said, I know it will shoot me for your brain and stuff first. But Tron I’m telling you, it’s in the news every day. It’s not a day goes by my brief goes out that runs and I mentioned, tron chain link cardano I Oda. These projects are Ethereum is constantly changing. There was an article the other day about a theorem. Some of your largest enterprises are using a theorem. And actually one of them was talking about using the public chain instead of a private chain for a project. And so that goes again to show that I think it’s going to be like the internet and the internet. When they first came out. Everyone was all we’ve got to be having an intranet, and eventually that just dispelled and everybody was on the internet. I think the same things that happened with the public private within the Digital Asset space, I think you’re going to see a lot of people try to do these private chains, but eventually going to find out it’s nothing more than a glorified database. Less Move it all to the public chain, where there’s real security and yada, yada. Now you will need something like z k snarks for changing privacy and things like that. But I think that’s going to get solved. So projects will continue to develop, I think, to innovate and move toward the end of 2020. I think we’re going to be surprised at which projects take off.
Rob McNealy
Very cool. Paul, where can people find out more about you since they can’t email you?
Paul McNeal -The Crypto Curator
Well, my website, the crypto curator is the easiest way. And once you’re on the crypto curator, you have links to all the places whether I’m on Twitter or telegram, or YouTube or action on YouTube, key base, things like that. But yeah, if they get to my website, they can contact me all over the place.
Rob McNealy
Paul, thank you so much for coming on the show D I’ve enjoyed our chat.
Paul McNeal -The Crypto Curator
Hey, thanks, Rob. Thanks for having me on.