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Brad Michelson – Crypto Marketing & eToro Transcript

July 10, 2020 robmcnealy Crypto, Social Media, Transcripts 0:00 Comments Off on Brad Michelson – Crypto Marketing & eToro Transcript

Brad Michelson - Crypto Marketing & eToro

Note: This transcript was automatically generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and therefore typos may be present.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Hey folks Rob McNealy here. And today we’re talking to Brad Michelson. He is a crypto marketing guru based in New York. And today we’re going to learn all about the ins and outs of marketing in the crypto space. And I think you see this a lot with a lot of developer led projects out there that marketing seems to be the thing that developers hate a lot. But I want to get a Brad’s kind of input and his take on things. So Brad, welcome to the show. How are you today?

Brad Michelson – eToro
Doing great. Thanks for having me.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Well, I appreciate you taking the time to come on and talk with us. Marketing is something that it’s near and dear to my heart. And I think that in really for there to be crypto mass adoption, I think marketing, at least from the crypto side of things really needs to ramp up his game. And I want to kind of explore that a little bit with you today if possible, but but before we dive into kind of all this, you know, marketing stuff. Let’s talk a little bit about you. What’s your background and how did you get into crypto marketing?

Brad Michelson – eToro
So I originally started out in e commerce marketing, so I was at an agency for a few years and learn the ins and outs of paid media over there. ended up leaving as the director of strategy at the agency went in house to an e commerce brand and didn’t have the best time and then I when I was looking for a job from there, I found my first crypto company so I jumped into that. Two feet forward, which was pretty fun. I was at helped launch dex which was really cool and obviously a big learning experience. It was after, you know, the Ico boom, it to a degree like the the place I had worked had already completed their Ico so it was fully funded and they’re building out the platform. And it was also right around the time when Facebook and all the social platforms started banning crypto ads. So that’s one of the biggest differentiators between traditional marketing and crypto marketing is that you don’t have a lot of the same levers as you might elsewhere.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So what do you do about that? You say your crypto project, how do you get your brand out there? How do you market a crypto project effectively?

Brad Michelson – eToro
You know, a lot of it relies on social media and it’s really community building and not in the way that Ico projects would create a telegram group and just like get as many people in there as possible and use it as as like a pumping mechanism. It’s not really like that at all, at least anymore. It’s a lot more reliant on word of mouth and just general community sentiment, being able to go on Twitter, having your brand post something, you know, you’re not necessarily being like, outrageous, but you can just post it in an Oculus. bullish tweet and you’ll get hundreds of likes out of it just because of the goodwill that you’ve, you’ve grown in the community. So a lot of it is just sharing and echoing the sentiment of your target audience. But on top of that, you still have to make gestures that deer, the brands to the community. So with some people it’s being you know, a really approachable brand with very easy to understand. messaging that maybe is like a really easy onboarding to the ecosystem, for example, lolly they do a fantastic job with that. Other times It’s, you know, something like what we do at etoro. Or we’ll work with, you know, a famous celebrity or something like that. And we’ll do a commercial with them. And that way we’re, you know, bringing in more average consumers into the the ecosystem. But I think every brand has their own different approach. And it’s sort of the key really is just finding what makes the most sense for the people that want to use your product and expanding that as much as you can.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So I was around when the Ico craze was going nuts. We started two and a half years ago with Tosca, and it was interesting because we could never even get an ad, you know, placed with any of the social media platforms out there primarily, you know, Facebook and stuff. But that seems to still be kind of the problem. And in the last two and a half years, I mean, the Ico world is largely dead, at least in the United States right now. The the scam pump and dump groups are mostly You know, quiet at least right now, though they’ll probably return when you know, the next Bull Run kind of jumps up. So the question I would have with you is, why is there such a still a blanket, you know, community standards problem with crypto related stuff on the major platforms? Why are they still banning it? The space is so much different and more mature now than it was a two and a half years ago. You got any insight of my why that might be?

Brad Michelson – eToro
I think it’s a risk thing. I think that that there were a bunch of lawsuits around the time of the Ico boom, both to the ad platforms and you know, not necessarily just Facebook and Twitter, but predominantly them, as well as other platforms where people are saying, I saw this advertisement on your platform. I assumed it was legit. And it turns out it was a huge scam. I think that everyone by now has noticed the the increase in attention on not just content across these social platforms, but the you know, whether they’re offensive or whatever else or they’re predatory, there’s rules on tons and tons of different industries. And obviously, finances is a big part of that. And that extends into things like predatory loans. And payday lenders can’t necessarily advertise on Facebook or I think even Google, you can’t advertise those products anymore. So unfortunately, crypto is still in one of those categories. But we have seen a little bit of movement that hopefully over the next little while this will start loosening up a bit. There have been rumors for the last little while.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Yeah, it was interesting. I saw today on my social media that there was a couple social media content people that said they got locked out of their Twitter accounts, which I thought that was interesting. Then and then most of the stuff they post is not what I would call spammy or shilling by any stretch of the imagination. than anything, and it seems like it’s pretty alive and well. And I’ve seen this where a URL will, you know, be banned from, you know, Facebook or Instagram and there’s like, zero, you can’t even appeal. There’s not even a process. There’s not a button to push. And so it’s interesting. I, you know, there’s a lot of rumors out there, especially among the conspiracy theorists that, you know, they’re they’re trying to, you know, head off any competition, you know, at least on the Facebook side would like a Libra out there, for instance. So they don’t like the competition from other crypto projects. I mean, do you think there’s any merit to something like that? It seems it seems a little out there for me, but I was just wondering if you’ve heard anything along those lines.

Brad Michelson – eToro
I really doubt it. You know, Libra, especially at that time was so far away from even launching, and it’s even far away now from launching, and it’s just not really, it’s not really also what that business models competing with. So I just don’t think that they’re related personally.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So over the last last couple years, it’s been interesting, you know, watching crypto marketing from the inside as a project. You know, we, you know, there’s so many stories that I’ve heard about at least experienced myself, where during the Ico boom, you know, just to get an interview on a podcast like this might cost $10,000 or more depending on what it is. Is that changing? Now is that Yeah, easier,

Brad Michelson – eToro
way easier. I don’t think I’ve seen a podcast that charges to interview in a while now, which is a really good change. You know, that it was extremely hard to get on, you know, any of those big YouTube channels or, or whatever it was in 2017. And then it moved into podcasts a couple years later. Obviously, the space for sponsoring all these shows has expanded significantly. There’s a ton of money that goes into that. And, you know, I’ve been sponsoring podcasts and influencers for a few years now and I just think it’s going more legit. There was a time where it was like wild west amateurism, and it’s finally matured into like a legit marketing marketplace kind of for sponsorships.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
You know, it’s really kind of funny because when we started Originally, I couldn’t get on an interview. Because we didn’t do an Ico we had no cash to spend, you know, lots of money to get on, though, actually, it’s kind of funny, because one of the reasons I started this podcast, because I said, I’m not gonna charge and I never have I’ve never even taken a sponsor. I don’t do this to monetize. I do this because I genuinely like the industry. And I like to talk to cool and smart people that are doing cool things because I learned from people like you coming on the show. So I always thought it was funny because this whole podcast was a response to that. And originally, when I started this, I didn’t really want to do this. But I do like talking to really cool people. And so it’s just interesting, you know, kind of seeing it, but When I’m trying to get interviewed, I’m seeing it. It’s a lot different now than it was two and a half years ago. And I think that’s a good thing for the industry that the advertising the marketing piece is starting to become more formal, I guess, and a little more legitimate and honest. And I think that’s good.

Brad Michelson – eToro
I think there’s a reason for that, too. I think that with a lot of crypto companies, like when I started at my first crypto company, most of the opportunities that were available were companies, Ico companies that were gonna pay you in their tokens. And this was before the Icos. So they were like pre mining tokens to give their employees and in the hopes that the token will pump at the Ico and you’ll get paid off by that, but then we’re going to pay you otherwise. Now, you it’s you’re going to be really hard pressed to find that that’s not really you’re not going to really find that anywhere. A lot of crypto companies now are at least reasonably well funded. So They can pay you normal salaries, some more than others. You know, these things come with benefits. And there’s HR along with it. And these are real companies as opposed to in that 2017 2018 range where it was very bootstrapped, and like semi real company and people were really leaning into the whole decentralized company thing, which I don’t know necessarily if it materialized in the way that they originally presented it. But the way that it’s become now is his own unique thing, which is really exciting. But it’s nice to see that it’s formalized in that way and with those budgets for the businesses come budgets to to hire legit professionals. So you know, most of the people at most of the projects you’re aware of the big ones at least, they didn’t come from crypto, a lot of those people aren’t crypto native. Even my team there’s half of us probably aren’t crypto people I’m lucky enough to have been in since 2012 is when I discovered it. So there’s, you know, this whole back catalogue of knowledge that I can pass down to my team and to other teams. But it’s a double edged sword, right? Because people come in with traditional marketing experience or traditional finance experience, whatever it is, and then they got to catch up on the the finer points, and especially in marketing, you know, the audience is so sensitive to certain signals or values, that there aren’t a lot of opportunities to screw up and figure it out afterwards. So at first, it’s a bit of a learning curve, but it ends up being huge for the the attracting talent in our industry in the long run.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So you said earlier and I know this to be true as well is that there’s a lot you know, the the tools that you have for growing are a lot more limited, because, you know, you just can’t go say, Oh, we need 10,000 users. To download our app that’s, you know, between five and 10 bucks a user, whatever it is, just go buy the ads and boom, you know, we build it out. You know, that’s not really something you can do with crypto very easily. So when you have an when you’re hiring, you know, marketing professionals and you bring them on your own team that, you know, maybe aren’t, you know, crypto natives, but they come from a more traditional marketing background. Have you found that they see that as a challenge? Or do you think they get more frustrated that they don’t have as many tools in their toolbox?

Brad Michelson – eToro
Depends on their background, if if they had like a pure paid marketing background like I did when I was younger, then it would be a little head spinning because you’re used to having a fashion brand that you just run ads on Instagram on. And you can test you know, a million different iterations of copy and creatives. And there’s a whole universe within within that realm of marketing, but it really forces you outside your comfort zone. It’s not that paid media disappears necessarily, right. There’s ad networks. outside of just Google and Facebook, and the obvious people, you know, buy sell ads is one that you see relatively often. There’s a few others. And you can also do, you know, native placements within a bunch of different websites, like you can buy native placements on Yahoo or, you know, CNBC or TechCrunch, even. But they don’t necessarily come with the performance metrics, or the performance history that Google or Facebook might. So someone in that scenario, initially, in theory would be a little shocked. And there’s a bit of a learning curve, but you’d hope that that person would be able to, you know, dive in and come up with some new best practices for themselves.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So that’d be things like, you know, programmatic and those kind of ad buys that you’re talking about there that which are not the normal Google AdWords kind of thing, but, you know, dedicated ad networks that are already placed on specific websites.

Brad Michelson – eToro
Right, exactly. And then the The whole universe of app advertising, which is a whole other thing,

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
That’s interesting, tell me about that.

Brad Michelson – eToro
So in the same way that there are display ad networks on whatever website you’re on, there are also those really annoying ads that show up in apps, like when you’re playing like a puzzle game or something and you lose, and then you have to watch an ad for like 15 seconds, those kind of ad ad networks where they’re gonna get placed in games or news, news apps, or whatever it else, whatever else it is. And they’re not necessarily run through Google. So they might have less strict rules in order to attract people like crypto companies or other smaller industries that are not as easily accessible through Google.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So what have you found to be the most effective, you know, tool out there for getting out to as far as normal advertising? Would it be the app advertising? Would it be the programmatic? Which one Have you found has the best, which one of those has the best audience that are receptive to the crypto messaging?

Brad Michelson – eToro
It really depends on what your objective is and what kind of marketing you’re doing. So if it’s brand marketing or performance at etoro, we’re lucky enough to actually be able to run ads on Facebook and Twitter in the main platforms, because globally were more widely recognized as a broker. So that’s what most people know us for overseas, but in the US for crypto only right now. So we’re able to take advantage of that relationship with those publishers. Outside of that, you know, it’s it’s the typical stuff, when you’re marketing to a niche industry like we are. It’s thinking about where are these people most often? So you go to Twitter, okay, well, we can’t necessarily run ads on Twitter. You know, you can post organically as much as you can. But what’s next so what’s next is podcasts, advertising or YouTube advertising. natively within the videos with the publishers. But there’s also the influencer sponsorships. And you’re seeing that get more and more popular now, whether they’re through networks, like what block works group is doing or whether the brand reaches out individually to individual influencers, which is my preference and what we do. So that’s one of the easiest and arguably most affordable ways to get wider reach within your niche.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So say, a community project. Now how what would you say is the best thing for a community project that may not have that Ico backing that big bankroll that we had with a lot of these products? You know, two, three years ago? It was interesting. I mean, you saw people throw money, like really big amounts of money at ridiculousness. As far as marketing goes, I saw and it seems like ROI to me has always been an important thing. I was just you know, curious. What would you recommend? For like, you know, these community projects that don’t have that, how would you deal with those kind of projects instead of something that was really had a big bankroll? And, you know, maybe VC funding, for example? Sure.

Brad Michelson – eToro
Well, I think that you got to think about it in some degree, similar to a brand selling a product. So who is where is your product for sale? Okay, so we’re thinking about crypto exchanges, right? So, you might want to spend a lot of your time getting more familiar with the marketing and PR teams of those exchanges so that you have better like co branding opportunities and relationships with those people. You can have them add your brand and your token into more marketing materials and therefore, expose the token brand to more people that way. And, you know, marketing is really just a game of eyeballs at the end of the day, whether it’s consciously or subconsciously The more people see things, the more they’re aware of a brand, the more opportunity there is for them to purchase or participate within the brand. So that’s probably a place that I would start with first because, you know, when people see people shilling, like non top 10 assets now, people just assume it’s some sort of, whether it’s a bot network or whatever else it is. I see this in my replies all the time. But if you can integrate organically with a provider of your services, it makes it a lot easier for you.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So one of the things that I’ve seen and it was interesting, as someone whose US based your US based is that crypto is like a global thing from day one. You know, and so the exchanges are global, the projects are global. The, the basis for many of these projects are global in nature. How do deal with that as a project, like for instance, marketing. You know, a lot of times, you know, US base industry might be just mostly focused on that, you know, the the US, for instance. But how do you deal with the global niss and the messaging globally for any kind of crypto project?

Brad Michelson – eToro
This is a challenge that I think most crypto companies discovered really early on and when you look at when we keep going in 2017 2018, but it really was a craze, you know, people are not for people that are relatively new in this space. It’s not that people are playing up what it was like during the the boom, it was as exaggerated as it sounds when people talk about it. So there are all these projects that you know, started out us base or started out UK base and then suddenly they had to hire like a community team in multiple regions of Asia because suddenly that catches on and one of their exchanges over there. And then all of a sudden, maybe a market dries up. And they have to ditch those and only really focus on two regions. I recently had a call with someone who’s a part of a fairly large defy project. And they were saying that over the last year, they’ve cut teams in certain regions of the world. And they’re really just focusing in the US and a couple other places right now, because that’s where their customers are at the moment. And really, that’s what it comes down to. It’s where the majority of your users in the case of a token project, where’s the majority of your volume? And what can you do with those people to increase the brand awareness or your volume if that’s what your KPI Your goal is there?

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Yeah, it’s been interesting as a project right, and you know, I’m not here to shill #TUSC all day, you know, I love #TUSC but it’s interesting because it’s really we’re US based, ee’re not an IC O, so we’re not a legal security. So we’re one of probably a couple dozen projects that eventually be able to legally be traded on us exchanges. The problem is it’s really hard to get on a US exchange. So most of the exchanges we’re on at least right now are in Asia. I mean, there’s just seems like we’re the most of them are right now. But it’s interesting having to go through and negotiate with all these different in that and it’s different by which country in Asia to their the way they interact, the way they negotiate, or in some cases don’t negotiate. And it’s an interesting kind of trying to navigate that, like, I mean, I got a background in business. I got an MBA for whatever that’s worth these days, but, you know, but it’s like International Business one on one day one. Yep. And it’s like, I got to go read a book on you know, negotiating in Asia and because I just never had to do that before. So it’s been pretty fascinating. And it’s actually been really fun too, though, because I’ve met some amazing people. Around the world through my project. And so I think that’s what I really like about doing this. But it’s also sometimes really frustrating is, you know, not understanding some of the, you know, just the more cultural nuances just because there’s so many you have to be worried about something. And you know, it’s interesting, because in a typical American, right, you just kind of think all Asians are the same. Well, they’re not they’re very, very culturally very different from one another. And so, only time ago I did I used to work for a Japanese country company. And back when I was a corporate Guy 20 years ago, and you know, I get how the Japanese work because I work for a Japanese company I worked for an ally Japanese were but they think and act and do business very differently than say people in China do. It’s just totally night and day and, And to me, that’s been very fascinating. But is for you guys even like with etoro? Are you essentially then hiring different marketing people or ground teams in each country that you think you’re going to have a big presence in?

Brad Michelson – eToro
So basically, the way it works with us is that we have regional offices. So, for example, I work in the US office, I run the US marketing team. But there’s a completely different marketing team in the UK, for we have one region that’s most of Europe that there’s one team working on. There is a team in China that only works on China, etc. So we’re a little bit luckier because we’re at the scale now where we can have all these regional teams. But it’s not that easy for everyone else. So it’s kind of a little bit about prioritization based on business goals.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So do you guys all coordinate though, all the different marketing teams around the world to so you still have a similar message or really staying on the consistent? You know, focus when you’re doing the marketing, or is it is it then just regionalised? Like, is there one central brand messaging and then it’s just, you know, regionalised in a certain way, that makes more sense for those places?

Brad Michelson – eToro
Yes, kinda. So basically, there’s like a central brand to etoro That’s managed globally, or at HQ, we just call it globally. There’s like a brand book basically with the way we like to talk about things, the colors, we use the gradient styles that we do in our graphics and things like that. But every region is a little bit different, right? So the coffee is going to differ. You know, the way that the UK talks about crypto would be different than we do. There are things that we’re allowed to do that they’re not allowed to do, for example, we like to throw incentives to customers to have them come in, but in the UK, they’re not allowed to do that legally. So there’s a lot of differences and they really leave it up to us to make it our own, which is a really fun part of the job.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Well, and your experience, at least, you know, coming from the more traditional side of marketing to the crypto, what would you see what are some of the the horror stories that you’ve seen out there in the marketing of crypto?

Brad Michelson – eToro
Yeah, I think a lot of it goes back back to how there was a lot of like amateurism at the beginning and it wasn’t like, purposeful negligence or anything like that. It was that most of the people, most of the personalities were just people, right? They, they had never taken a sponsorship before, they had never done any of these things. So sometimes you’d like sign a deal with someone for six months. And then two weeks later, they’re like, sorry, I decided I don’t want to do this with you anymore. I signed with your competition. So stuff like that is really annoying, but it happens from time to time. And, you know, you’re not going to burn a bridge. So it’s whatever it is. Other times it’s, you know, you if you think back, you can probably think of at least a couple companies that partnered with a project that ended up being a scam of some sort, right, like whether it’s listing a token or whatever it is. So I think that a lot of the differences between then and now is just maturity and growing into like a respectable industry.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So what would you say your best advice would be to new companies say, VC backed project, what would be the best piece of advice you could give them in the beginning?

Brad Michelson – eToro
Invest in your brand and your brand’s voice. So that applies to social media, the way you talk about things, the way you present the values of the company. Because at the end of the day, the way that our community works is that if you don’t follow the simple rules of, of the the basic tenants of centralized currencies and whatever way you want to interpret those things, digital currencies, you’re really never going to take off, right? Because you’re not going to be able to capture the attention of the influencers, who might share your content and bring more attention to your brand. It’s a lot more of an uphill battle. You don’t need necessarily to invest in a paid media. A team or a paid media agency, which is kind of backwards to a lot of people’s experiences. So having a strong brand team, which includes a strong UX asset on board, and then making a product that’s easy to use, I think we’re finally approaching the days of no longer having to deal with apps or daps, or platforms that you need to read like a manual for because the first time there were a lot of exchanges where you kind of had to read steps on a forum or whatever to complete a purchase or a trade. And thankfully, those days are now appeared to be behind us.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Thank goodness.

Brad Michelson – eToro
Yeah, right.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So Brad, where can people find out about more about you?

Brad Michelson – eToro
You can find me on Twitter @BradMichelson.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Well, I appreciate you coming on the show today. And anytime you got something interesting, you want to talk about, you’re more than welcome to come back. Sounds great. appreciate you having me. Thank you. I am Rob McNealy, this is the Rob McNealy program. Check us out on the web at Rob McNealy calm and we will catch you next time.

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Scott Cunningham – Crypto & Things Transcript

June 29, 2020 robmcnealy Crypto, Social Media, Transcripts 0:00 Comments Off on Scott Cunningham – Crypto & Things Transcript

Scott Cunningham - Crypto & Things

Note: This transcript was automatically generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and therefore typos may be present.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Now, welcome to the program. Hey folks, Rob McNealy here and today I am excited. I’m talking to Scott Cunningham. He is the social media influencer host of the crypto things podcast. He’s got a huge following all over the internet. He talks a lot about a lot of different crypto stuff, a lot of the business stuff. So I’d like to welcome to the show. Scott, how are you today?

Scott Cunningham
I’m doing great. Thank you so much for having me on.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
I appreciate you coming on. I’ve enjoyed speaking to you in the past and I think our audience will gain a lot of valuable knowledge hearing about you or from you. So before we get started, kind of can you give a little bit of background about how you got into the crypto And how you got into publishing about crypto stuff.

Scott Cunningham
Yeah, absolutely. So I unfortunately got in just before the big crash in at the end of 2017. I invested a bunch, I was just getting into it. And and then the big crash happened. So I realized I wasn’t the greatest that investing. But I was curious to see what other ways blockchain could be used. And as a social media marketer, I thought, you know, how could this be? How could this work for social media, so not long after of, you know, looking around for a while I found steam. And that was kind of the only platform at the time. So I started posting on there figuring what you know what it was all about. And then I realized there was a lack of educational material on like, how to use it, and just like teaching people about the actual different platforms. So from there, I started doing tutorials I started just like learning A lot more. And then maybe about six months after that I started to expand and look for other platforms. And since then I’ve just spent a lot of time exploring new platforms, doing reviews, and interviewing different people from those companies and organizations.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So of all the different platforms that you’ve kind of been looking at, you mentioned that you started off on the social media marketing side. How are the crypto related publishing platforms different than the traditional older school kind of social media publishing platforms?

Scott Cunningham
Yeah, so there is a range I would say of like, how centralized how decentralized, how much are they actually using the blockchain and posting on the blockchain? So there’s definitely a spectrum. So for example, real quick publish yo x is somewhat centralized in that they have like moderators, and they’re not posting to the blockchain, but they are crypto monetize where You can earn cryptocurrency from the platform, not so. So there’s a there’s a big discrepancy where people think that you have to give other people crypto on these platforms where most of the time you’re actually earning it from the platform and you don’t have to rely on like donations from other people. And, and publish Oh x is really good for that. And then if we look at, you know, on the other side of things like something like hive or library, where all the content exists on the blockchain, and it’s completely decentralized, and so, so that’s kind of like the two sides of the spectrum. And, you know, there’s many in between but the the big difference between most blockchain platforms is the sort of values that go into why they were created, and a lot of that is transparency, open source, free speech. As I mentioned before, decentralized Which is just taking a look getting some of the control away from the platforms and dispersing more of the control. And the way that the platform is used amongst all of the people. So that, like, for example, again, hive and steam, don’t have moderators, a lot of the moderation is done by the community. So that’s another example of decentralization. And kind of the big thing is that, I mean, another thing is censorship to that’s one of the biggest motivations right now why people are switching over to new platforms, because they are very free speech. I mean, I will say this, right? Not every blockchain platform is, you know, free speech focus. And it’s not like they’re always going to be all of these things. But that’s generally why a lot of them are created, and a lot of them do follow that, you know, those values. The rule is not, you know, there obviously are exceptions to the rule. But but that’s kind of the The main reason why a lot of these platforms exist and, and what makes them extremely different from legacy platforms and and then aside from that monetization, it’s very, very challenging for people to monetize on regular platforms. I’ve been posting on YouTube for almost three years, and I haven’t made anything I still can’t even start to monetize yet. And if we look at a platform like library, for example, the very first day as a viewer or a creator, you could start earning from the very first day. So I think there is there’s a lot of people who are empowered by that. And when you see that you can start earning from day one, you actually have value that you can extract and provide and actually get, like both sides get the value. That’s the best part, right? If you’re watching or creating, you’re going to earn something and you kind of get that value back for your own time that you’ve invested and the attendance That you’ve put to those platforms.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So you’d say there’s like kind of two categories of interest. One would be the censorship that a lot of these legacy platforms are obviously exerting over the content from the publishers. But the other side is the monetization side, which cryptocurrency seems to make that a lot easier. Let’s back up a little bit. Why are the legacy platforms doing those two things? Do you have any insights on the monetization piece or the censorship piece?

Scott Cunningham
Yeah, so I mean, I mean, quite simply, we can we could say with monetization, they want more money, right? So if advertisers are advertising on your content, regardless, if you have higher restrictions to actually be an advertiser, like to have those advertisements and get paid from them, then YouTube is going to keep more of the money at the end of the day. The second reason is, YouTube has become like, I’m just going to use YouTube usually as an example, because it’s most well known for censorship. But they they want. They’re beholden to their advertisers. So if advertisers say, you know, we don’t want our videos showing up on this or on this, they continually keep making those changes, and they make the allowed spectrum of content narrower and narrower. Every single year, just in the past year, we saw changes with commercial viability where essentially YouTube said, if we deem that your channel is not commercially viable, which almost any channel could be said to be that if you’re talking about something that they don’t want you to talk about, or you’re not even able to monetize yet, like myself, technically, I’m not commercially viable. So they could terminate my channel at any time just under those grounds. And then in January, we saw the changes with the compact which essentially made it so that You can’t make video content that is directed towards children. And it was further advertising. It was all around their advertising. But the consequences of that are all of the younger youtubers can’t make money anymore because obviously their their audience is is other young people as well. So people doing gaming videos, kids who do reviews, there’s like five year olds who do reviews of toys, and they had big channels, because obviously they’re doing it with their, their parents are their family. But not all of those are being demonetised child celebrities can’t make money anymore. Lots of things have changed. And what we’ve seen because of that, is a lot of content has aged up on YouTube. So people who previously made content for kids are now making more adult content and and it’s very, very weird. The the range of what is allowed, right because YouTube’s basically saying with these changes that we want you to make your content more adult because if it could be directed to a younger audience, then it might not be allowed to be monetized. So now everyone is like, introducing like, like trying to make their stuff more adult casually swearing more and stuff like that. But then on the other side, you might hit the point of not being commercially viable because you’re too adult. So they keep making that that spectrum more and more challenging to fit within. And, and when they do, you know, strikes or terminate channels. It’s very, you don’t really have much time to react and it’s kind of just like it’s done. And you can try to email with them, but usually, not a lot happens there. So we saw a lot of that happen with the crypto purge, but luckily, a lot of them, a lot of the channels and things were restored. But you know, there’s a lot of people who still have like two strikes now and They’re really concerned that they might get kicked off at any time from like YouTube.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
You know, I don’t like to go down necessarily like the conspiracy theorist route and you know, as well as I do that there’s a lot of people in this space that automatically go down to like the it’s a big conspiracy. And I’m not saying that conspiracies don’t exist, right. But I don’t necessarily believe there is diabolical as people want them to believe they are. But it definitely seems to me that I look at these the censorship and the D monetization. It’s almost like a typical lifestyle or lifecycle of like a large corporation, right? The bigger these you know, these players get, the more rigid they become the more antiquated, the lower the slower they move, the slower they adapt, and ultimately, it opens up opportunities for startups. And you know, because they’ve created like this vacuum now I have a friend of mine that runs Do you are you familiar with Utah Gun Exchange or UGETube.com?

Scott Cunningham
No I’m not.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
It’s a it’s a it’s a gun related video streaming site I’m friends with the owner of it. And we have a lot of conversations about all this kind of stuff because he’s a big believer in free speech and and things and and it’s interesting to me it’s at it’s it’s like this is creating these openings now for these startups that even three years ago you couldn’t consider it there was no chance to these big channels would even consider you know, these big YouTubers or what have you wouldn’t consider moving platforms because they had a really good thing going three years ago. I myself also I can’t monetize on YouTube at all. It just doesn’t even make sense. And I’ve had my YouTube channel for like a decade. And you know, I’m just for all the same reasons you’re struggling with. They’re just wanting to consider it. Whereas platforms like library you know, like Day one, you can start making money. And and I think ultimately that’s going to drive a big chunk of the market to these new platforms. And I wonder if the corporations understand that’s what they’re going through. This is like a pretty common like, lifecycle problem that a lot of big companies have you think they worried about it? Do you think they understand this is happening? Or do you think they’re just so blinded by their own little missions that they’re not even paying attention?

Scott Cunningham
Yeah, I mean, here’s the thing, like, I think they know, but then it comes down to, okay, how much of our money would we really be willing or our revenue or income? How much of that would we be willing to then sacrifice and put into, you know, making a cryptocurrency or, or even just making monetization easier again, how much would they really be willing to cut? And do they think in the long run that that will work? I mean, from our side, we think No, we think they’re going to go out of business because of this, but they might look at it like, okay, like these other platforms have a million users, 2 million users, this isn’t a problem. This isn’t a problem. That’s probably what like blockbuster was thinking at at the beginning. But you know, as they get further and further down the rabbit hole, or or, you know, too far into wherever they’re going, I think they’re going to maybe notice in hindsight, but I don’t know if it’ll be too late. By that time. You know, an interesting conspiracy theory that I thought, like, I find it interesting is that YouTube was trying to get rid of all the crypto youtubers so that they could then come out with YouTube coin or something like that. And then it’d be no one who would be critically able to like, analyze it or have an opinion on it. I thought that was pretty funny and interesting if that did happen. But yeah, I mean, the problem is then they get to this point where it’s like It just doesn’t seem it’s not even in there. I don’t even think they’re looking at blockchain. I don’t think there’s a lot of people in there who understand it or value it. And, you know, even if people from YouTube or twitch decide to make a blockchain while they already have a, for example, like I don’t want to knock a specific blockchain on your podcast, but I’ll say this, a co founder from YouTube and a co founder from twitch left and made a new blockchain, but there’s a lot of problems with it that are similar to the problems with YouTube. So I don’t think if they did make a cryptocurrency or blockchain, that it would actually be what people are looking for. And I think it would still be just as centralized, you know, all the same issues that they’re having, you know, they would still censor and they wouldn’t pay the cryptocurrency to specific people based on you know, political views or whatever it might be. I think they would still have all of these same problems. So they wouldn’t be able to effectively implement the blockchain or cryptocurrency in the way that other platforms are doing in the way that would make sense. Because they would be kind of skirting all the values and the reasons to even have it where they could just continue doing monetization in a database. And maybe that’s what they’re thinking now, but I’m not totally sure, obviously.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Yeah, it’s pretty interesting. Like, Gab is another social media platform that forked a couple of their platforms. And they kind of cater more to the kind of alt right kind of world. And for those that are not all right, but on Gab, I’m not trying to December from under the bus. But it’s interesting, though, that the founder of Gab is also very, and one hand he’s very pro free speech. But on the other hand, he’s got his own very strange look at different things and how he wants to have people on this platform which is kind of funny.

Scott Cunningham
When you get into like the the Gab and anti porn kind of debacle.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
It’s just like really? You know, you can talk about all the Jews and the Zionists and all the other stuff and but but porns No, no, it’s like, Man people got priorities issues. But that’s I do.

Scott Cunningham
Yeah, yeah, no, sir I do have I do have an interesting opinion on on on that because I do fully respect free speech, but I don’t know if I would consider pornography free speech and, you know, I’m no I totally understand the argument from both sides though. But the way that I would look at it, or the way that I’ve sort of approached this is free speech is anything that you can say or do in a public square that is legal Can you have sex or be nude and do all that kind of stuff in a public square? I’m not sure could you legally put a pornographic in image on a town bulletin board? I don’t think so. You know that that’s the way that I look at it. And I think it makes sense sort of what he’s doing. But he’s making a religious argument. That’s the problem. I think it was his like premise. That was the problem. He wasn’t saying, Oh, I don’t actually think this is free speech. So I don’t think this is like a problem for social media. He was saying, This is like, immoral or so like, I get that. I think that’s that’s kind of the issue that he went about it. But my personal view, is that like, I would say that it’s not necessarily the same thing, but I can understand why people would feel that it is. And I fully respect to the free speech argument that all speech is is free speech.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Oh, absolutely. And I’m not giving an opinion one way or the other on it. I just think it’s kind of ironic, but the but the whole need I think it’s there’s a little bit of hypocrisy when you form a whole network. That’s supposed to be anti censorship. Then you have censorship, you know, for whatever reason, you know, and I think that’s that’s the interesting part of this. There’s a big spectrum out there, I guess, with some of the stuff what people are willing to tolerate and what they want don’t want with these different platforms. I have to say that, you know, even with the big social media outlets out there, like Facebook and the Twitter’s of the world, you know, it’s interesting, like they have a real issue with crypto. And I understand, you know, two and a half years ago, when there was so many, arguably illegal Icos and there were so many scams, I can understand why you may not want that on your platform as far as advertising, right, I can see the argument but things have changed a lot. The whole market has matured a lot. There’s a lot more clarity, even you know, from a year ago, there’s a lot more clarity in the market right now than there was you know, a couple years ago, but it’s interesting, like there’s no rhyme or Reason, or it seems like there’s a lot of arbitrary kind of decision making on what’s good and what’s bad when it comes to these platforms. So for instance, on Facebook, not too long ago, I posted something to a regular URL. It was an update for a project for a crypto project. It wasn’t spam, it wasn’t selling anything. It was just a straight up announcement. And somebody in one of the groups post, you know, obviously, they reported it for whatever reason. And now that URL to that update, like the whole domain is completely banned from both Instagram and Facebook. And there’s no way to appeal. There’s there’s no way to email anybody to appeal it. It just says this violates the our code or community standards, and that’s it, you can’t even respond. And it’s like, that’s devastating. That could be devastating economically to a lot of different projects, a lot of different things. And so it’s like, I think that’s where a lot of people get frustrated is that they don’t know what the rules were. Are Yeah, there’s Yeah, the guidance is just so generic and so arbitrary. And you got some, you know, sensor in some room in some warehouse somewhere going, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. And and you don’t have any control over it. And I’m not a big fan of, you know, making these platforms, you know, utilities, you know, there’s a lot of call for that, right? Where they want to make it so the government can regulate it. And, you know, individuals don’t have, you know, control over their businesses anymore. But on the other end, I think from a customer service standpoint, I think they’re gonna hurt themselves long term. And I do think that’s where these other publishing platforms are going to thrive.

Scott Cunningham
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And to that point, minds.com if you ever used the URL in any way, even to the point where I had a YouTube video that said mines.com in the title that I couldn’t post to Facebook. So if and this was for a good year and a half, I believe, where if you tried to post anything to Facebook, it would say, this is a I can’t remember exactly what it said. But it said like you need to type in a CAPTCHA for this to actually post. And then if anyone would tried to share it or do anything comment, you had to type in a CAPTCHA type in a CAPTCHA. So no one’s doing that. And, and even if you did, I got it was to the point where I would send myself sometimes I would send myself a message on Facebook just so I can get it on my phone. I send myself a message to one of my own posts on mines. And then I look at my phone and it’s like message removed from your messages for violating the guidelines. And I’m like, I can’t even send myself a private message that includes a mines URL, but you know, now they just allow it. So for all I know, one person reported it a year ago. That’s all it took for a full year of completely blocking out this, this one site. And, yeah, it’s crazy. It really just seems like on legacy platforms. It’s not about the rules anymore. It’s about who’s offended. How many reports are there on that thing? Because a lot of times, it’s like, Where’s the actual violation? It’s like, Well, a lot of people were upset about this and it’s like, okay, and I reviewed the community guidelines on Facebook about like a year ago. And I remember there was this huge outcry when Facebook changed part of their community guidelines to say something along the lines of if someone is determined to be I can’t remember exactly what it was but it was just like a something individual maybe like a dangerous or or something. But but it was by the news, not by like law or anything like that. They would excuse any kind of like illegal thing on Facebook so like if if someone was claimed to be such and such people on Facebook were allowed to give death threats and all this stuff that is otherwise illegal, but they were accepted for you know all this stuff and I think it was actually around the time of the Covington kids and I think that’s why cuz there was a lot of celebrities saying things like openly calling further death like like very popular blue check verified million follower Twitter users were saying things like put them all back into school and burn the whole school down and those tweets were allowed to stay whereas tweets that say things like I don’t know. Like Laura Loomer, I think was the one who said but but is he a man or is she a man though or something like that? But are you a man though it was something about gender and and her whole count was like deleted instantly where someone can make open death threats, and then they get their stuff can stay up. So it’s very bias and it’s very, it’s very ad hoc, there’s no real baseline of rules or standards that people can refer to. And that’s why a lot of people want these new solutions because the rules are more clear cut, or it’s kind of just like open free speech, everyone kind of free for all because either of those are better than at any point you can have all of your progress in all of your money investment, everything taken away, because I’m sure those people who have tons of followers have probably done ads on Twitter. If you’ve done ads on Facebook, you know, people have invested money into these on top of, you know, years and years of time. And then that could all just be taken away. Really like just just like that and and there’s like barely any appeal process or anything to try to get that back. So yeah, it’s a it’s it’s pretty crazy what they’re doing online. Legacy platforms.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
You know, it seems to me like, there’s just a lot of political virtue signaling coming from these corporations. And I know it’s kind of controversial, but the gun issue, right, like there’s a big chain called Dick’s Sporting Goods down here in the States. And they pulled all their guns out of the stores, you know, and they lost like their quarterly filings last year have been like they’ve lost hundreds of millions of dollars. And it’s interesting to me is that I tell people, I really missed the days when I didn’t know the politics of the companies that I bought things from. Like, I like that, you know, because I just want good service. Like if I want to buy something, give me good service, but it seems like in the last couple of years, and I think it’s probably in the last three years, especially but really the last two years is that it seems like there’s all these like left leaning companies that I didn’t know they’re left leaning until recently have just come out of the woodwork to like start basically, I hate the But virtue signaling they’re, you know, they’re like all of them. It’s like the gun you know? It’s like sales force comm fired all their gun dealers Shopify the shopping cart sell software fired all the gun related kind of dealers off their site I mean I don’t understand why like a sales you know CRM tool company cares if a gun related sporting goods company uses their software or not like that to me is just insane and you know the the business guy and he’s, you know starts asking questions like is this good for shareholders kind of thing but I also look at it from the business standpoint that there’s opportunities now because of that and I just don’t understand like, you know, you hear with jack right with Twitter everybody in the crypto space loves jack for some reason and I don’t know why. Because of cash app but but you look at how jack treats krypto on Twitter, you know, in Twitter ads and things like that. And it’s like he is not a friend of decentralization at all. You know, and in fact, if you look at most of these legacy platforms, decentralization destroys them, in many respects, it kills their business models. So it’s gonna be interesting to see long term, how this plays out. Do you think that they’ll shift gears back to being, you know, with the advent of this, all these additional platforms and competition? Do you think that’ll push them back toward being a little more objective? Or do you think they’re just gonna ride this to the bottom?

Scott Cunningham
I, I’m 99% sure. I’m not sure but I’m 99% betting on the fact that they’re going to ride this to the bottom. I don’t think they’re going to pull back. A large reason of why they’ve done a lot of that Like massive changes is to appeal to Chinese advertisers. And I only think that’s going to be more and more evident. So I don’t think that they’re going to, it wouldn’t be beneficial for them to turn back now, because they’ve already cut off so many people, and they’re going to continue doing that. They’re basically just like trading one audience for another audience. But because the other audience is bigger, they’re happy to do that, because that just means more money. And, and that’s all there. That’s all they’re really going off of now. So I think naturally, there’ll be a massive opening for all these new platforms to fill the void of that, that they’re that they’re creating, by doing all these things. And, you know, it’s it’s challenging for them to turn around and kind of be like, Okay, nevermind, we’ll cut off all these advertisers. And then we’ll just completely switch back to what we were doing before. Because there’s so many people who have a sour taste in their mouth, where they’re like, Yeah, but are you really going to stay this way, like for all we know, this is just for now. And a lot of people still want those new things anyways. And it’s, you still wouldn’t know if in six months from now they completely switch back to what they’re doing now, then you’re screwed, because you trusted them again, even though we really have no reason to trust them. That’s the thing. We have no real reason to trust them anymore. And that’s why blockchain solutions are so important because a lot of them are trust lists. Because we don’t have to rely on a specific person or entity. A lot of them are just, you know, they exist as is. And I think that’s one of the biggest the biggest things that attracts people to the technology because I don’t have to rely on anyone. I don’t have to put my faith in someone to do something for me. I can just rely on the math and then the code.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Well, you know, just since the last time you and I spoke, I actually opened up my own library channel and I am in the process of moving all my YouTube videos or at least synching on my YouTube videos. And now I’m starting to re embed those videos into my site from the library instead of YouTube. Because I just expect long term is that I just don’t trust that YouTube is gonna keep my channel up and I just don’t want to have to go through the mess after they’ve already deleted everything. So I want to thank you for helping me with that. But if you want to check it out at Rob McNealy on library now, that’s where we’re going to be focusing more of our energy just from the fact that maybe it’s not 100% decentralized, but it’s pretty close. And I think the team over there really supports free speech. And so I’m excited about like, just, you know, I’d rather give someone that cares about, you know, the liberties and freedoms that I do. I’d rather give them some business and support their project rather than YouTube because YouTube’s given me nothing. YouTube’s make money off me, but you’ve never given me anything. And it just why am I bothering and I’ve almost given to the, I’ve almost said why don’t I just delete the YouTube channel, but it’s still one of the biggest search engines out there. So I still have to kind of deal with it. But it’s just not going to be where I focus my energy anymore after, you know, after like last week, I’m just done less worrying about it. Because I just think that it’s a legacy dinosaur. So I hope the folks over library win. But I mean, how I mean, you you really track what they’re doing? How is the library’s growth?

Scott Cunningham
Really good. You should see you should see from when they hit a million users in March, and then from March to April, they went to 2.5 million users. So right now their growth is seemingly exponential. If you go over to library nomics, lbr, why and o m ICS, calm. You can see the top hundred or the top 200 channels. But more importantly, if you tab over to the next tab they have it’s all the channels that have ever been called. created all the publications that have ever been posted. It’s all graphed. And they even have specific events like the beginning of the crypto purge the launch of library TVs browser, because they only got the browser, you know, maybe six or seven months ago. So before you could only access it with a downloaded application, then when they got it on to the actual browser, they just took off. And yeah, you can go and see that you can see that it’s like it’s exponential right now. And I wouldn’t be surprised if, you know, by the end of this month, they are at 5 million users. And by the end of the year, 20 million plus, they really seem to just be destroying these milestones. Like you’ve got to consider steam it, I believe I have, after four years had about maybe 2 million, a little over 2 million users and libraries already passed that so you know, and that was the biggest Previously, so So now library is already essentially from what I can tell is the biggest blockchain dap. And yeah, I think it’s just going to keep on going. And, and one of the really good things about library is, you know you’re earning from day one, even the viewers earn I like I just made a post yesterday talking about the unique differences of library compared to other platforms. And one of the biggest most important thing for people is that you get paid via the views. So if I post a link to any other blockchain platform, you need to register and you need to go on and you need to upvote my posts for me to make money. If you watch my library video, regardless, if you register, you could just be on the website and you watch my video, I’m going to make money from that. So when I post it to Twitter, and people go on to hive or steam or anywhere else publish Oh x They’re not likely to sign up and do all this stuff unless they actually are a part of that platform. For the most part, it’s just someone clicking the link and then going to it, they might just read it or look at it or whatever. Like, you don’t have to sign up to medium to view articles on medium. But with library, even if they have or haven’t signed up, you’re still going to make that get that you’re going to get the view count. So you actually know that it’s happening to begin with, because again, with the other ones, you wouldn’t have even known that someone had clicked through and looked at your video or watched it because again, it’s it’s only really tracking like likes and stuff like that. So you can see everything that’s happening, and you’re gonna get paid for everything. So that’s one of the biggest things. I mean, there’s a million other things that I could dive into. But that’s why I’m really passionate about library because they have so much available to the creators and the viewers that is just really beneficial and they just make they have a really good ecosystem.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So how do they make money? How does They get the money to pay out all this. Is there an ad revenue model in there somewhere?

Scott Cunningham
Yeah, so they just started having an ad model. But the good thing is that currently, the way that it’s set up is that only people who aren’t registered will see ads on the browser. So if you’re logged in, and you’re using it, you shouldn’t see any ads. But if you go on via clicking a link or whatever, like I just sort of outlined, you might see an ad in the newsfeed as you’re scrolling through, but you would never see intrusive like in stream, video ads, skippable ads, anything like that you wouldn’t see, it would just be like you’re scrolling through the newsfeed and there might be like an ad in place of where one of the things might been on the newsfeed so it’s not super intrusive, and it’s only for people who haven’t signed up. So if you you’re annoyed by that, you can always just sign in and then or sign up and then there’s no issue. I don’t know how they’re going To expand that out, but I know that they’re trying to do it in the least intrusive way possible. They obviously know a lot of people are here because they don’t like the way that YouTube does things. So they’re obviously trying to build on that and create something that is sustainable, because obviously, there’ll be a point where, you know, like, where’s the money coming from? And obviously, they have to keep up with that as well.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So what blockchain did they fork to build it? You know?

Scott Cunningham
I don’t know, for a lot I, from my understanding, I actually think they just like built their blockchain, but I haven’t looked too much into their actual blockchain to know to be like well versed in that.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
One of the other success platforms that I’m seeing out there where there’s crypto monetization, I think is then the brave browser with bat tokens. Yeah. And I you know, I wasn’t sold at first that you know, it’s great. I’m like are great another browser to download but it’s Like I started looking in over the last couple months, I think I got like 50 bucks or something in my brave browser, like wallet and I’m like, yeah, yeah. You know, and it’s like, it’s like, yeah, it’s not a lot. But I mean, if it’s 100 bucks a year or something just from surfing.

Scott Cunningham
And I think that’s interesting. And I think that that model, one, I think is a winner. I think paying people for advertising to them, gives people like, empowers people again, right.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
But I think, but I think it’s an amazing way to get people into crypto. I think it’s slow. But it’s happening and and as a library, it’s like, you know, yeah, YouTube might have paid me if I would have been monetizable in dollars, right. That’s always great. But the fact is, I’m getting you know, I’ve already made like, 30 cents or something on library and I’m all excited. Yeah. I mean, it was like the first revenue ever made for a video. So like, wow, that’s that’s really really kind of cool. And so I think this is how we get adoption. That’s why I tell people make a really good platform, and then add crypto or blockchain to it. But don’t make crypto or blockchain does a thing. It make a real app like, and I say this about game. Like, I think there’s a lot of people out there that in the crypto world, especially like games and stuff like this, and some are good, some are not, but they’re trying to make it all about the crypto instead of making it a really good game, or making it a really good web browser or, you know, make a really good application or that really solves a problem. And focus on that and gaming focus on the game, the ability of it, and I think and just add some monetization to it. And people don’t care about databases and blockchains I mean, they don’t and and so I think those are two winners and so far looking at library and bat and the brave browser. I think those are probably two of the biggest success stories that I’m seeing in crypto right now.

Scott Cunningham
Yeah, I would agree. Yeah. And they do so much to just make your experience better. Like for me on brave browser, I’ve said it so that I only get crypto and technology based ads. So I don’t get all the random pointless ads that I would normally get. You can even like, curate even further by liking the ads that you liked. And then they’ll give you more of that. So I actually have seen like some interesting crypto projects as ads. And you know, not only that they’re very unintrusive. And you can set how many you get at a time, you could just have none. And then there’s also brave creator to where creators can sign up for brave, and then people can tip you on Twitter or YouTube. It’s a sort of a way to integrate crypto into the legacy platforms that are already out there. And I think they’re doing an amazing job of doing that. And kind of getting people on to the brave browser with their onboarding process. And like you said, I think the most important thing is when people start earning crypto, it completely flips their perspective. At first it might have been, oh, I don’t understand this. I don’t trust this. I’m like, they’re gonna take my money. Now it’s, oh my, oh, you’re giving me money? How do I get this money? Oh, I have to create a wallet. Okay, one sec, let me go create a wallet, let me get this money. They’ll do they’ll, if you’re giving them money, they’ll find out how to get that money. And then all these people are going to come in and then they’re going to keep earning money. And they’re like, Why wasn’t I doing this before? So I think that’s how we’ll reach mass adoption. I’ve been saying this for many years that I think social media is the route to mass adoption for blockchain. Because that’s where all the awareness will be. If people are making money for posting a selfie. I think that’s a pretty easy way to realize the potential of cryptocurrency and what blockchain can do for monetizing tension. monetizing content. Pretty much a lot, almost any application in blockchain just improves upon something that we already have, and gives a little more power to the user. Or at least the good projects give a little more power to the user and more control more access more everything, right. They’re trying to remove middlemen and, and just empower the user more. And I think that’s, those are the projects that are going to come on top and stay on top. And projects that get away from that are going to fail. Perfect example of that right now is you know, steam has been kind of going on like it’s been it’s been going down because ever since Justin acquired it, he’s been centralizing it he’s been making it really not what it was meant to be. And they’ve been losing a lot of people and people have been switching over to hive because they are still embodying the original values of steam and people will make Do whatever works best for them. I forgot to mention this earlier. It was either today or yesterday that Joe Rogan, announced he was leaving YouTube. Huge, biggest podcast in the world is leaving YouTube. He’s moving exclusively to Spotify. It would have been amazing if it was like library or something. But that alone is showing people that these platforms are not going to last, if all of the big influencers and creators start to leave. They have nothing to offer their their advertising isn’t useful if there’s no one there. And obviously, you know, it’s it’s going to be slow at first. But with these big people leaving, you know, other people are going to say, Oh, where are they going? I’ll go there. Joe Rogan is on mines.com, for example. So that’s good. He actually had the CEO of Minds on his podcast and we need more of that I mean he probably only knows about mine so if he learned about library maybe he would be on Lbry so you know, as these things grow and get more awareness I think we’ll see a lot more big influencers joining and there already are a lot of really really big influencers on there. And I think it’s only gonna it’s only going to keep growing.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Perfect Scott Cunningham, where can people find out more about you?

Scott Cunningham
You can find me pretty much anywhere at Scott seed business. Seo TTC be you si n e s s. And I have a podcast called crypto and things you can find that on any podcast platform like apple, podcasts, Spotify, all that good stuff. And yeah, you can find all the rest of my links at my website, Scott see business.com

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Thank you so much Scott and Rob McNealy and check us out at RobMcNealy.com. We appreciate you listening.

Scott Cunningham
Thanks for having me.

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Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Transcript

April 24, 2020 robmcnealy Audio Podcasts, Crypto, Entrepreneurship, Politics, Social Media, Transcripts 0:00 Comments Off on Invest Noir – Cigars and Crypto Transcript

Invest Noir - Cigars and Crypto

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.

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Paul McNeal – The Crypto Curator Video

February 9, 2020 robmcnealy Crypto, Social Media, Video Podcasts 0:00 Comments Off on Paul McNeal – The Crypto Curator Video

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Paul McNeal – The Crypto Curator Transcript

February 9, 2020 robmcnealy Crypto, Social Media, Transcripts 0:00 Comments Off on Paul McNeal – The Crypto Curator Transcript

Paul McNealy - The Crypto Curator

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.

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Kingsley Edwards – CEO of Flote Transcript

January 6, 2020 robmcnealy Crypto, Politics, Social Media, Transcripts 0:00 Comments Off on Kingsley Edwards – CEO of Flote Transcript

Kingsley Edwards - CEO of Flote.app

Note: This transcript was automatically generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and therefore typos may be present.

Rob McNealy
Today I am talking to Kingsley Edwards. He is the CEO and founder of float app, which is a new social media sharing platform. And I think the timing of this is great given what’s going on in the crypto world with YouTube right now. So, Kingsley, how are you today?

Kingsley Edwards – Flote.App
Doing well, just you know, little bit of rest after after yesterday, Christmas, but yeah, glad you got to be here. Thanks for having me on.

Rob McNealy
Cool. I literally laid on the beanbag for 14 hours yesterday.

Kingsley Edwards – Flote.App
Did you break a record or?

Rob McNealy
I think I got bedsores, but I don’t know if it’s a record but yeah, I kinda was a complete pig slouch, just kind of hanging out. But you know, me and my, my wife and I, I mean, we both are, we’re both co founders and Tosca, and so but we both have full time other gigs because everybody on our products is a volunteer. So it’s like, we’ve been going crazy. Just we launched this week. And I got on Main net and opened it up and got block producers on the network and stuff. So it was like literally two days before Christmas. We’re like literally been doing tech support helping people sign up and get their nodes on and stuff. So it’s been a little crazy. So we took the day off yesterday.

Kingsley Edwards – Flote.App
Yeah, well, congrats. I know that’s got to be that’s a huge feat to get over. So,

Rob McNealy
You know, when people say, Oh, you can just you know, make a blockchain just point and click on my get go do that. Let me know how that works out for you. Because, you know, it’s interesting, because, and we’re getting our topic but you know, we launched first as a token, and then we swapped and built our own chain. And it’s funny because people don’t realize how all the little things you have to do to make that work. You know, even just, how do you get your first nodes ready? How do you recruit people to set up servers to support your network in the beginning, it’s like, you know, it’s one thing if you’re just setting up a token or something on someone else’s blockchain but when you have to build up And recruit, and persuade and try to negotiate and get all sorts of, you know, people involved in your project and anyways just to take a risk of their own time and whatever money and stuff to do that that’s hard. It really is a lot of it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of lunches and a lot of phone calls.

Kingsley Edwards – Flote.App
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I did. I did a token sale in at the, the kind of the height of the market or close to the height of the market in 2017. And yeah, I was it was even just even just doing that was just, you know, crazy. I stayed up for like, 72 hours at at the one point, I do not recommend doing that. But um, but yeah, you know, a lot of things that seem easy to others and just, you know, with technology in general, are there’s a lot happening behind the scenes that a lot of people don’t know about, so.

Rob McNealy
Absolutely. So give me a little bit of background about what you are. Sounds like you’re an entrepreneur. So how did you get involved with starting float?

Kingsley Edwards – Flote.App
Yeah. Well, so I started my first crypto startup in, in 2013 actually was a eSports Bitcoin platform where people can play against each other and popular video games for Bitcoin kind of a skill base. You know, being from Vegas, we’re just talking about I’ve always thought that and also playing video games growing up, I always thought that be interesting to kind of recreate, you know, the poker environments and with with video games and how EA Sports is is taking off. So so we we created that it was called leap coin, which later turned to leets. And then in 2015, we ended up getting some investor money from from boost VC and Tim Draper and in Vegas tech Fund, which is run by Tony Shea, and some other angels and VCs. We ended up selling that in 2017 to to a larger startup, and that’s where I actually directed their token sale and then after that, year I did some consulting for four different crypto companies and more recently we’re focused on on floats and really came about which is you know, we we, we we will first of all we’ve you know we’ve been part of the kind of the Liberty movement or what do you want to call it or or at least myself for over a decade starting with with Ron Paul back in the day and and then you know that that kind of led me to learning about Bitcoin and all this kind of stuff in the ron paul forums like in 2010, or something like that. But, but yeah, you know, so so just kind of seeing this the way things are going with social media especially like all the people getting shadow banned, banned, and demonetised especially over the last last few years, and now all of a sudden, you know, just the same that you support free speeches, you know, the mainstream narrative is saying that that’s like controversial or not not the right thing to do. So So yeah, we you know, we have a lot of friends that are that are content creators, independent journalists, on on YouTube and other platforms that have been affected by what’s going on they’ve been D monetized they’ve lost their These are people that you know, they survive off of off of YouTube monetization and in, in their, you know audience supporting them through donations and all this and we’ve seen them the struggle over the last couple of years losing anywhere from 80 to 90%. Some have been completely demonetised hundred percent of their their income just you know, overnights gone for what we feel like is really unjustified reasons. I mean, a lot of times these people don’t get responses from YouTube and Twitter and Facebook and others and and they’ll be like an email response. They’ll say, you know, a little show you’ve been kicked off or have you been banned because of and I’ll just have a blank won’t even have any from there. So it’s it’s like, you know, I think a lot of like I said, a lot of us saw this coming and we just wanted to offer just an alternative. Last year, I actually tried getting off of all kind of this decentralized platforms that are there today. And I went to various other decentralize, you know, offerings. And it was just, you know, is way too confusing. A lot of them have like a lot of these token schemes that are kind of built into just the basic like, feed and stuff like this, that they, you know, this is cool if you want to partake in that, but, but we just wanted to offer something where people can, you know, speak freely, we have chronological time timeline with no kind of deceptive algorithms deciding what content you see or interact with and engage with. And, and so yeah, so we decided to kind of, you know, dive deep into it. And in I’ve been working alongside of a lot of those friends that that have been affected by what’s going on.

Rob McNealy
So it’s float like a blockchain based app or is it not based on blockchain? Or is it crypto related? How is it kind of build what kind of platform is it on?

Kingsley Edwards – Flote.App
So right now we are we are, we are centralized? So we have plans to decentralize Over the next year, we did we went through boost again with this with this company boost VC, which is one of the leading blockchain startup accelerators in San Mateo, run by Tim Draper son, Adam Draper, who’s done a lot of great work in the space. So so we with through boost VC, we got we got actually quite a bit of credit on on various server, you know, like AWS and digitalocean, which isn’t, you know, the best place to be but as it as a scrappy startup where we want to use those those credits, until until we can’t. But we do have plans to to decentralize. We don’t we don’t. We’re not we’re looking at various technologies as far as our decentralization strategy. And we’re not quite 100% sold on a blockchain yet for for social media. There may be an opportunity to like interact with other block chains if a user does want to, but we’re looking at other other distributed ways where we can have different People partake in backing up their own content.

Rob McNealy
Well, I think that’s important. And I actually commend you on that strategy. And I think it makes more sense. Get your MVP out there, start on a centralized system, and look at where the technology is, and then adopt whatever back end that’s decentralized that you want. To me, that actually makes more sense. Because I think you probably are well aware. I mean, with the social media platform, it’s about eyeballs and audience. I mean, that’s why people are on Twitter. That’s why people are on Facebook, because that’s where all the people are. There’s lots of actual alternative media, social media sites out there now. And you know, I’m getting inundated like nobody here go to there. And it’s like, okay, but no one else is there, or there’s not as many people there or this one community like is on this platform and not on your platform. So who would you say your technology closely or is a close resemblance of are you more like a Twitter or more like a Facebook?

Kingsley Edwards – Flote.App
I feel I feel like we look more like a Twitter right now but I would say as far as features that really going for Facebook, we see a large opportunity with with both those platforms and and also including YouTube, where, especially Facebook, where, you know, there’s a lot of studies out there where 66% of Facebook users do not trust Facebook, even though they, you know, they do use it because that’s where the users are at. I don’t know, really anybody who really likes, you know, they’re the CEO Mark Zuckerberg. And so we see a large you know, an opportunity there to kind of go after that feature sets and and that’s really you know, we want to build a place where, where, you know, free speech, can I can live you can engage with you, you know, you follow who you want to follow, you can gauge who you want to do you want engage with, and in Facebook as far as, as features is kind of the most our has has a lot of features that we’d like to, to to implement. So, right now we have, you know, just kind of the social network side, we do have crypto integrated, where every every account comes with a Bitcoin BTC wallet right now. So people can with without wallets, you can you can tip people you can you can do we have a Patreon type model already built built out where you can subscribe to content creators for premium content for for whatever tier they want to set which is really cool. We have encrypted messaging. So you know again kind of going back to to Facebook and Twitter I’ve noticed over the past couple years where now it’s been made public where they actually they can and they seem like they do read your read your messages, your direct messages to other people and people don’t really realize that so, you know, we don’t we don’t want to read your messages. And that’s what we make them encrypted and peer to peer and you know, a lot of lot of other little other things where we’re just trying to make floats a friendly place for for people to you know, create a second account on there’s a lot of studies to how social media, you Users they used to have, I think was like 2.4 accounts couple years ago. Now I believe it’s closer to five. And the next two years, they’ll have up to like 10, or some of that. So we’re looking at different, like, interoperability between us and the major platforms. So to just make it easier switch to, you know, at least use us as a as an alternative.

Rob McNealy
So I have a pretty big social platform, you know, footprint on like Twitter, smaller one on Facebook, sell me on flow, why would I want to be on flow versus these other platforms?

Kingsley Edwards – Flote.App
Well, again, you know, I think you notice I I personally, very much dislike the way that Twitter and Facebook feeds been becoming more and more kind of deceptive in the way that they use their algorithms as far as the the home field and timelines. So even with Twitter, you know, you have to constantly change for me, I have to constantly change that. I want to see things chronological as from the people that I’ve seen, or that I that I follow, and and you know, it just we don’t we don’t push any information that you don’t want to see. And, and again, we don’t read your messages, respect user privacy. And we don’t, you know, we’re not out to censor us. So now that’s what we’re seeing more and more on on all the major platforms. And we don’t want to we don’t want to partake in that.

Rob McNealy
So you’re funded through boost VC. Is that where you’re getting the funding to grow this out?

Kingsley Edwards – Flote.App
Yeah, we Yeah, we receive some initial funding from from boost VC right now. We are in the middle of fundraising right now for our full seed round, but we received Yeah, we went through boost earlier this year.

Rob McNealy
So that was gonna be my next question is, I like what you’re saying. I think we need more alternatives to what we have out there. The next question is, how do you combat that network effect of the big networks? That’s the big challenge. How do you take away their market share, and what do you think your marketing strategy is going to be to onboard some of those new users and kind of pare away some of their market share?

Kingsley Edwards – Flote.App
Well, so we definitely wanted to take advantage of the way that YouTube is treating content creators, the way the distrust of Facebook and the other platforms. So that’s one of the biggest things right now we’re actually working on adding ad monetization for content creators so that we can, you know, we can provide a way for for content creators to, to join our platform, and not only you know, receive Patreon, Patreon, you know, revenue from their audience, but also tips but then also add revenue from from different ad networks. And eventually we’ll be implementing our own ad platform that’s that’s fully integrated into our platform. One thing about us as far as for content creators is that we don’t take any percentage of The payments to content creators or or just users in general. So that’s one of the things that you know, we’re really focused on to is showcasing how lightweight crypto actually has a use case here, where when I send a Super Chat, let’s say to a YouTuber, and YouTube takes 30%, or YouTube takes 45% of ad revenue from content creators, we don’t sit as a middleman, as far as you know, in terms of payments. So I think that’s one one place where we’re kind of, you know, placing our bed on and saying that, hey, you know, kind of be the old saying our content is king. And if if content creators can create an as you know, a second account on on on floats, and hey, maybe not the user base isn’t there yet. But I’m making 100% of all my tips on making 100% of my monthly subscriptions from my audience, and I’m getting a larger percentage from ad revenue. While it might make sense to try to start moving by my people over to this, this platform Where I can ultimately make more money with less followers.

Rob McNealy
So you as float up, how do you guys make money if you’re not taking a, you know, cut of the content creators, you know, earnings.

Kingsley Edwards – Flote.App
So we have for, for ad, we have two sets of ads, we have content ads that will be similar to a, it’s kind of unique actually, to we have, we have content ads. And then we have two forms of content ads. Right now, we have video ads, where it’s kind of a we’re just we’re testing this out right now with a few content creators. But a video ads are similar to the YouTube ads that you see that go before and after videos. And then post ads for content creators that can be done on any post which is kind of unique. So if a content creator just doesn’t like a normal kind of Twitter style or Facebook style post, they can have a small ad on the bottom little banner ad where they can also monetize out of that. So we have those sets of ads for content creators where they get 100%. And then we have network ads, which is kind of can be seen almost like if you think of a YouTube video page. Like the top right, they’ll have a little ad you know, post up on the top right. So we’ll we’ll take the percentage off that and then we’re also going to be implementing network ads within within the feed of users. So we’re yeah we’re going to be you know, mostly focused on on ads ad revenue, we are going to implement a premium subscription where will provide ad free experience for users? And we’re hoping that you know, eventually once once we get more more and more content creators on our platform and higher tiers as far as how many people follow them that that eventually you know, we’ll be able to really monetize it monetize it well with with the ads that we’re showing that we profit off of.

Rob McNealy
Very cool. So with a lot of the so a lot of what the the normal big giants in this space. Some of their excuses for censorship and and you know, D platforming people is one they’ll say they’re combating hate or in some other People will say they’re just trying to cover their tail legally in case someone you know, does something stupid on their platform, so they don’t directly get sued themselves for hosting this content. So if you’re a centralized and you’re gonna allow free speech, are there any limits to that? Or are you going to have some basic rules? How does that kind of work? And if you allow free speech, unfettered free speech, are you worried about liability for your group?

Kingsley Edwards – Flote.App
So we do, you know, we are a were a US Corporation, we do have to follow us laws. So if there are things that that uh, that we find or others bring to our attention, or if you know, there’s one of the alphabet, US government agencies that you know, request something or something we you know, we’re not going to go to prison over something over a social media post or something like this. We’ll we’ll do what we have will only what we have to do, but we’re not going to go out of our way to censor people for no reason. Which seems to be where all the other platforms are going. When it comes to you know, the story of you know, advertisers and all this kind of you know, seems like they’re they’re kind of pulling the strings and all this you know, I believe that I believe that that that is the case in some circumstances but at the same time it’s it’s interesting to see that you know, especially YouTube is using that as an excuse why they’re censoring people yet all the major other you know, the the mainstream media that’s that’s on YouTube are talking about the same things that all these independent creators are talking about maybe maybe in different ways and you know, this and that but but you know, they do cover a lot of the same topics that YouTube says is controversial and all this yet YouTube doesn’t take down you know, Fox News, CNBC, talking about crypto, CNN talking about Epstein, all this types of all this type of stuff. So so you know, we’re going to we’re going to test out the waters we’re going to we’re going to roll with the punches, but also Yes, we want to we want to support free speech and we feel that what’s going on right now. It’s just it’s there’s there’s something, you know, seems a little sinister, but happening behind the scenes. And it seems to be maybe politically motivated or whatever. But, but we’re, you know, we just we want to be we’re just really rewinding the clock, just about three, three to five years of where social media was why YouTube became so great why Facebook became so popular and Twitter became so popular. And so we just, we just want to basically, you know, be be what it was before and offer, offer that to our users and respect our users.

Rob McNealy
And I think a lot of people want that. And I think on the other hand, I think there’s also a big market for curated content as well. And I can see both sides of it. The the anarchist part of me is like, you know, what people should do without the want to do, but, you know, if they want to do it on their own platform, you know, if they want to do it their way and not my way on my platform, then they go build their own and you did so I kind of like that and I’m actually very interested to see where this positive plays out for you. You guys float. But on the other hand, there’s a lot of bullshit out there. I mean, there’s a lot of stupid people there a lot of assholes. And, you know, I kind of look at it like, we have a forum, for instance, with Tusk. And we haven’t we have rules in our forum and our groups in our telegram, because we believe like, we don’t allow certain types of spam because we find that spam does make the community suck, you know, all these online groups, once they stop having moderators and admins is just the nonsense takes over. And I’m just putting out my little brainstorming hat here. And it’s like, Okay, if everybody on your in your neighborhood turns out to be a jerk, and people don’t necessarily honest, is that a great neighborhood anymore? And I and I, and I wrestle with these kind of, you know, internally I wrestle with these kinds of, you know, thoughts philosophically, because I always want to weigh my own freedom. My pro freedom orientation with people are still stupid and jerks. He helped Part of the world, right? You got to kind of look, there’s both there. And I do think there’s a nuance and it’s interesting, especially with a lot of folks in the Liberty movements, whatever movement you want to call it, that have a hard time with that nuance that, you know, just because you can be a jerk doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to be a jerk all the time. And, you know, I heard voices coming out and this is supposed to be a new social media thing out on the iOS network, and supposedly it’s everybody’s doxxed and I’m mixed on and I’m actually interested to see how it works. So for instance, on and to me, I docs myself a long time ago, I’ve always been Rob McNealy and everything I don’t have. I don’t have any sock accounts. I am myself out there. So I’m always kind of flying without a net. But I can tell you Kingsley, you know, I’ve had a lot of assholes take advantage of that trolls, doing crazy stuff. And it’s like, oh, you’re you’re an anonymous avatar. And you You’re going to be a jerk. I’m doxxed. You know, I’m myself I’m I’m a target. And, and I and I think there’s a weird trade off there because I one part of me, a lot of people are really anti social non civilized because of that anonymity. On the other hand, I always think that while we still need to have that ability to be completely private, because maybe someone needs to be a Hong Kong protester, right. And so, I don’t know the balance. And, you know, libertarians will have this, you know, they’ll they’ll shred me on this, because I’m not quite 100% pure, but I’m like, you know, but sometimes people lie and say things that aren’t true on the internet because of their anonymous. You know, avatar, what have you I mean, what do you think about that?

Kingsley Edwards – Flote.App
Right? So I mean, if you’re, you know, if you’re a public person and you have a public profile, then you know, you’re going to run into this stuff, no doubt, and then it’s up to you to curate, block or mute people who you know, want to are trying to harass you or engage with you that you don’t want to You know, that you don’t want to engage with. So you know, I would say, if you if you’re really against people, you know if you know, coming after you or doing this doing that, then make your account private and then choose who you know who can who can really engage with you, if you’re willing to take the risk of being becoming public and you want to, you know, promote your voice and you want to grow your audience a little bit more easily through through a public profile, then, you know, you take on that risk yourself, and you have to kind of deal with the things that come at you. It’s a, you know, I think it’s no different the online identity versus the real life identity. You know, there really isn’t much of a difference between besides people being are able to be anonymous on are more anonymous, I’d say, are easier to be anonymous online. But But again, you know, there’s there’s there’s interesting features that we’re building out, like shareable mutes and blocklist where let’s say there’s a full list of people. That’s have shown of users that have shown to be, you know, I don’t know, kind of a difficult to deal with online. Well, you know, if there’s an easy way to, to share these lists, and you know, with one click being able to block a full list of users that have engaged in this type of behavior, then, you know, let’s let’s make that easier. Let’s use technology to make make our lives easier, easier, not only to engage with people, but also to disengage with people.

Rob McNealy
And I think that’s actually an amazing idea. You know, I know I’m saying I understand blocking, and I block liberally and I have a pretty thick skin and I me, and I’ve been out there for a long time. So I really normally don’t care when someone says dumb shit, because that’s just the internet. I did have a guy who’s actually kind of pro popular, but he’s, you know, anonymous, and he runs a podcast and he’s a crypto maximalist of one flavor and a year ago we had a problem and he just didn’t like my project because it’s not Bitcoin. Let’s just put it out there. just you know, he’s like anything that’s not Bitcoin is a scam. And I’m like, Okay, well that’s not true. Okay? A Scam is is accusing someone of a fraud or a crime and a violation than happy and a B. And you know, and you know, it started coming up in the search engine results and I’m like, okay, he wrote a blog post and all the saying that I’m a scam and I’m like, Okay, one I’ve never taken anybody’s money. I’ve done everything I said I would do I created something that we gave away that became valuable. That’s not a scam. That’s a gift. But it was interesting. Like he was very toxic and I ignored him for a year but I had to deal with and deal with some of the, the SEO Fallout, right? Because marketing is kind of a thing. And and I called him up and I’ve figured out who he was, I did some digging, and I’m pretty good at finding out some things that I actually know who he is now, like everything about him personally. And I emailed him and I used his first name and now he’s got a public email just for his avatar, you know, and I emailed him by his First Name, and last name, and said maybe we could have a phone call. And we did. We had an hour long conversation, he still hates my project. And I said, That’s okay. But don’t accuse me of being, you know, a fraud or criminal. You can say you hate my project. I don’t have a problem with that. But let’s just be honest. And, you know, here’s the thing, Kingsley, if I hadn’t figured out who he was, he wouldn’t have cooperated with me, because he felt protected by that anonymity. And he felt that he could break the law and call somebody things that aren’t true. And I think, you know, that’s the problem I see out there and I do understand where some platforms come from on that. And and to me, it’s like, you know, sometimes people just aren’t nice. And are mean because of that. And I think that’s the the downside of the whole keyboard warrior thing. But.

Kingsley Edwards – Flote.App
They’re going to be perfect. Just like in in you know, IRL real life. It’s never going to be perfect no matter what you’re going to have people out there that are that hate you and Whatever. And so, you know, and then we’ll we’ll continue to see this you know, I think a lot what’s what’s interesting with crypto in particular is that we’re seeing a lot of people that that were Bitcoin maximalists starting to at least be more open minded to new projects. And I never you know, I, I was more of a I would say a Bitcoin maximalist years ago, but I would never hate other other projects out there because competition is good. And you know, we’re really actually a big one we’re seeing that that as far as advancement and and you know that the protocol and so with that we’re seeing a lot of other protocols that are kind of blowing past that as far as things that you can do on chain. So, so, you know, I think competition is good, whether it’s social media, whether it’s money, I mean, obviously, and and really, you know, let’s let’s really keep our eyes on the target, which is the, what we’re creating is an alternative to central banks and then felician and, you know, this this kind of crazy system that That’s that we’ve been born in.

Rob McNealy
Lost you. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? I think I lost you, buddy. Hello, there you are. You’re back.

Kingsley Edwards – Flote.App
Yeah, I lost you too.

Rob McNealy
Having some bandwidth problems on your side. I think keeps saying that you have low bandwidth. I hate when you have low bandwidth. You got low tea or something?

Kingsley Edwards – Flote.App
Yeah, it’s weird cuz I have really good internet. Anyway, I’m not sure right cut off but.

Rob McNealy
Okay. So I’ll just pick it up. You know, I think I think competition is excellent too. And I think so the crypto crypto space as well. I’m an entrepreneur and I actually am kind of late to crypto. I don’t click came to I don’t claim to be like an early adopter at all. I’ve only been in this space a couple of years. And it surprises me because I view everything as an entrepreneur and I always look at opportunities and you know mitigating risk and flaws and markets and that’s kind of how I view crypto I just see it even if it’s decentralized, it’s still a market it’s still a product and service and it’s interesting with like, the old maximalists that are so defensive about Bitcoin it’s typically been you know, I think you’d agree it’s typically Bitcoin maximalist it seemed to be the most toxic maximalist. But I think I have a theory on why I think it is, I think it’s that these guys have been like, you know, singing the tune of Bitcoin for so long that it’s become kind of their personal identity. And I think that the competition to Bitcoin and some of it is a lot more innovative and even not only on the tech side, but on the governance side on the speed side on the scalability side are far better.

Kingsley Edwards – Flote.App
I use to use Bitcoin all the time to pay people you know with $20 Bitcoin on on Reddit and you know yeah the speed was was great you know and now like I wait for 20-30 minutes confirmation for this small transactions it’s actually very frustrating.

Rob McNealy
Right, and so then something and I think it just comes down to what the maximalists is that no one likes their baby being called ugly and and that’s what it’s about and I think the the the maximum was just fear the competition that maybe they backed the wrong horse at some point..

Kingsley Edwards – Flote.App
..to kind of reverse their opinion.

Rob McNealy
It’s human nature and no one wants to admit they’re wrong or their their baby’s ugly. It’s like, but to me, it’s funny because like in my own portfolio, I mean, I own Bitcoin, I own a Etheoreum. I have my own take somewhere. I think they’re going to be an end up and I think some things I think it’s, you know, I can’t make a decision yet because I think there’s a lot of things moving in This space, but I think I have my own theories on how crypto will be adopted. And that’s why we launched our own project anyway. I mean, that is why we launched our own project, because I think that some of the other big projects out there are kind of going the wrong direction. We’ll see if I’m right or wrong. We’re going to work really hard to figure that out. But I think that’s the same thing with social media, right? I mean, social media proved to be a thing, people like it, people like communicating digitally with each other. They like to be able to communicate with groups, they like to communicate with people on the other part of the planet. Social media is a good tool. The question is now, the governance of social media has kind of gone downhill, pretty bad over the last five, six years. And I think this is why I’m excited to you know, talk to you about what you’re doing with slope because to me, we need competition to kind of hopefully push back, you know, on some of those major social media platforms that in my opinion, are abusing their users.

Kingsley Edwards – Flote.App
Yeah, no, absolutely. I’m not sure why I cut off earlier, but I was just saying that let’s let’s remember, you know, whether it’s Bitcoin or other technology, but specifically with Bitcoin and money, you know, it’s not that, you know, it’s great that all these different cryptocurrencies and blockchains are competing against each other, define what what is going to serve the market best. But let’s remember that, that what we’re what we’re trying to replace is central banks. And so just because something isn’t as decentralized as this or this and that or you know, like, let’s focus on on what what the actual goal is, is that’s creating a better technology for money and in whether something let’s in you know, it should it should work as good as as the best thing out there. So, that’s what I like to support. And that’s what you know, kind of the, the foundation is set for as far as social media with flow, is that you know, okay, right now we may be we may be centralized, but hey, we support free speech, you’re not going to get thrown in 30 days. Facebook Jail for posting a meme or you know, you we’re not going to suspend your your Twitter account because you you work for anti war calm. So you know, it’s just like, hey, let’s support things that, you know, may might not be the most decentralized or the most, you know, in our case libertarian thing, but let’s focus on the things that hey, maybe it has easy, good, great UI UX, you know, it’s it offers an alternative, and maybe, you know, they’re not they have they don’t have all the features yet, but on the roadmap, you know, they’re playing this and that and, you know, great team and good backers, and great community. So that’s just that’s just kind of where I’ve gone from, and I used to be kind of one of those more things like, Oh, this isn’t as decentralize or censorship resistant and as is that but, but, but, you know, I would say I’m more of like a kind of a incremental approach myself, where incremental ism has been used against us for, you know, years and years in the past, but now It may be maybe to get the masses to adopt certain things we don’t need to go fully you know crypto anarchists maybe we can just kind of incrementally get there and just use technology as as a way where indeed show people that hey technology can be used for you know obviously obviously very good things that they can they can help us move money you know communicate with each other.

Rob McNealy
For other you’re singing my song you know I say the same thing like with Tusk were delegated proof of stake chain we are we are not quote unquote. So decentralized is say maybe one of the bigger block chains out there, though, the definition of what decentralize This seems to change a lot but here’s the thing. The masses don’t give a shit about something being decentralized. They want something that works. They don’t care that PayPal centralized they don’t get a Venmo was centralized. They don’t care that you know, authorize net is centralized or visa, they don’t care. They want their problem solved. And so it’s funny when you know a lot of the Maxis will argue about Well, it’s not decentralized. And I’m like, okay, but these people don’t care about that. But how about, but what would be better would would a local credit union one cryptocurrency or would a local credit union be a preferred business vendor than maybe a major national bank? You know, there’s a trade off there. They’re very different. I mean, I use I personally like credit unions, I don’t have account at a major bank, because I like the fact that I can vote for the board of my credit union. And to me, I still have more control over that relationship with the credit union because I can go talk to the vice president pretty easily if I want to I have actually. Whereas with the major bank, I don’t have that. So to me, that’s that whole spectrum, right. And it seems like a lot of people that are more libertarian minded seem to have a real difficult time with incremental and, you know, spectrum kind of things. That nuance right. And I agree with you and so what tasks are like, I’ll give you I’m Neil saying the same thing you are as over the top We’re trying to focus on going out and getting people interested when crypto as something that’s going to solve a problem. And then in our roadmap long term, we’re building out more resiliency and more, you know, redundancy into our network. And that’s, we got a big plan on that, if we’re successful with the first part. You know, I think it’s like this, and I think you’re doing the same thing, right? You want to build out, look, we just need to get something out there. So people can start, you know, communicating in a way without immediately being just ghosted. Right. And then you build out those other features that you want. I mean, Facebook can build all this stuff overnight, right? YouTube didn’t build that stuff all overnight, right? I mean, it takes time. You got to have a plan. And you know what, it takes a dedicated team, a dedicated visionary to grow that right and unfortunately, and this is my criticism of really hardcore Bitcoin maximalist and decentralized so that I don’t believe that a lot of these decentralized cryptocurrencies have these structure to get adoption, because they don’t have anybody out there guiding it. And you don’t have those visionaries out there that are out there talking to end users? Well, yeah.

Kingsley Edwards – Flote.App
Yeah, that’s one of the interesting things too about a lot of these dissension, you know, dials are decentralized organizations is that I have no problem with actually centralized leadership, as long as the leadership is doing something that the users want them to do, or, you know, actually, actually doesn’t really matter. You know, let the leadership do what they want to do. And, and hopefully, the leaders are making the right the right moves, where people will follow them. I mean, humans are made up of leaders and followers and then you know, just depends on the different aspects of your life and the different things that you buy or interact with. So so you know, I, there’s, for most things in my life, like I want to be able to follow to trust someone and follow a leader, that that, that I understand where they’re, where they’re going in their vision and all this when when we talk about all these kind of decentralized organizations and all this. I mean, really, that’s that’s actually like, you know, democracy which actually is one of the worst forms of governance in in organizations. I mean, it’s basically communism. So why well, why would we want that we want we want actually good leaders that are that are doing good things that we can we can follow versus, you know, direct democracy or communism.

Rob McNealy
Yeah, it’s interesting going from a token that we launched, and we gave it away. I mean, we launched it for free via faucet, so we never sold coins or tokens. But it’s interesting going to a project that actually has on chain governance this week, which was the big switch, right? We basically we gave up all this control. And I can tell you as an entrepreneur, that was hard. Yeah. Because as an entrepreneur, you want to control your baby, you spend two years busting your ass kind of trying to create it and then you push it out of the nest and hope that all the vultures out there, don’t eat your baby. But I think you’re Right, I think, you know, good, good leadership is hard. And especially in startups. I mean, the reason people love Elon Musk so much is because he’s rare that Ilan musk of the world are rare that they have that vision and the ability to execute on that vision. And you do need that, I think, if anything, at least, to design the system to design the protocol. And I think with the centralized projects, My take is that no one’s marketing them very well. And no one’s out there talking to end users, no one’s building them, like you would a normal project, or you know, service which means to me, I’m more of a sales and marketing guy, I don’t build I don’t build something anymore until I have a customer. And to me, when you build something, you should be building something for an intended customer. And if you’re just building something and hope there’s a customer, I just think that’s that’s a recipe for failure. And I think with what you’re doing with float, you like look, we see we see a gap in the market, right? You there are people that are really concerned learned about this there are people being before in the of the platform, and you’re trying to fill that gap. And I think that’s why I think you have a good chance of being successful with flow is Is that your understanding that you’re building something to solve an existing and recognized problem with a lot of crypto, they don’t solve any problem. Any buddies recognize problem. If you look at most kryptos do not solve a problem for anybody. They actually create more problems for most people, for the average person. crypto creates problems, it doesn’t erase them. And I think that the crypto projects in the future that are going to be the most successful at cracking that whole mass adoption nut are going to be the ones that are the best marketed. Yeah, and whatever that looks like.

Kingsley Edwards – Flote.App
Yeah, yeah. I definitely, you know, Yeah, I agree with a lot of what you’re saying. And I think that for us, you know, we’re right now we do, we do support BTC but we’re looking to add a lot of the other major all coins and trying to just make it you know, as easy as possible for users to not only buy and sell digital contents on our platform, but next year quarter one, we’re looking to also start a marketplace as well, so that people can actually sell real, you know, physical items or even services if they want to. So we’re really focused on making crypto, you know, very user friendly. And that’s one of the things that, you know, I’ve lived off crypto actually for four years this year. Unfortunately, I’ve had to deal more in VR than ended up in banks that I’d like to but but you know, I see there’s, you know, I truly believe that cryptocurrency is the future of money it’s definitely a better money. Yes, there’s a speculative speculation side to it. But But you know, if you do make the right choices over time, it looks like that you can potentially make a lot of money on cryptocurrency and in just but but there’s still a lack of ways to use cryptocurrency and and I think the future of that is not only through all the Other you know, companies and corporations and services where you can already already use cryptocurrency, but enabling people to we see the gig economy growing and enabling people to use crypto on a peer to peer basis in a marketplace where they can sell, buy and sell digital and physical goods and services is the future that, you know, it won’t be the kind of this this full kind of crypto anarchist dream won’t happen overnight. But, but but through, you know, through through proper, proper implementation is very achievable because I think the end result is a more more peaceful, cheaper, a faster way to to do business and then communicate with people. And I think that that you know, the

Rob McNealy
Oh, we dropped out again. I lost you again. Right at the end Now you’re back

Kingsley Edwards – Flote.App
Hello.

Rob McNealy
Oh there you are you’re back now.

Kingsley Edwards – Flote.App
I you know it’s weird because I don’t have issues I’ve had like one issue with zoom before but my on my internet is really good so I don’t know what’s going on

Rob McNealy
Oh we’re close enough but I think you’re right i think it is the future as well and you know I really enjoyed our time today and I want you to keep me up to date on when you got things rolling out with slope because I I think this is something the market needs.

Kingsley Edwards – Flote.App
I really I really appreciate you having me on and appreciate the chat.

Rob McNealy
Where can people find out more?

Kingsley Edwards – Flote.App
Find us at Flote.app F L O T E dot A P P or JoinFlote.com. Again Flote is spelled a little differently and and also my I’m King King on Flote. So I was able to grab that username somehow. But But yeah, so you can you go to Flote.app/King. That’s where I post most of my stuff. And we actually haven’t so that you can like share to Twitter and all this kind of stuff we are going to be implementing so that you can share to Facebook too. So we’re trying to make it as easy, like I said, as easy as people to switch over, and at least create a second account on Flote.

Rob McNealy
Perfect. Kingsley, thank you so much for coming on the show today. And if you like this content, folks, make sure you subscribe to our social media platform channel that you can find listed at RobMcNealy.com.

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Kingsley Edwards – CEO of Flote Video

January 6, 2020 robmcnealy Crypto, Politics, Social Media, Video Podcasts 0:00 Comments Off on Kingsley Edwards – CEO of Flote Video

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About the Show

NFTs, TUSC, Crypto, Small business, blockchain technology, and politics go hand in hand. The Rob McNealy Program covers them all and much more. Hosted by Rob McNealy, a crypto entrepreneur and personal liberty activist, interviews thought leading guests on topics ranging from Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, blockchain and startups, to politics, gun rights and personal liberty.