Transcripts

Zuby Udezue – Rapper and Author Transcript

Zuby Udezue - UK based rapper, author, and artist.

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

Rob McNealy
Today I am really excited because we are talking to zoobi. He is a very popular rapper out of the UK. And he just finished up a lengthy nine week trip to the United States. And he’s kind of an interesting guy. He is not typical of what I think you would think of when you think of a hip hop or rap artist. So like to welcome the show. Zuby, how are you today?

Zuby Udezue – Rapper and Author
I’m very well, thank you. How you doing?

Rob McNealy
Great. I do appreciate taking the time. Are you recovered? Now? It seemed like you had a pretty big whirlwind trip to the US.

Zuby Udezue – Rapper and Author
Yeah, I wouldn’t go as far as saying I’m recovered, but I’d say that I’m recovering.

Rob McNealy
Well, that’s good. Did you have a good time?

Zuby Udezue – Rapper and Author
Yeah, it was amazing. Absolutely incredible trip. life changing. Was that the first time you’ve been to the States? No, I’ve been to the states five times before, but it was my first time going in 10 years. And it was also the first time going for career purposes. So I managed to really make the most of it. I never been out there for Along with the exception of New York City, all the cities that I visited I’d never actually been to before. So that was all brand new.

Rob McNealy
So what did you think? So what did you learn on your trip about American culture head going to all the cities?

Zuby Udezue – Rapper and Author
Well, firstly, I learned that it’s probably easier to view the USA almost like a continent more than just a single country in some ways, because the variances between the states and cities are so big. First of all, you know, you’ve got the different time zones, which you don’t have somewhere like the UK or most other countries, you’ve got different climates, very big range of temperature and different types of weather, range of different laws, cultures, accents, type types of people. Everything is a everything’s pretty different depending on where you go. I mean, even the difference between, you know, going from somewhere like San Francisco to Dallas and then to Atlanta, and then to DC and then to New York. They’re all really different. So I guess I learned, I mean, I already knew that I wouldn’t say I learned it. But I saw just how far an extent the places vary from city to city and state to state. I also learned that a lot of people don’t know who I am, which I didn’t necessarily expect. I had a lot of incidents where I was in, you know, various places in public in the different cities and had people come up to me and recognize me or thank me for my work or very, you know, just say that they like what I do. And that’s, I mean, that’s something I get from time to time in the UK, depending on where I am, because I get people who recognize me for my music, but I’m to be in places that I’d never been to before. And to have that happen. It was it really showed me the impact that I’m having not just locally, but on a on an international level. So that was really, really encouraging. So yeah, those are a couple of things.

Rob McNealy
fame is an interesting thing. I’m not quite famous, but I know a lot of Famous people and and and that rise in getting accustomed to it you know it’s kind of like it’s like from what they’ve told me is you have to like kind of grow into it because you’re not used to it at first I used to live in Ireland I actually studied over there and worked over there you know long time ago probably before you’re born at this point but I was you know it’s kind of interesting you know and I’ve honestly you know, Ireland’s a lot smaller than you know, the republic’s a lot smaller than the UK but it’s like when I tried to explain to my friends that were Irish that had never been to the United States. I said, No offense, this is not me being you know, kind of like this ugly American but your entire country smaller than my state. And we have like 50 more of them in mind. You know, I originally came from Michigan. The Detroit area is where I grew up. I live out Western and Utah now Salt Lake City, Utah, and what you know, and they get like a kind of offended and they said you really don’t understand until you like really come to our country. The United States is not a homogeneous Is coral culture it’s not a homogeneous continent, it is very dirt that’s iconic. But you know what I’m saying? It’s a country and it’s very different all the way around. And I always like to see people’s perspectives that you know, spend time here to see Yo, holy crap. Yeah, it’s not there isn’t just like this one TV stereotypical American thing, right? There’s very, very big differences between the different states and even within a state. On top of that, you know, Texas is very different between, you know, Houston and Dallas. Even people. Yeah, I didn’t I didn’t

Zuby Udezue – Rapper and Author
get to I didn’t make it out to Houston, unfortunately, but I went to Austin, Dallas and Fort Worth.

Rob McNealy
What was your Do you have a favorite or do you want to not say didn’t love the place you go? What was your favorite place?

Zuby Udezue – Rapper and Author
My favorite state would have been Texas, probably. Just in general. But um, I liked most of the cities I visited in terms of like, it depends on what level in terms of opportunities and Just cool stuff happening. Like the most cool stuff happened in Los Angeles, but I would probably not want to live there. For example, I think places like Nashville and Austin and Dallas and Fort Worth are a lot more livable than la than New York and San Francisco. But um, it really depends on what you’re after. I mean, I went there primarily to do a bunch of interviews and add podcast invitations and just opportunities for all the stuff that I do. So I primarily hit some of the major cities I didn’t make it out to all of them. I would certainly like to in the future, but um, yeah, I guess. Asking favorite is is kind of a tricky one. But I did really like Texas there. I just felt like, I like the vibe there. I like the people. I think I’m on that wavelength. In some ways. Texas is one of those places to be honest. I kind of liked it before I’d ever been to it. I know a lot of people from there. I know quite a bit about the state and stuff like that and it always just dropped Me in some way that I didn’t really want to visit because I always seem to, whenever I meet people from Texas, I always seem to like them and get on with them and be on some similar wavelength. So I found the same thing when I was out there for a couple of weeks.

Rob McNealy
Well, I think you hit on something, it’s really interesting that you went and did a lot of interviews, and you got on some really major ones, I mean, Joe Rogan, and some of these other you know, big conservative podcasts and, and that’s one of the things that really intrigued me, you know, about you is, you know, okay, you got this English guy, right. So, usually off the bat, you know, English guys are going to typically be more on the American spectrum, at least politically a little more left leaning, and then, you know, you know, you’re black or person of color, and typically, then that’s also going to be generally by American standards, they tend to lean a little more left, and then you’re in hip hop in rap, and that also tends to be very left leaning, but you’re not.

Zuby Udezue – Rapper and Author
You know, all those things. You said, I don’t even know if that’s really the case.

Rob McNealy
Fair enough.

Zuby Udezue – Rapper and Author
Think that way? I don’t think it’s really the case.

Rob McNealy
It certainly it certainly seems that way.

Zuby Udezue – Rapper and Author
It does seem that way. Yeah, for a lot of reasons. And then it might lean that way in some aspects, but in a lot of other ways. I don’t really think it does. I just think that illusion.

Rob McNealy
And so but the illusions prevalent, it’s out there. So you went on a lot of these really conservative talk shows and, you know, so I guess I just need to get this out there. Are you a republican? I’m not even American. I know. Um, but are you? I bet you would consider yourself a conservative politically, at least on some stuff. Sure.

Zuby Udezue – Rapper and Author
I don’t label myself what people want to label me. I don’t mind. I don’t personally label myself because well for a whole bunch of reasons. Because people have different meanings and interpretations and presumptions that come with certain labels. So I prefer to let anybody else label me if people want to know my certain views on certain things. I’m happy to explain them and express the epistemology behind my thinking and my conclusions. But um, yeah, I’m not I don’t mind being called a conservative, I don’t mind being called libertarian, I probably don’t mind being called a traditional or classical liberal. I mean, depending on who you talk to all these labels can be quite quite different things. I mean, even the definitions between you know, liberal and conservative even between the UK and the US, there’s, there’s quite a bit a bit of a variance. So yeah, I mean, if I were in the USA, I would certainly be more along the lines of Republicans on most issues. But I generally just, you know, from from thing to thing, issue to issue. I, you know, I’m not I’m not sort of totally down one line or the other and I don’t, I don’t believe most people are. I think that’s just kind of the binary thinking and sort of Thinking that can occur when there’s only two sort of viable options, then people seem okay, they need to either totally aligned down this way or totally aligned down that way. But I mean some acid on Joe Rogan, right? I said, it’s funny because we live in a time where people are saying that politics is binary, but gender is a spectrum, right? So yeah, I think the whole idea that it’s either left or right, or red or blue, is, yeah, people talk a lot about social constructs. I do think that’s kind of a genuine social construct. So I certainly lean conservative on some issues. I would also lean certainly in the not in this sort of weird hyper woke progressive, leftist sense, liberal, but in terms of like the normal liberal sense. I’m also a liberal on certain issues. It just depends on what it is and what I think makes sense and what I think is moral and ethical and correct and also what

Rob McNealy
works. You know, I think that’s a good point what works and what doesn’t. I mean, you’re not shy about your political views on anything. In fact, you can be very controversial, you know, things you post on Twitter and things. And I mean, you even reference in conservative icon Jordan Peterson in your music. So you definitely bring politics up. And they tend to be by a lot of people’s standards more right wing at least the United States. Do you think that helps or hurts your career in any way?

Zuby Udezue – Rapper and Author
Seems to have helped. If I’m going by, by the past 365 days, I’d certainly say it’s helped. I mean, I’m not someone whose politics have changed significantly. I mean, I put out my first album in 2006. And even before I was making music, my views have not shifted much I’ve probably shifted on maybe like two or three issues in the past 15 years. And I’m not even someone who I don’t know i a lot of people view me through a political lens. But I think I’m only interested in politics kind of on the high level, the big idea level, I’m not really so interested in it on the party level. So that’s why you won’t see me tweeting a lot about like specific parties or specific politicians or even breaks it and stuff like that. But the nitty gritty of it kind of bores me, but the overarching ideas and ideals that runs alongside culture and morality and psychology, and religion and other stuff that I think is a lot more interesting. And it’s hard to talk about some of those aspects of society and humanity, either as individuals or as groups without it, crossing over into politics, that’s just kind of natural.

Rob McNealy
So from a high level, do you think culture at least Western culture is going the right direction right now? What this whole woke thing and no,

Zuby Udezue – Rapper and Author
it’s No.

Rob McNealy
Why Why do you think?

Zuby Udezue – Rapper and Author
Absolutely not? Not even not as not a smidgen?

Rob McNealy
Where’s it going? Where are we going? I guess that’s the question because I have my own opinions. And I don’t think I disagree with you on that many things, either. But where do you think we’re headed right now with the current state of affairs in the West?

Zuby Udezue – Rapper and Author
Well, I think a lot of people are trying to drive it off a cliff. And, and I think that it’s important for the moderate and sensible people to do that part to contain that. That’s one of the reasons why in the past year, it seems like to a lot of people, it seems like I’ve suddenly become a lot more vocal and outspoken. And that’s why because there comes a stage where you can’t really just sit back and acquiesce and just just watch because the people who are a lot of people who I think are trying to push things in the wrong direction, they’re not going to shut up. They’re very loud. They’re a bold, they’re very vocal. So you need people who are more reasonable and more logical and more rational. Have a better grasp on certain things, or at least an alternative opinion, to also be able to have that conversation and to join up. And if you see something that’s going on out there, whether that’s in your school, your workplace, online offline, and you see something is going in a really bad direction in in either in either way, in any direction, then it’s important to, you know, not just shut up and let it happen, because that’s how bad things take place. Right? So it’s important to sort of balance that out and to make sure that the communication channels stay open. That’s why I love podcasts. That’s why I love being able to have these discussions with people because, you know, as long as people are talking, they’re not they’re not fighting. That’s why I don’t like the idea of censorship. I don’t like the sort of D platforming or the silencing of voices on social media, all that kind of stuff. I mean, that concerns me because all that was going to do is polarize people further People think it’s a solution because it might look like a solution in the short term. But in the long term, I do think that’s going to create far more problems than it’s going to potentially solve. And I don’t think a lot of people have the foresight, nor the understanding of historic history nor human psychology to really get why that’s the case. They think that if you kind of take someone off Twitter that that person no longer exists or their ideas no longer exist and stuff like that. And what is likely to happen in reality is by ostracizing that person and completely excluding them from the conversation. You know, firstly, I’m not sure if that’s moral or or ethical or even legal in some cases, but then, you know, you’re you’re kind of pushing them into the hands of people who are potentially a lot more extreme and would love to get their hands on someone who feels like society or these platforms or whatever has ostracize them. And, you know, I’d rather I’d rather have bad ideas out in the open And then have them hidden in silence. Because if an idea is really bad, or it’s really unethical or it really doesn’t have any support, then you don’t need to fear it being you shouldn’t fear it being voiced. Because as long as you have people who are willing to push back against it, then you can just expose that idea for, for what it is. That’s the way I look at it.

Rob McNealy
Well, they say sunshine is the best disinfectant. You know, and and I don’t know who said that, but I do believe that to be the case. And I think, with this outrage culture and it in the thing is, is, you know, I’m an American, and this outrage culture is getting really scary to me, you know, where we just want to, you know, shut somebody down and take away their rights. And, you know, and, you know, obviously, polls can be a little dubious at times, but, you know, the polls seem to be indicating that a lot of at least on the millennial side, support, you know, getting rid of the First Amendment, and of course, they all hate the Second Amendment, but, And that, to me is just I kind of blamed Government education has been a complete failure. We don’t teach critical thinking we don’t teach, you know, logic and rhetoric and we don’t teach, you know, history. And I think you touched on this a little bit. You know, that gets into a little bit about this anger call. I think it’s almost like our culture has been deliberately the keep stoking this anger in our society right now, at least in the States. This since this last political. The last since Trump came to office over the last couple of years. You know, I’m 47. And so I’ve been through a lot of administrative, you know, changes in presidential campaign elections over my life. And the one thing that we saw that was different, what’s different about the Trump presidency, and I’m not a fan of Trump Personally, I didn’t vote for him. But what I think is interesting is that typically after you have a changing with administration, people are, you know, a little butthurt and disappointed for a week or two. After that election happens. It’s never had, it’s never not been butthurt since he got elected, it’s never died down. It’s Seems like it keeps festering and as much and it’s funny because I think he’s just as a noxious as you know, is that I think he’s completely obnoxious and I can understand why he what he says pisses people off. But if you actually look at what he votes for, and I’m a big believer that I hate politicians, what they say don’t like what they say, Don’t listen to what they say, I look at what they do, what laws do they sign, what power do they actually change and enact? And really from one president to the another, the the really important policies really don’t change very much, but yet the rhetoric around it does. And if you look at what Trump does, he’s not really done anything very much different than the Obama administration. He keeps doubling down on the debt and things like that. Those are the things that I care about what do they actually do? But and so this anger is interesting and a lot of times that anger spills over into culture and and one of the things about what I think is interesting about your music is that you know, your your music isn’t angry. It seems like no, no, not at all. You really push a really positive message, I think in a more of an empowering message, which is kind of different than what a lot of hip hop artists are really doing. And why why do you focus on the positive? Well, I mean, it seems like if so many people in that in this industry in this genre of music are more negative. Why are you a positive guy?

Zuby Udezue – Rapper and Author
Well, because I am a positive guy naturally. And also there’s so much negativity out there that why would I want to contribute to that more? That’s not what people need people need encouragement. People need positivity people need to be feel emboldened and empowered to improve themselves to go after their dreams to be better people for themselves, for their families, for society, everything like that. So why would I want to go and preach murder, death kill, and all this stuff when I can put out a positive message? I mean, I’ve only got so many only got so many words to work within a song So if I can make a song that’s going to make you feel aggressive and want to go in, you know, I don’t wanna make music that people commit drive bys to keep it real. You know, firstly, that doesn’t, that’s not my background, right? I want to make music with people set gym records to I want to make music that people feel inspired to, I don’t know, go out and get a new job or be successful or start a business or whatever it is, man, anything, anything positive even just to just to believe in themselves a little bit more. There’s so much negativity out there in the world, not just in music, but in general, man. There’s so much negativity out there. You turn on the news, you know, the What do they say if it bleeds, it leads, right? news is just constant fear, fear, fear, fear mongering. So I don’t watch the news. I don’t I don’t want to TV. I don’t read newspapers. It’s just negativity, negativity, negativity, fear, fright, like awful stuff, and it never ends. It’s the same even in entertainment in lots of music. Not all music, but in some music And you know, it’s just, yeah, I mean, and life life is a balance. But like I say, there’s so much negative out there already. And I feel that the negative currently outweighs the positive. So, I don’t want to I’m not interested in my legacy being someone who contributed just more negativity into the world. So from the very beginning, I was like, Okay, I’m not gonna, I’m not going to take that path. I’m not going to rap about that song. I’m not going to rap about those topics. I’m not going to put my put profanity in my music. I’m not going to use the N word in my music, all that stuff. I mean, firstly, that’s not who I am in real life, and I’m not going to fabricate to pretend I’m something in my music, that I’m not in reality, you can go back and listen to all my songs over the last 13 years. everything I’m saying is, everything you’ll hear there is consistent with what I’m saying. Now, that’s never that’s never changed. So yeah, I mean, those are the main reasons so a combination of you know, my own background, how I was raised my own personality, my own message, my mission with what I’m trying to achieve with my music. I say my goal is to, I want my words to have a positive impact on over 10 million people. So through through my music, through my interviews through my podcast, public speaking anything I do, I want to be able to die and say cool, you know, there’s 10 million people on earth, or more, who, if you say zoobi to them, they’ll be like, Okay, cool. Yeah, I like that guy, or he had some kind of positive impact or motivation or inspiration in my life. That’s really where my head’s at. That’s what my heart is.

Rob McNealy
So in preparing for this interview, which actually believe it or not, I did. You know, I was listening to some of your songs, right? I wanted to get a feel for it. And I was listening to perseverance and I was listening to glory. And it was I said to my wife, you know, I was listening to she’s like, what are you listening to? I’m like, I’m going to talk to this guy. I want to see what he’s saying. And I’m like, his rap is different. And and it’s funny because I got some and I actually am old school. So I actually have NWA and Eminem and stuff, you know, in my own music library, and I said, his rap Reminds me of like, self help hip hop.

Zuby Udezue – Rapper and Author
No. Yeah.

Rob McNealy
You know, seriously, and I go, this is kind of interesting because it wasn’t like, I got wrapped, I got little kids. And I’m like, I can’t even list them out in rap albums in my house, right? Because I don’t want my kids here and some of that NWA stuff, right? Old. Easy, right? But I said, you know, it’s interesting that, you know, you’re kind of, you’re breaking a mold as far as I can see. I mean, and I’m not going to be I’m not going to try to be as I’m not the super hip hop guy, right? I just, I’m into all sorts of things. But you know, you are breaking a mold. There’s not a lot of hip hop artists that are really kind of focusing on that positive. And you know, I don’t know keeping it pG 13, so to speak. So do you and I respect that right? You are doing something different when I’m talking to you and not try and talk some other guy because I can’t stand a lot of the guys out there that are just mumble rapping around. And and so the question I would have for you, do you think that breaking that mold actually is helping your career or do you think It would hinder it like, has anybody ever come up to you and said, Hey, if you get a little more raw on this thing will sign you and you’ll get bigger? Or do you think that you know you’re going on the path that you want to end with the trajectory that you want? Because you’re breaking a mold?

Zuby Udezue – Rapper and Author
Yeah, man, I’m someone who. I’m not someone who sacrifices, my principles and my ethics for short term gain in anything. That’s just not how I roll. I’m not someone who, who bends to appease other people. You’re asking before about some of my some of my socio political views, you ask about my music with everything. I’m consistent with who I truly am. And if my goal were to just make a lot of money, or simply become famous, or whatever, there’s other things I would be doing if my goal were to maximize my income. I wouldn’t have left a job as a management consultant to become a professional musician independently, right? Whenever Someone says I’m in it from I’m like, Are you insane? Like I would have been, like, you know, I took a huge pay cut to become a full time musician. But in the long term with the way my vision is and with what my goal is, it’s like, yeah, this is the path that I need to I need to walk. And it might take a while for the world to kind of get it. But I’m not going to change my entire message or even my entire genre or type of music or something to whatever might be currently popular on the radio for six months, just to try to win over some people who aren’t really my real fans anyway, I figured by just by being myself, by being true to myself, both in my music outside of my music, on social media or whatever, not everybody’s gonna like it. And I’m happy with not everybody liking what I do or not even liking me that took me you know, a little bit of time to accept and kind of get used to because when you first start out in music, you kind of want everybody to like you, and you don’t want to rock the boat too much because you don’t want unsettled people or polarized people or anything like that, but as I’ve gotten older, as I’ve gotten more experienced as I’ve gained a better understanding of what it is that I myself believe in, and what I’m not willing to compromise on, or waver on or whatever. And as I felt more emboldened to, and felt it more necessary to voice some of that, what’s happened is my audience has grown 1520 x this year, since February, I’ve gained hundreds of thousands of fans just this year. And that came from me just continuing to be authentic. So I haven’t changed. It’s just that you know, it took it took a while for the world to come around to it and for the message to be particularly powerful. Right, a lot of the stuff I say, I think, you know, whether that’s in interviews or that’s on social media or whatever, I think a lot of it would have been considered. I feel the same way. You mentioned Jordan Peterson earlier. I feel the Same way about him. Right? I think a lot of the stuff he says, you know, 15 years ago would have been considered common sense, or maybe a little bit mundane or banal or something. It’s like, yeah, of course, you should clean your room and work on yourself first. But in 2018 2019, these messages have become somewhat lost in modern Western society. So it’s necessary, again, to say some stuff, which may almost seem obvious, and, you know, and seem common sensical. And there are so many people who are afraid to say that stuff, right. And so by someone being willing to stick their neck out and say some of the things that other people aren’t willing to not for the sake of being controversial, or causing problems or just trolling or triggering people or whatever, you know, with an actual reason behind it, then I found a lot of people gravitate to that because a lot of people feel like they can’t speak up or they can’t necessarily articulate things in The way they’d like to be able to one thing i a comment I get a lot now, both in real life and online is people kind of saying, Man, you you say things in a way that I feel or I agree with, but I can’t. I can’t articulate and express them in the way that you are able to. And really that’s what I’m that’s what writing music is even about. Being a songwriter. If you had asked me what makes a good, a good songwriter, or a good rapper, I’d say it’s someone who’s able to articulate things in a way that people relate to and connect with, in a way that most people can. Comedians do the same thing, right? They take stuff that’s I mean, that’s what that’s the funniest comedy when it stuff that you you’ve kind of thought that way when you felt that thing before, but you wouldn’t have been able to put it together in the way that comedian did.

Rob McNealy
It’s funny, I have a really dark sense of humor, very sarcastic, and I’ve actually been I’m looking at doing some funny kind of stand up stuff and some of the stuff my wife just looks at me, she’s like, you can’t say that in public. And I’m like, but they’re all thinking it too. Yeah. You know, and, and I think, you know, they say, you know, you know, tell people the truth, that’s great, but make sure you make them laugh or they’re gonna kill you. Right, you know, and I think that’s where we are right now. And, and, and I’m very, I don’t care anymore where I am. I mean, I say stuff on Twitter that gets me pissed off or people pissed off at me because, you know, I’m, you know, it’s when it goes on on most social issues. I’m very liberal on how I think government should interact with people. But I think personally, I live a very conservative life I just, you know, I’m like friends, I think people if they want to do drugs, do drugs, but on the other hand, I think it’s a bad idea. So I tell my kids not to do drugs, but I don’t think the state being involved with that helps the situation in fact that usually creates more problems and you know, and the one thing that’s interesting like it’s all on assault this election cycle, and I think it’s because so much of the American me is I don’t know straight up communist at this point I don’t know how to define it. But I’m pretty much everybody on the left running for president is communist is all I can see. And I know a lot of and I don’t see that, you know, I read history I just finished a book about the finish war and I just finished a book about called bread famine, which talks about, you know, what happened to Ukraine during the Soviet empire and, and so I read history, right. It’s not like, you know, and and it’s funny in even if you read gulag archipelago, which I definitely if you can get through it. It’s a really enlightening book. Yeah. About a third of the way through Volume One or two.

Zuby Udezue – Rapper and Author
I’ve actually I’ve actually got the, the like, I guess you’d call it abridged version where they’re, they’ve put the whole thing together. So I’m actually listening to it as an audio book.

Rob McNealy
Yeah. And and it’s it’s lengthy, but the length, it’s interesting, because, you know, when I started reading that and listening to the language and how people were You know, basically the recounting of how the propaganda was in the Soviet Union. And then you just turn on CNN, and and listen to any of these people running for office. And it’s literally saying the same thing. And they’re demonizing cool locks. These billionaires are the coolest, but the fact is, when they when they say billionaire, they mean anyone making $200,000 a year. That’s a cool lock. And it’s funny because it’s the same playbook, almost verbatim. It’s not even unique. But we don’t even teach history in this country. So people don’t even know any different that this is all this is just a repeat. It’s a rerun. It’s a

Zuby Udezue – Rapper and Author
do you do you think that people saying it even know that it’s a rerun? I don’t think so.

Rob McNealy
I would say, Well, I would say like the Bernie Sanders type absolutely does because he spent time in the Soviet Union. So I think he probably does. And I think he’s probably a true believer. I think some of the other ones are just, they’re just pawns trying to get power and they’ll say whatever they’re told to say by their handlers. But I think the The thing that kind of scares me right now is that these kids are like, you know, anywhere from you know, 20 to 30 seems to be, you know, they’re just, they’re just espousing this, this communism, this this socialism, and that they’re all victims. And it’s funny and I just say look, I you know, I’m not a billionaire like I’m not a rich Dude, you know, but I can say that if you’re going to blame your life’s failures, it’s not these those fault or it’s not, you know, Bill Gates fault you’re struggling.

Zuby Udezue – Rapper and Author
It’s not they’ve made they’ve made life better for you in fact,

Rob McNealy
uh, yeah, it’s always people on their iPhones on Twitter on their Microsoft computer in their court dynamic, you know, and and part of that just, they’re young. I mean, I get it, but you know, I grew up poor so I know what that looks like and and really in and I just posted a tweet earlier today that talked a little bit like look, I grew up poor, my parents made bad decisions with money. I was raised to be financially illiterate. I didn’t understand personal management, personal finances. And you know, but I never blamed anybody else. I blamed my parents when I was angry and young. But sure, I didn’t blame rich people. I said, You know, I wanted to learn from them because I wanted back then I said, hey, look, I don’t why knew even when I was in high school, I don’t want to have my life like it is right now. And what do I need to do to get better? And I looked for mentors to help me and I looked for books, and I read books on personal finance and small business and, and, and where I am today is a much different, you know, standard of living, though, and I grew up with, and it was because I made it and it was hard. It was hard. And as it’s supposed to be. I think it is I don’t think he I don’t think you’d become strong. Growing up being a victim. I think. In the end, the thing is when people and this is where politicians I think are pretty smart, is that if they make people that are failures, or people that are struggling, and I don’t mean that in a negative way, I mean, everyone fails. I’ve failed more than I’ve been successful in my life, but you got it but going back to your song, perseverance And this one I like that song is that you got to keep getting back up, you got to keep doing it. And, you know, you’re an overnight success, like 15 years in the making. You know what I’m saying? It’s like, it’s like, how many and I’m gonna bet, you know, without even knowing all the stuff you went through how many times were probably people told you why are you quitting your job did me musician, I’m gonna bet you had people like question that decision process. You know, and I’ve had people do the same thing when I wanted to be an entrepreneur, right? It’s like, well, how, you know, how can you just not have a paycheck every week? You know that that and I’m like, Look, you know, I don’t want to be a slave to a paycheck. Sure. Because if you if you get a paycheck, that’s all you’re going to make. Why would you limit yourself?

Zuby Udezue – Rapper and Author
It’s always lonely. I mean, I always feel some kind of bond between artists and entrepreneurs. Because it’s a it’s a lonely path, you know, because that’s only a relatively small percentage of the population. It’s always it’s always going to be a minority and it probably should be. But there are so many things people go through. Whether it’s starting a business, or doing something creative, whether that’s acting, singing, being a rapper, or doing both of them combined as I do, and yeah, there are certain things that are. It’s hard to explain to someone else who isn’t also, or hasn’t also been on that same kind of journey. I mean, it’s just it’s a whole different mentality. The highs are higher, the lows are lower. And just having that ultimate feeling of Yeah, man, this is this is totally on me. I mean, any success I get cool, like I’m taking the I’m taking credit for that. You didn’t make.

Rob McNealy
A friend of mine just got his first Ferrari. Now it’s not even new Ferrari. He was a use Ferrari, but he’s an entrepreneur, him and his wife I’ve known for a long time. They started their business 1516 years ago now. They now currently employ over 60 people they created 60 jobs, they pay a barber minimum wage. And some of the jobs are like entry level non skilled kind of jobs. He just bought his first Ferrari. Like, it wasn’t even that much, you know, considering what a new Ferrari can cost. And it’s funny when he posted pictures of it and I said, Dude, virtual high five, but he was surprised at how many people were negative about that. And we’re like shooting I’m like, Dude, that guy I cuz I help I worked in his store with him. And when he was younger, and they only had one star nine, three retail locations and, and I literally was in there when he was helping putting in his floors, because he’s putting in his own floors for his store. I mean, and you’re like, Dude, this guy worked his ass off 5060 hundred hours a week for like a decade before they really started making money. And now they’ve created jobs for people that wouldn’t have had him otherwise. And now to celebrate he’s got enough money that he can make cash for you know, it’s not even that expensive a car but less than 100 grand. Yeah, and the people is funny and sad at the same time. How many people would shit on that?

Zuby Udezue – Rapper and Author
Yeah, it’s um, it doesn’t surprise me anymore. You know, it does not surprise me. I mean, again, I’ve been doing music since 2006. And one reason I’ve been able to be so resilient, and I guess astute in some ways this year, for people who are kind of seeing me for the first time is, it’s like, this isn’t new. It’s just the volumes gone up. Right? Like I’ve been dealing with, both on the love side and on the hate side, right having people, whether that’s people recognize you in public or want your autograph or hating on you on some internet forum or talking smack on you on YouTube or social media, like I’ve been dealing like, it’s been more this year than ever before. But I’ve had that slow build of over a decade to get used to it. And with what I’ve seen, it’s like, it doesn’t matter. I mean, you’ve got two different types of people you’ve got, you have celebrators and you have haters, and that’s what it is like, you can have someone who, like I love seeing other people succeed. When I see someone else succeed, if I see someone post online, like Yeah, I just did this, whether it’s I just hit a million views on My YouTube channel, I just, I just released my hundredth podcast episode. I just got promoted at work, I just started a business Whatever. I’m in there, congratulations, man, well done like love it love it. It inspires me. I’m like awesome. Other people are succeeding, you have other people. And I don’t even know what the split is the other this might even be the majority, who see someone else have some kind of success or some sign of looking like success. And their immediate emotional reaction is not the thing well done for that person. If they can do it, I can do it. Their thought is either jealousy or envy, or a feeling that somehow by that person succeeding, instead of taking it as inspiration, this is coming back to that whole billionaire thing, right? It comes from this idea of, you know, you have people who think that life is zero sum, so by someone else succeeding, they then can’t succeed, whereas it’s the opposite like people aren’t. People are not poor because billionaires exists like people have this idea. And it’s a it’s a, it’s a scarily prevalent idea because people don’t understand economics, that people are poor, because the billionaires are just hoarding all the wealth, right? There’s just X amount of money in the world and the nonsense, these people are just hoarding it, and so no one else can get it. And so all we need to do is like, take it off them by force or whatever. And it’s like, no, that’s not how it works, right? Bill Gates having a billion dollars, takes nothing away from me. In fact, quite the opposite, right. Like, there’s nothing stopping me from also earning you know, if I if I were capable of and I had the right idea, whatever, I can also earn a billion dollars. But you know, it’s not it’s not like having Okay, you can only have this many and it’s going to stop. So people don’t understand that the pie is always growing. And so as a result of that, I think that I mean, it might be some kind of primal instincts because some things I guess are zero so if you’ve got a certain amount of food, okay to say an actual pipe people talk about piece of the pie if you have an actual pie You have eight people, and someone literally does eat half of it, then you’ve only got half left for the other seven people. So like, that’s like, Hey, man, that’s not cool. But that’s not how the economy or money or success

Rob McNealy
because other people can make size of theirs.

Zuby Udezue – Rapper and Author
Exactly. Exactly. You can keep making pies. Yeah,

Rob McNealy
so I was gonna say, you know, one of the things I think that a lot of people miss, and the zero sum game kind of thing is that there’s a there’s an infinite resource that no one ever talks about. And that’s human creativity and ingenuity is unlimited. We can solve most of our problems. And you know what, you don’t even need most people to really be focused on that I have this kind of magic number mind brain that, you know, my experience is 3% of anybody as the one that’s doing everything, you know, 3% of the big creators 3% of the big thinkers 3% of the ones that are really changing the world. 97% are along for the ride typically, but You bet. So to me, I don’t even care if 97% I care about helping those 3% make all the difference. And the difference is the infinite creativity. I just saw a little clip from Bezos, like he’s the the late phases and Bill Gates are the big bad guys did your because politicians are kind of pulling them out. Right. But it was interesting is it was a clip from 97. Right? And so it was like, Amazon was like three years old. And dude, the guy was smart. Right? And, you know, you go look, and he basically I put a post on my Twitter a couple days ago. And it was like looking at, you know, why he wanted, you know, online store because he saw the trend. He knew that this is going to be a big thing. I want to do internet stuff. He didn’t go into the bookstore because he had a passion for books. He picked the books because it had the most number of titles in one industry that would affect so many other industries. So it was the great place to start. And most people don’t know this, but especially these kids that are all communists and they’re 20 years old. Is that They were a bookstore for like six or seven years. And all they did is books until they, you know, they are not but it was the 90s, early 2000. A lot of people don’t even know that anymore. They’re like, Oh, Amazon’s and everything like, no, they started and got traction in one industry. And then they went to the next industry, they disrupted books and then disrupted music. And most people don’t know that. And so it’s like, but he had a plan. And he’s like, This clip is amazing. You should go take a look at it, because it just says, look, we picked this this and this is why we did this. And it’s like, Dude, that guy didn’t get rich by accident. He didn’t inherit his money. He was freaking smart. And he used the creativity and that was one of the biggest employers on the planet. And and so it’s like, okay, he just didn’t fall into it. And and people who don’t understand these things are ridiculous. But I know we’re getting close on time. You know, I want to hit on one of the things back to this whole concept of perseverance and and being, you know, that overlap between artists and entrepreneurs. You’ve recently released an E book, and it’s called zombies. Strong advice. zoobi Guide for fitness for everybody. So tell me a little bit of what made you write a book? And then tell me a little bit about what it what it’s about.

Zuby Udezue – Rapper and Author
Yeah, sure. So I’ve been training for actually longer than I’ve been been rapping, I’ve been going to the gym since I was like 15 years old, started off not really knowing what I was doing and then stumbling my way along and really working out what I was doing. Maybe when I was my 919 or so or my early 20s and making good progress, you know, getting stronger, improving my physique, honing, my diet, everything like that. And I wanted to basically write a book that would be a simple and concise guide to what people need to know about mindset, nutrition and training. So for it’s primarily aimed at beginner to intermediate level, whether people want to build muscle, burn fat, gain, weight, lose weight, eat better, feel better, trained better. So it’s a it’s a relatively short book. It’s under 100 pages. And I wanted to just lay it out in simple layman’s terms of this is what you need to know and do away with the stuff that you don’t need to know. There’s so much confusing, conflicting information and misinformation out there. And nutrition and training are two topics, which are actually relatively simple once you really understand the basics. So I wanted to lay out the basics for people in a way that they can really understand it, and take that and essentially run with it for life. It’s the book that I wish someone had given me when I was 15. And just said, Look, just read this, understand these principles. Don’t get sucked into all the nonsense and do this. And if you’re consistent with it, and you work hard, you will achieve whatever goal you are aiming at in terms of your physique and your health and your strength and so on. So that’s really what strong advice is. So I put it out there as an E book initially, and you know, sold sold well. And then lots of people started asking me for physical copies. So I did a physical run in August, which sold out in a couple of weeks time. So those All went and now as we record this, we’re approaching Christmas in seven weeks. So I’m currently doing the next pre order for the physical books. And I’ve also recorded the audiobook version when I was in Nashville. And there will be an audiobook version coming as well. In the next couple of weeks. I narrated it myself. I’m a rapper, so I figured I had to. So yeah, so it’ll be available on ebook, physical and audio book. So yeah, that is strong advice, newbies guide to fitness for everybody.

Rob McNealy
Where can I get the book?

Zuby Udezue – Rapper and Author
The book is available on my website, Team zoobi.com. And if you go to if you wanted to get the physical copy right now the best place to look is just if you go on my Twitter at zoobi music zUv why music, then? I’ve currently got the physical book preorder available there. I will put it on my website as well. That’s a good reminder. But I’m at the moment for the E book. Yeah, Team zoobi calm and the physical. You can get that via the link on my Twitter.

Rob McNealy
Zuby have had a really great conversation with you today and I do appreciate your time and you know, I’ve really enjoyed your message and I think what you’re putting out there is really good positive stuff and I want you to keep up with it, man, you’re doing some really killer stuff. I appreciate it man. Thank you.

Episode Links

Audio Interview
Video Interview
Interview Transcript

Lea Thompson – Girl Gone Crypto Transcript

Lea Thompson - Girl Gone Crypto

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

Rob McNealy
Today I’m talking to Leah Thompson. And she is also known on the web as a Girl Gone crypto, you know, and every time I say that, I get this vision of Girl Gone Wild, which was those videos back in like the late 90s, early 2000s. And I’m like, I mean, and I said this, my wife, and I said, I’m interviewing That Girl Gone crypto, she’s like, don’t say something stupid. And I’m like, and I said, you know, I’m going to say something stupid. So I’m just going to get out of the way because I’m going to accidentally call her Girl Gone Wild, and then it’s just going to look stupid. So I said, I get that out of the way. So how are you?

Lea Thompson AKA Girl Gone Crypto
I’m good. Thanks so much for having me on Rob. I know it’s kind of a catchy play of words there. You know, that’s kind of what I was going for. But I know I apologize for all the people that trip over my my channel name.

Rob McNealy
Oh, you know, when I was going back through and and I’ve been on Twitter a long time, and people always ask, well, how do you get this following because I’m like, I was like number 62 in the world by followers at my peak, because I came in so early, I came up, I got my Twitter account just after they started. And so it’s like, and I just named it my name. I never like made a handle or you know, and I’m just always stuck with that. And I was like, maybe I need to do something interesting, but it just kind of stuck. And then I got people like, well, you should worry about your personal brand. So I’m like, okay, that’s my personal brand. My name makes it easy. But then there’s like, you know, there’s a Rob McNealy, who’s like this really successful British like motorcycle racer. So like, I have to compete with a British motorcycle racer for SEO on my own name, which is kind of funny.

Lea Thompson AKA Girl Gone Crypto
Which actually that’s kind of part of why I went was something else because SEO on my name Lea Thompson. It’s spelled exactly the same as the Back to the Future actress. And so I was like that is a hopeless case. I am never going to win that SEO battle.

Rob McNealy
But at least you think about that in SEO is a thing. And it seems like crypto people don’t get SEO, and you lots of other things they don’t get as far as marketing. So anyways, I digress. Tell me a little bit about yourself. How did you get into crypto?

Lea Thompson AKA Girl Gone Crypto
Yeah, so my kind of crypto journey I mean, I heard about Bitcoin back. I don’t I don’t know I want to say like 1415 but it’s just more than I’d heard about it. Like some people that I knew were mining it. But I didn’t really ask more questions. I didn’t really look into it too much. But then in kind of early 17, I stumbled across a blogging platform called steam it I don’t know if you are familiar yet okay. Most people in the crypto space are but you know, and I, I hadn’t really made content before. But I was like, well, this looks kind of fun. Maybe I’ll you know, I play some a couple different instruments. And I was like, maybe I’ll just make a little ukulele cover and post that and kind of see, see what happens. And, you know, it made like $100 or something. And I was like, Whoa, what is this?

Rob McNealy
What did you cover with your little ukulele?

Lea Thompson AKA Girl Gone Crypto
My first cover was creep. Actually, so nice. Yeah. And I, oh, gosh, I should dig up the photo. I tried to look creepy in the photo. I thought that’d be funny. So that was just kind of that got me down the rabbit hole because I was like, well, where did this money come from? And how is it created? Like what now? What do I do with it? What is this thing called an exchange and so it just kind of once I started actually contributing regularly on the steam blockchain and, and posting content, often I was like, Okay, I need to actually learn about this stuff. Like how does any of this work? So That’s kind of what you know got me going down the rabbit hole of crypto and just been kind of, I would say growing my knowledge ever since I’ve been on the steam blockchain for a few years now like I said posting content and I kept getting requests to speak at different crypto conferences because people were following me on Steam and even though I wasn’t even making crypto content, I was just doing like ukuleles and random things. I was like, you know, maybe I should actually dig into this a little bit more and start making crypto content. So that’s when gergan crypto was born probably about four or five months ago. So that channel and brand is pretty new, but it’s been just so much fun. I’m so glad that I did. So is crypto and content creation your full time occupation right now or is this just like a side hustle at this point? Right now it’s just a side hustle. I’m kind of intentionally I don’t wanna say growing slow because it’s that’s not necessarily accurate, but I’m trying to be really intentional about how I monetize is what I’m trying to say like, for me, I, I’m like, you know, I can manage doing this on the side, with my day job, I’ve got a great job that I you know that I enjoy. That gives me a lot of flexibility. So I’m like, as long as I can, I kind of feel like when you get desperate for money, that’s when you start making poor choices, you know, in terms of accepting sponsorships or doing things that maybe aren’t totally in line with your audience. And so for me, I would just way rather kind of hold off on not doing that much monetization at first and just kind of build my content and fill out my audience and kind of see, see where things go first. So yeah, just doing this on the side for now. So you don’t have the doctor stop. But what kind of work do you do for your day job? Don’t name the company, but when I would feel there you’re working in? Yeah, so I work in like sales and account management for a tech company. And so yeah, so I manage a lot of our big client relationships and partnerships. And so I’ve been doing that for about seven or eight years.

Rob McNealy
Very cool. So the ukulele saying Do you take requests like do you do? Do you do crypto ukulele songs? Yeah.

Lea Thompson AKA Girl Gone Crypto
You know, I’ve dabbled a little bit here and there and I actually, I’m working on at this moment a little fun Christmas Carol, kind of crypto spoof. So by the time this interview comes out of the past Christmas, you guys be able to go find it on my channel, but I’m actually planning to record it tonight. Well, if you want to say really nice, I’ll make sure I get this edited out by Tuesday. Oh, alright.

Rob McNealy
So you know, I always kind of joke around in that in crypto, there’s a lot of really cringe worthy kind of like crypto songs out there. But I said I was talking to crypto Euclid I don’t know if you know who he is but crypto Euclid and mystical oaks and they do some weird numbers and I said, you know, you haven’t made it as a crypto project until somebody has done like a really cringe worthy crypto song to your chain. So somebody needs to do an elephant themed crypto song at some point and then once we’ve done that then I’ll know that we’ve made it in arrived.

Lea Thompson AKA Girl Gone Crypto
All right, well, I might have to be that person that does it for you guys. We’ll see I’ll make it as cringy as I can I promise.

Rob McNealy
But you have but you have to have elephant special effects in the song if you’re going to do it. So you have to get some kind of like elephant like, I don’t know what do they call it when an elephant makes a noise? It’s not like a roar elephant roar is it? I don’t think elephant roar was a thing.

Lea Thompson AKA Girl Gone Crypto
I’ll look it up and I’ll include it somehow in the song I promise.

Rob McNealy
You make that you know, I’m pretty sure we can get we can put in a worker proposal fund and compensate you can make but i think i think it’s pretty interesting. So content creation and blockchain You know, that’s very interesting. It seems like everybody’s got a podcast now. And I’m wondering if there’s almost too many. Pretty much and with like, what this podcast You know, I’m not just doing crypto, I do small business stuff and I do shooting and gun stuff, baby. Basically, I’m interviewing the people I want to interview, because I find them interesting. And so I’m not just doing, you know, crypto is the one topic because I think it’s being over killed personally. And I think that’s going to change over time. I’m old enough that I went through the whole social media phrase or our phase from 10 years ago. And I used to do a radio show about small business back then and started, you know, podcasting and taking my radio shows that were over the air and putting them through. And so I was actually podcasting 10 years ago, and that that’s originally how I built a lot of my following because I had a radio show and I was always pimping out Twitter because Twitter was so new. So I was like a real early adopter of Twitter and Facebook for that matter of fact, and now and then I stopped because I just got busy actually running my business for a bunch of years. And then when we decided to get into doing crypto a couple years ago, I noticed Well, hold on, that crypto thing is really on Twitter, so maybe I should like unmothball my Twitter account and which that’s what I did. And and like, it’s funny because people like, you got fake followers. I’m like no, no been here a long time been here since you were in junior high, but thanks for playing. But it’s interesting how like, you know, crypto is actually evolved a lot there. And I’m sorry. But Twitter and Social Media have evolved a lot in that time. And there’s all these like little like all these little vertical communities now, like crypto, Twitter’s a thing. My wife’s a trained medical doctor, there’s medical Twitter, there’s lawyer Twitter, it’s just kind of interesting how Twitter has all these little pockets now of little communities inside of them. It’s kind of funny to me. So what do you find? As far as content creation goes, What do you find are some of the things that are being done right in crypto, and what are some of the things that you think are being done incorrectly or poorly in crypto?

Lea Thompson AKA Girl Gone Crypto
Ooh, okay. I think that in terms of content itself, I mean, I think that depends on how you classify content, right? Like, to me a piece of content can be a tweet, it can be a full YouTube video, it can be, you know, a podcast episode, it can be such a variety of different things. One area that I think, is I don’t see a lot of other people doing as much as they could in crypto Twitter specifically, is posting shorter native videos like to me, that is where I get the most amount of engagement. And it’s just really because it is engaging, it’s fun, like I’ll maybe take an interview that I did with someone, and I will clip out, you know, a minute or a minute and a half little section and kind of edited into something that I post on Twitter. And so that kind of helps drive traffic to the full YouTube video. But it also is just a more consumable little piece of content that gives people kind of a little taste of what they might get if they do want to go watch the whole thing. So in terms of something that I think seems to be working well that people could probably do more of is more short kind of native content. And so I guess I kind of answered what’s going well, and what could be better kind of in the same punch? Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think even like an A and another level of like, what’s not going well as I mean, I think that, and I kind of touched on this earlier when I was talking about not wanting to like kind of over show is I feel like that is a real thing that happens in the Twitter or in the crypto content creation space is people kind of like overextending the use of their audience and kind of over shilling and that it can be that can be a really tricky balance, I think of monetizing your content, but then also being like just really authentic and open with your audience about that.

Rob McNealy
You know, I’ve kind of struggled with that myself. And, for instance, as podcasts, you know, the only reason I started podcasting, again, like a year ago, is that when we first launched two years ago it’s changed a lot since then. But we couldn’t get interviewed on any podcasts in the crypto space because we didn’t have the money. And all these influencers, even really small influencers, were literally charging astronomical sums of money to go on a podcast with like, 100 followers or whatever, you know, it was ridiculous. But since we hadn’t we didn’t do an Ico we were literally the this, like the whole stereotypical community project. Everybody’s got a full time day job. And we don’t hide that fact. But we didn’t have the money to pay influencers and I and I told the team I go, I got a pretty decent sized Twitter following. I’m gonna have to like revamp the audience because my audience wasn’t a Twitter audience or I’m sorry, my Twitter. You know, followers weren’t like a crypto like following so I have been going through like a metamorphosis with it, which is interesting, like people a lot of people don’t like the new type of content and lot of insight, get new followers and old followers. It’s leaving all times. It’s interesting to see how they work. Balance. But I think when we started doing this, I said, I almost have to just become a content creator to promote my own project. And so because of that, I don’t charge like even You, you, you can attest, I didn’t say, Hey, come on my show, right. And I interview other projects that some people might even consider potentially a competitor to task. And I said, Look, I’m in here for the space. And I want to talk to interesting people. And you know, there’s a lot of interesting people working on projects that aren’t mine. So I want to talk to those people. And I don’t charge I’ve never charged a dime for anybody and how I monetize, monetize, quote, unquote, the project is I run a commercial for tusken front of the end, I just run an ad for us. And it’s like an in kind. I don’t take money from people. And it’s funny because I hit I’m starting to get people wanting to pay me to come on, which is interesting. I’ve had a couple people say, Hey, can you tweet us out and pimp this and and I’m like, nope, nope. Cash but how they could but I said to one guy, there’s literally two days ago, I said said, Why don’t you just tell me about what you’re doing and asked to come on the show? If it’s something interesting, I’ll shill it, or at least you know, talk to you about it. Because it might be interesting. But if it’s just kind of like, you know, some kind of like weird scamming kind of play, I’m not just gonna pimp for that. But, but I think that’s one of the things that has been interesting. From the content creation side, we got into it out of desperation. I didn’t want to be a podcast. But what I found is that I really started liking talking to people, because I like to talk I like to type to talk to smart people. And I can always learn something and I’ve already learned something from you. You already give me an a new idea, my little brains kind of working on this thing. One of the things that I’ll give you something that I see that I think is a mistake with a lot of crypto products, but one Muslim, don’t do marketing, let’s number one, but the ones that are doing marketing. I do believe that hosting your own content as much as possible is important, because it drives value to your own domain. And unfortunately, when you host all your content and other people’s platforms, you don’t control that and ultimately, you become dependent on them if they decide to change their algorithms or their terms of service or what have you, boom, you’re gone. And so I’ll give a great example of this now I think mediums an interesting platform. And I leverage medium to drive traffic to other I basically like to drive links back to content that’s already on our existing sites. But I don’t like it when people blog on medium only. And I think that’s a mistake. Because you see a lot of people in in crypto where they’re like, dude, WordPress is free. blog and host your content. Even if you’re a decentralized project, if you got a website, you can put a blog on it. Put the content on your blog, so you can control that content, and drive inbound links to your website. And then what you can do is then link to that content on medium to an excerpt. And then you get that traffic push backwards. From medium medium, and I’ve been testing this I like to test things when it comes to content. Medium Google scans Medium about I found about every half hour, it gets updated that quickly. And I don’t know if you know, but you train Google on how basically Google kind of alters their frequency of crawling based on your traffic and your size but medium is such a big site that once you want to if you want to like get content backlinks now they’re not going to do follow links. But if you want still want links back to your site, and you want them quickly, medium is a great way but post back to content from medium let you already have a hosting on your site. So like I like your idea about you know, doing like a little edited short, almost tik tok kind of length video on Twitter to get people to drive traffic to your YouTube. Well, maybe you put that also that little video of that little on medium and then link back to the full version on YouTube. And I think that would be good SEO. But I don’t see anybody doing that. No, I think that’s that’s great. And, man, I like so many things.

Lea Thompson AKA Girl Gone Crypto
I want to say about what you just said. But yeah. Yeah, I mean, in terms of like you said, Oh, you could post it on Twitter and medium like, that’s actually a huge part of my content strategy is putting things on is re utilizing content and taking one piece of content, maybe it’s my YouTube video, and turning it into all of these other pieces of content. So maybe I clip three different short videos, and I put that on Twitter and LinkedIn, and, you know, Instagram and like all these different places. But then maybe I take a quote, and then I turn it into a graphic and I share that out to and so you don’t have to always constantly be coming up with all of these ideas for content. You can take the content you’re already making and piece that out into more micro pieces of content. And it helps you to have a really active social platform at that point. And, and the other thing that I wanted to touch on that you said was about backing up your own content. I think that’s so smart. Because you’re right, what if YouTube all of a sudden is like, Oh, we just deleted that video and you didn’t have a backup of it or the Like you said that blog post I mean, it’s not that hard to back it up. And I, I say that I don’t actually like a my websites just coming live here in a little bit. But I do back things up to the steam blockchain actually, you know I mentioned earlier how that’s how I got started. And so the content even though I don’t personally like own the domain of that it’s on the blockchain and it can’t be deleted. And so I know that that’s going to be there. So that’s been kind of my backup to this point, which probably isn’t quite as good as, you know, having your own website, but it’s another good option as well, I think.

Rob McNealy
Yeah. And I think ultimately, it’s about, you know, driving traffic back to content that you can monetize other ways. So one of the things that I’m going to be doing is I’m going to take all my old audio podcast content, and I started looking it up because I’ve done multiple content. I’ve done multiple podcasts over the years, and I have almost 200 shows almost two hours of content that’s just sitting on my server. It’s not hosted anywhere right now. So what I’ve decided to do is I’m going to actually put them in, I’m going to put all that old content, I’m going to update it all in the SEO and all this and it’s gonna take me six months to do it, I already know what. But it’ll end up driving the size of this podcast. By mid summer, I’ll have probably 300 posts on this on this feed. And, and I make a video out of each one of them. But the thing is, a lot of the people I interviewed are still actually actually way more famous now than when I interviewed them before. So they have their own names have good SEO associated with them. And I think that’s important. And it doesn’t mean I’m going to make my my feed, you know, stale. I’m going to mix it in and I’m going to list it as an archive show or what have you. But it’s about building up the size of you know, the actual the RSS feed the number of videos, and it shows a bigger about it’s a more representative of the body of the work that I’ve done. As a content creator. It’s just I got it. I just Got a package and I got to repackage it. And that’s going to take a long time. Because the way I do pod like, and I don’t mind talking SEO stuff. But what I do with SEO with this podcast, I do three blog posts for every show and a medium post and foremost, and they get cross posted to six different social media sites. And so it’s a lot of work the posting and just cross posting takes a couple hours for every show. It’s not just the show editing. But all that cross linking will turn this it’ll turn it into a pretty big I think it’ll be a pretty big show here in the next couple months. It just takes time, hard card eskie SEO, I mean, it’s an it’s an investment of time. But if you do that correctly, and you have like a central hub where all that SEO and all that all that inbound link juice goes, you then can rank for anything you want to rank for. And then that’s that’s pretty good tool if you want as a content creator. The idea is that you create enough content, but you bring it back I like it. I liken it to like a hub and spoke system. You want that hub and the hub is I like the hub to be something I control. And then all those other extraneous social media platforms, sites, help content go out, but they also link back into your own content which drives up your SEO from the search engines.

Lea Thompson AKA Girl Gone Crypto
Now, that’s amazing. And, you know, SEO is something that I’m, I’m still kind of even learning about because it’s I realized how powerful it is. I’m like, Okay, I gotta dig into this more. But it’s, it’s true, you know, when you actually when you’re not just throwing up content for the sake of content, and you that’s kind of an area where I think a lot of crypto companies maybe go a little bit wrong as they’re like, I don’t know, I need to tweet I guess. So they like throw stuff up. You have more like research behind why you are saying what you’re saying why you’re doing what you’re doing and you’re actually bringing some intention to it. That’s when you can really see some dynamic growth because you’re not just kind of running in circles. You’re actually you you know, the reason why you’re doing certain things.

Rob McNealy
But absolutely. It was interesting like on our main TUSC website, there’s that there was going to be a lot of sub domains for things like our gooey wallet and the block explorer and our forums, we have all that stuff being built out or is built out at this point. And if you put something on a subdomain, it the Google and other search engines treat things on a subdomain as a different website. And so whatever goodwill, as I call it, or our SEO juice that your main website has doesn’t necessarily be pushed down to the sub domain. So we actually move some things that are that we’re going to be in subdomains and we moved him into directories, because it’s much better for SEO and our developers, like why are we spending all this time doing this? A lot of work and I’m like, trust me, it’s going to be a big deal because I know when on the TUSC website will do all the trackers and all the exchanges live link to it. Well, the link to your block, explore the link to your forum, and I go those are going to be the sites that All the big sites in crypto will be linking to those sites. And we want all that inbound link juice going to the main website, not a sub domain. And so that’s somehow I think about SEO is that we we structure our whole project around how some of the SEO stuffs going to work out knowing how these things work. And I think that a lot of crypto project will be better off starting to get some marketers on their team, so they can figure that stuff out too.

Lea Thompson AKA Girl Gone Crypto
Hmm, absolutely. No, it’s so true. And I think that as the as the space continues to evolve, you know, we’ll see more companies have that marketing budget to right because I think that might be part of it. A lot of it is they, they it’s the developers is the people running it or, you know, the the nerds behind the project, right, that actually are building it and making it work. And so they’re going to need that help that marketing that, you know, kind of personal touch that like how, how that stuff works as they continue to grow. But yeah, so I think that maybe that’s just kind of the phases. We’re in as a just in general as a space, you know, as we’re maturing. We’ll see more of that come up, I hope.

Rob McNealy
I think so. It was interesting and our we’re-our project’s focused on the gun industry. And that’s one of the our little niches that we’re we’re just kind of focused on that space. And it’s interesting. You mentioned earlier if the terms of services of these platforms change what so it’s interesting you may not know this, but I don’t you don’t look like a hardcore gun guy. But did you know that in the gun world is one of the biggest communities on Instagram right now?

Lea Thompson AKA Girl Gone Crypto
I did not. That is interesting. And I do own a few guns by the way. So I do shoot sometimes. Yeah.

Rob McNealy
So but, but so it’s interesting because the way the gun world is locked out, not only does the gun world have a lot of problems with payments and financing, they can’t get bank accounts. They can’t use PayPal, square stripe, they can use any of those payment systems. And our our theory and thesis about how we launched TUSC was that if you’re going to get mass adoption, you need to start with people that have industries that have a recognized problem with traditional payment methods. If you’re just trying to sell grandma on crypto, you’re not solving a problem for grandma, you’re creating work for grandma. That’s not a good way to get adoption. So we so we focus we’re focusing on the gun industry. And we used to have a business in that space. So and I’m a gun guy. So it just kind of is awesome. But the but because of marketing, like the gun space is interesting, because not only that problem with payments, but they have problems with marketing on top of that, because they’re not allowed to do pay per click on most major platforms. Google doesn’t allow you can’t sell guns on you can’t sell and market guns on Google. You can’t do any kind you can’t buy it. Facebook and Twitter and most of the social platforms want to live by ads. And now in so what was happening is the gun world has created all these By the way, this could be a good option for you. All the influencers and all you have to do is be a girl and hold a gun and take a picture and then big companies will pay you lots of money for that I didn’t have a ton of those my goodness I miss it out so and but here’s the thing Facebook said two days ago they’re going to fire the gun influencers off their platform. So they’re banning gun influencers now, that just happened. So this we have it has they said in the upcoming weeks that’s gonna it’s gonna go down that road and and I was talking to someone in the gun space who’s very influential the other day and we were talking about it he says it’s going to happen because he He’s the owner of gun industry marketplace and we were talking about this and his name is Owen York, and I just put that out today, I think. But we had a good conversation offline about this and he’s like, they’re gonna go they’re gonna fire those guys too. And he called it he totally nailed it. And and so it’s interesting this goes back to but now if you’re an influencer and you built your business and your income now around being like an Instagram influencer in the gun space, you are now finding yourself you don’t have a job and or you probably won’t have a job pretty soon. And it’s just interesting kind of seeing a now if you’re an influencer and you’re only did Instagram, it’s great, I would say what you should have been doing the whole time is hosting all those pictures on your own website and cross linking them from Instagram. So now you’re still placed so people can go and your content is there because now they don’t have all that link juice if you think about if so if you’ve been building up this following for you know, potentially years right, you know, you’re not you haven’t and you haven’t been driving all this traffic back to your own personal website. Where do you do now? You’ve lost all that time, all that content now maybe scrubbed, maybe you can download it, I think but but all that goodwill and all the time people only know how to get to your main, you know, Instagram account. They probably don’t use probably not even ranking in Google. And so that to me is what as far as I see a lot of these influencers just not understanding that the game can play or change. I’m sorry, if you’re playing the game, it can change very quickly and you have no control over that. So you should always be thinking about in the back of your mind if I’m going to make a living as an influencer. For instance, what if and this has happened a couple times the last few years where Twitter wouldn’t allow crypto ads and Facebook still won’t allow crypto ads, and unless you know somebody, because we’ve tried. And so the question is, what if you’re a crypto influencer and now crypto Twitter decides to call you?

Lea Thompson AKA Girl Gone Crypto
Yeah, that would hurt. It would hurt but if you’re driving all your content back to your own website, and that’s your focus is pushing people to your website that you do control. I think to me, that’s the smarter way to go. And and I don’t know the best way to do it. I mean, obviously, we’re all doing cross platform stuff, and I do a ton of Twitter. I do a ton of all the social media stuff too. But most of what I do is drive people back to my website. For instance, I have a YouTube channel right but I don’t link to my YouTube channel. What I do is I actually embed my YouTube videos in a blog post for every show and and i SEO that blog post it just says so and so interview video so guess what, if I lose my youtube channel I can re upload all that content to another video player and put it back and I maintain the SEO I just need to change the embed I need to start doing that with my YouTube videos I part of like what you’re talking about with not being so dependent on particular platforms is actually why I’m just building a website right now and I’m really close to launching it’s going to be Leah loves crypto calm because gergan crypto.com was apparently taken but it was I think by some guys got in trouble for it but that’s a different. And so but part of it is because I want to start actually building an email list and like you said, building those those backlinks because then I actually have away to contact and connect with people that like my content. If something happens if suddenly, you mean crypto especially crypto is something that I think the market is still kind of figuring out the, you know, governments, these big centralized social media sites are still figuring out what they think about. And like you said, they might be like, Oh, well, we don’t want to see crypto ads anymore. And so that’s certainly a possibility. And so I think it’s super smart what you guys are doing and that’s such a good idea with the YouTube videos and definitely excited to write a blog post to go with my YouTube videos almost any way, you know.

Rob McNealy
Well, you know, and I’m not saying a corporation would ever do anything wrong, but you can’t tell me that. Well, let’s put in perspective right? You You got Twitter with you know, they’re pushing Bitcoin and some of their own little weird social media, things that they’re doing and I don’t trust jack any more than anybody else. But then what happens if Facebook launches Libra? You don’t think they’re not going to do something to drive people to Libra at the expense of other kinds of projects? Absolutely. And how does that look for not only, you know, banning ads, but are they going to add the content to? Are they going to bear? Or maybe they just bury the content? You know, oh, yeah, you can post this button, but we’re going to shadow band so no one can see it. And to me, I expect that to happen. You know, and, you know, and I work backwards from there. Because I don’t trust these guys. I mean, you know, if, if jack wanted to be open and not worry about censorship, he could make that happen time crypto, but he’s like, No, we want to make our own standard. There’s already open social media standards out there, though, you know, it’s, you know, web three stuffs already working on that. You don’t need to create a new consortium board of advisors to tweak Twitter, you could just adopt this standard exist, but they’re not going to do what they they’re not going to do something that they don’t control. And that’s what it comes down to. Because you know, especially with the Silicon Valley the way it is it’s about control to monetize, and there’s power in that and they’re not going to give up that power. Regardless of the stuff they say I don’t trust I don’t trust companies I don’t trust governments just like I and I don’t trust big corporate media guys whenever they talk about free and open anything Devil’s always in the details. Now I sound like a ranting lunatic but it happens from time to time. But so where do you think things are going to be in crypto here in the next year or two? You know, I’m not looking for like a hardcore money prediction. But where do you think it’s going to happen to the content creators in this space?

Lea Thompson AKA Girl Gone Crypto
I think it is going to be a wild ride because and you look at the content creators that were here in 17 before the big bull run, I mean, they got massive followings, really, because they were creating content during that Bull Run. So all of a sudden, all these people are like, googling things and looking things up and trying to find YouTube videos about Bitcoin and they’re on Twitter looking for questions. And so I think that a lot of those creators really kind of like swept up but you know, a big they’re following probably in that, like, you know, however many months period. And so I think that’ll happen again in the next bull run because again, they’ll be people that aren’t usually really consuming a lot of crypto content that are all of a sudden, really interested because maybe they bought a little bit of Bitcoin, like a long time ago, and they’re like, wait, now it’s worth how much What do I do or the you know, get the FOMO? And they’re like, do I need to buy now? What do I do? So I think that, in addition to, you know, kind of media mentions of the news and different people talking about crypto the next time I have a big bull run, you know, I think that just the general population looking for content is going to massively increase than the current amount that we have right now.

Rob McNealy
I think that makes a lot of sense. So I guess I need to get all my content out there for the next Bull Run. So I can ride that wave. Right. But I think you’re right, I think I think crypto is dead right now. And a lot of people I don’t have hope em by the way, I’m not one of those guys. I’m not injecting like, Oh, it’s gonna go to a billion not like now. I’m very cognizant, and I’m a heretic and that’s why I piss people off. But, you know, I mean, I think it’s possible that the price of bitcoin is $7,000 and maybe that’s what the actual market price of it should be. I don’t know that it’s going to go crazy at any one point. And and I’m open to that, because nobody knows everybody’s just guessing right now, but, but I can tell you even dislike the community right now. I mean, we just had to do our swap and, and, you know, it’s interesting, like how many people are diving in like, Oh, you guys swap like, yeah, we swapped three months ago. Thanks for thanks for playing, you know, because and I think that’s what’s happened. I think crypto got boring six months into 2018. For bigger, boring starting about a year and a half ago after the market tanked. People just went away. And it’s funny because even maybe within a you know, a year ago, it’s like the number of scammers just kind of faded away too. It’s like the scammers got bored. Like, they’re like, Oh, I feel bad for you. Okay, I’m a scammer, but I’ll give you some money because you’re down on your lock raid. So I definitely see that I think the market got really quiet and even the community is quiet. And I think I think you’re right. I think when when the numbers start going crazy, whenever that happens, again, I think you know, people get a little excited and start doing the research. So that’s a good note, I think. I think it’s a good time to build. I think even if you’re a content creator in this space, it is an excellent time to build. But I think you need to keep your content and your own stuff too, or at least have that reserve that you’re always kind of building yourself up. I think that’s important. I also notice I and I am I’m a big believer in personal branding now too. And I think that we had a good I went through the social media wave back 10 years ago when social media became a thing. And it’s interesting because all the big people that were big, I’m big Twitter, you know, I’m a social media guru. Kind of It’s like these crypto gurus, right? In fact, there’s a couple big crypto gurus that were social media gurus and now they’re crypto gurus. It’s kind of funny. But I think what happened is if they don’t do something else, besides just kind of try to ride that latest wave and be relevant in this latest wave, but I think people need to go through and build themselves into something. Out of that social media expert guru wave, there was hardly any of them that are relevant today. I think one of the biggest ones that is is Gary Vaynerchuk. I don’t know if he is a love him. Yeah. So I actually interviewed him a while back and Gary. Wow. Yeah. And Gary came out of the social media world, and then he parlayed it into a lot of other things. And I he’s one of the few that cross that chasm when like being a social like social media is just media and everybody does it now. But 10 years ago, no one was doing it. I mean, it was all brand new. And so, but there was all these other people that were trying to, you know, pimp themselves out is the latest, greatest so media marketing guru expert, right? And I kind of liken them to all these like traders, right? These crypto traders, I’m like, you’ve never traded a stock in your life. But now you’re like this excellent super duper trader on crypto and you got like some avatar dog. Yeah, no. But his, but his avatar dog gonna be there in five years? Are they going to be relevant in five years? And I don’t think they will be I just don’t see that. Because they’re not building anything. They’re not building anything back to a real website. They’re not building themselves back into a person, like their personal identity. If you’re if your identity is this random cartoon thing, but you won’t Dr. yourself for whatever reason, I don’t think you’re getting the benefit of all the content you’re really creating. What do you think?

Lea Thompson AKA Girl Gone Crypto
Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. I mean, there’s certain waves that I think are kind of easier to jump on or maybe more profitable jump on than others. And you know, I definitely say that crypto trading tips and kind of daily charting and stuff like that. I’m like, you know, I am not an expert. I’m like, if I really You want on my channel to blow up I would start doing but I know that that’s not necessarily, you know, my kind of my niche, my passion my like where I feel like I kind of find a groove. And so I guess kind of a question I have back to you cuz I’m curious what you were something you were just talking about is like so if that kind of content, you know, is that dog whatever is that going to be around in five years like what kind of crypto content do you think is still going to be relevant five years from now? Or are you more just saying like, build your own personal brand and then you can evolve along with that as things change?

Rob McNealy
I would ask if you went and looked at the the social media world of who is the social media expert on social media, and you probably can’t find that person anymore, or you probably don’t know them as like a household name brand. And and I would say is, it’s one thing to be an expert and using social media as a tool or any kind of marketing as a tool. But if you yourself are the as the content creator, I think you need to make yourself into something that allows flexibility for evolution going forward. So for instance, even name and I think about this even with projects and businesses and when we came up with the name the rebrand for us because we started as OCC in the beginning. And Tosca stands for the universal settlement coin. And, and it’s interesting because we also want to plan the elephant thing, because that’s our thing, right? Little elephant guy. So but TUSC, not to us, K. But what we said is we’re going to start off in this one industry, just kind of like Amazon was a bookstore for a long time. And but we’re not going to pigeonhole our branding around that one industry because that’s too limiting. And if we’re successful in one industry, we should be able to evolve and grow into others. And I think about personal branding the same way. If all you are is a crypto trader. Don’t Okay, make a lot of money. Great. I mean, I’m not dissing that and maybe you’re really good at trading. Thanks. You know, that’s great. But where does that take you? Where what are the options for you to evolve out of that? And ask, the question I would ask is, is how are you prepared to evolve when no one really cares about crypto trading tips anymore? Because at some point, it’s going to change, it’s not going to be as important out there. And what is your plan for evolving? And how does what you do with your brand now affect that in five years? And that’s that’s that’s just the question. I don’t know the you know, maybe I maybe you’re funny. Maybe you have a great personality, maybe you’re really smart about business on top of that. So you could talk about trading, but also business and that’s what I’m doing with this show. I’m not going to limit it to crypto stuff. Because it’s not one it’s not me, because I don’t just eat sleep and breathe crypto from the standpoint that that’s all there is my life. In fact, I have a lot of different interests. And I love small business and startups and I’ve been an entrepreneur for a long time and I’m going to cover that because that’s important to me. And that’s part of who I am. And so to me, I don’t want to limit myself to only talking about this one tiny subject that very few hundred thousand people in the world right now care about. I want to talk about it. Like I had a guy the other day and he pitched me I didn’t even know dinosaurs are fake guy and I love conspiracy theories. I’m not saying it believe them. But I love conspiracy theories and the guy pitch me and I’m like, that’s just funny. I’ve never heard this conspiracy so that you think like there’s a whole group of people out there think dinosaurs are fake. And there’s a big dinosaur industrial complex and museums are in on it. And I’m like, I know people that work in museums, I did not seem like in spirit they do not seem like there’s like a mafia, right. And so I’m like, I had them on the show, because it was interesting to me. And I wanted to learn about it. And so if I was just a strictly a crypto show, I couldn’t have that guy. And that wouldn’t be any fun.

Lea Thompson AKA Girl Gone Crypto
Actually, I saw my list to watch that or listen to that episode. I saw that and I’m like, I need to listen to like seven here and more people talk about the dinosaur conspiracy. I’m like, What is this? I was like I’ve seen Land Before Time. Come on, dude, Don’t try to fool me.

Rob McNealy
Did I fly? No, you fall. My favorite. Yep, yep, yep. Yep.I still have that show on VHS somewhere I think you really do. But I don’t have a way to play it. Because I don’t have a VHS player.

Lea Thompson AKA Girl Gone Crypto
But I think that’s that’s important is that if you’re going to be a content creator, be flexible, be flexible. And make sure you have some method where you can control it and drive that that content that’s somewhere that you can monetize in other ways. And like in just like I, you know, I live this, like, I still have all my old content. And I’m like, you know what, that would be good to build, you know, an extra 200 shows into my feed, and I have a goal I want to do like 100 to 150 interviews this this in 2020. That’s kind of my goal. I’m going to do probably three a week, but then you throw on another couple hundred shows in the mix. You know, by the end of the year, it’ll be a big show. And that’s important and it’s numbers and as inbound links and you know, maybe someone looks at an old show that I did was someone who has a big brand name I interviewed some big people before Like, CEO of Zappos, one of the former CEOs of Starbucks, the former governor of Colorado, I mean, lots of people a lot, I just call people up, like, come on my show, like, okay, that’s fine. But it’s good content and still recognized brand names. Then Gary Vaynerchuk, I interviewed him, you know, I interviewed lots of people. And so why not throw that content out there. And it’s interesting, isn’t it as an archive show, you can see how they’ve changed in time, and where they’re still the same. It’s kind of fun. So that’s what we’re going to be doing with this project. And to me, it’s all about, you know, meeting interesting people in the space. And I think with content creators, you got to be flexible, and you got to think about the future because if this is what you’re trying to do, and I’m not trying to do this as part of my job, or as my job, so and so I just preface this I, I would probably have to do things a little differently if I wanted to do as part of my job, but I’m not but I would say to people that are even you or people that are aspiring to be, you know, content creators for a living How are you leveraging that in back into yourself? And how are you monetizing that? Or what are you building that you can monetize over time. And to me, that would be important. Like, you know, if you’re really good at this, I mean, if you’re really a good brand ambassador, and you can build your own personal brand up by this one topic, I mean, that’s how you get picked up by like, you know, big companies to go around the world and be their brand ambassadors. And if you can generate an audience that way, there’s lots of opportunities there, if that’s something you desire to do, and you just got to be thinking about that the whole time on how do you establish yourself as being good at getting your own brand out there? And then how do you go through and you know, put that as a solution to like, say, a big corporation or something at some point later in life? Let’s just say this industry doesn’t need influencers anymore. What do you think?

Yeah, I know I think that being able to build a personal brand, being a Market understanding how to communicate with people and how to honestly how to be interesting. Does that make sense? Like, you know, to be like how do I’m screwed I’m screwed then. But just how to create things that people find entertaining educational, or in some way make their, their moment their day better when they come across it. I think that if you can kind of capture that skill, then you can translate that into so many different arenas, like you were talking about like and maybe it’s not even in the same industry like it could even be like Hey, so I I’m able to have this kind of engagement or this I have this kind of feeling or vibe with the audience says that I talked to and with my content, it you can take that really anywhere. So I think it’s almost like a good life skill just to kind of learn how to communicate online and how to create content that is interesting and engaging for people. And so in terms of like, you know, if the industry doesn’t need influencers anymore, like I personally think that I don’t really love the word influencer. But you know, I think that that industry is still growing and I think it is going to evolve and change. And honestly, I think that the crypto space is a little behind the game on certain trends and kind of the influencer marketing realm. You know, I think that a lot of people are just looking at your follower numbers and they’re not really looking at engagement and so much where I think in the rest of the world, you know, they’ve kind of moved on to be like, Okay, well, let’s, you know, let’s actually look at what people are really saying and how people are really interacting so I’m kind of excited to see the crypto space hopefully kind of come along that trend cuz I think you get more robust partnerships when you do that sort of thing. And now I’m starting to sound like a rambling fool I’m just going on about sounded great.

So with it, but I think you’re right i think it comes down to if you can build an audience and and a market let’s just say if you can build an audience about yourself and you do that really well. In a compelling way, that’s how you get a TV gig. That’s how you get hired to do other things for other people. So success breeds success. Ultimately, people want to work with people that have done it before. And and that’s how it is. So you got to understand. That’s why I like the personal brand. That’s why I like that’s why I like doing video on top of audio now. Because if you’re just like this crypto dog, or you know, whatever avatar it is out there, people don’t know who you are. It’s hard for them to kind of get a feel for who you are. And I find it’s interesting because with social media, when I used to go to like blog world and the affiliate summits and all these kind of related type of social media conferences back in the day, everybody just kind of used their own real name. So you can like Oh, you’re someone so Hey, nice to meet you. But now you’re like, and I feel like an idiot. Sometimes when I go to crypto conferences like, oh, you’re seeing your death, crypto and analyst or whatever, you know, it’s like oh, I just did it. Feel like a moron saying, Oh, you’re so and so right now. It’s like, I’m like, dude, I can’t take it seriously, I really can’t. It’s like, oh, you’re that taco dog or whatever. I’m just like, I’m just Rob. That’s just me. I am not that cool. I don’t have a cape, though. I probably it maybe that maybe, maybe I need a cape. Chris, should I get a cape? All right. Okay, the wife says, I can get a cape. So maybe I need a cape. That’ll be my thing. Oh, you’re wrong. But I think you’re right. I think people I think it’s important that people build their brand around themselves. And if they’re going to be in this space, and then they can leverage it and market in any way they want. If and I think that would be my thing. Now. You know, maybe these guys have some kind of, I always wonder if someone’s like an anon, I was wondering what they’re hiding. And I that’s what I think about like, right? It’s like, what do you Who are you afraid of? Why don’t you want people to know you’re doing this thing? Okay, and to me, I mean, and that’s, that’s what my own brain and maybe I get it because it’s like, it’s crypto. And I’m like, well, we’re not doing anything illegal. Why do you? Right? If you’re if you’re spending all this time and you’re really serious, like, you know, I just think it’s weird to me. But anyway,

I think kind of just to kind of offer like a little like Connor thought on that, like, I mean, I put my name out there too because I don’t you know, really care but the at least for me anyway, the reason I kind of went with a more like, you know, a curve on crypto, like, you know, more kind of funny, creative name is because I wanted people’s attention spans are about this big for those of you that are listening and not watching. It’s really small. And I think that when people see an account, and it’s like, you know, maybe so and so following this or something, someone retweeted it, if it just says Leah Thompson, then they don’t necessarily know like, oh, is what is that person about? But when they see something, it’s like crypto, they’re like, oh, that might be an account. I’m interested in So like for me, I kind of did that more as like a people can make that split second decision that they want to click on my name and check out my page. So anyway, just that’s kind of at least me where I was coming from.

Rob McNealy
You just need to put the word girl in crypto and then you’re good. You know, it’s funny. I see like these guys, I’m not picking out there’s this a lot of thirsty boys out there. And it’s like, you guys have a huge advantage. I’m you know, and it’s funny because even my wife, I mean, my wife has. She’s got a lot of followers on Twitter to like, 19,000 or something. And it’s funny because even I just mentioned her in there that I’m like, oh, and they’re like, follow, follow, follow. And I have to like, I’m losing followers every day, right? I’m like, I’m just trying to just keep my head above water. But she’s like, Oh, I got more followers. But, dude, you just breathe your girl and you get all right. I’m just picking. So Lea, where can people find out more about you?

Lea Thompson AKA Girl Gone Crypto
Yeah, so you can find me. You know, we’ve talked a lot about Twitter tonight. That’s probably where I Hang out the most online so you can find me Girl Gone Crypto, and also my youtube channel Girl Gone Crypto. I’m also on Instagram, you know, LinkedIn pretty much wherever people hang out. You can probably find me if you just search girl on crypto will thank you so much for coming on and I’ll try to get this edited before the holidays. Awesome. Well, thank you so much Rob is really fun hanging out with you.

Rob McNealy
Thank you so much. I’ll talk to you soon.

Episode Links

Audio Interview
Video Interview
Interview Transcript

Crypto Euclid & Mystical Oaks Transcript

Crypto Euclid and Mystical Oaks from the Bitcoin Show

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

Rob McNealy
Hey, welcome to the show today. This is Rob McNealy and today I am talking to two amazing crypto influencers who have been making me laugh for some time now, and I am feeling really excited that they decided to come on my little podcast. I’d like to welcome the show crypto Euclid and mystical Oaks. How are you guys today?

Crypto Euclid
We are fantastic. We’re a little cold here in Knoxville. It’s not cold today. Yeah, well, we had snow two days ago, but I guess that’s a little warmer today.

Rob McNealy
Snow in Tennessee is generally considered not a good thing from what I hear at least from my relatives that live down there. So a lot of my relatives there. There’s a little town in jellico, Tennessee. It’s in the northeast corner right off. I 75 it’s all my family lives in there.

Crypto Euclid
Oh, cool. Cool. That’s awesome. We’re actually Floridians. We don’t like to brag about that too much. But we’re actually from Florida born Well, not born and raised. But what Raised basically both of us were there for a long time, but we’ve been off oh really grow please do say something horrible.

Mystical Oaks
No, I was just gonna say no, I am definitely not an influencer.

Crypto Euclid
Oh shit. Yeah. Yeah You call this a bad word, sir man we don’t we don’t put on say no

Mystical Oaks
it’s not a bad idea. Yes it is not. I mean I don’t know some people think it’s a bad word but I hope that I do not influence anyone to do anything I think get outside Oh, maybe or laugh You know?

Crypto Euclid
Yeah, same I want to I want to influence people into knowing that you don’t have to be a piece of shit. Oh wow oh can we cuss on here I’m sorry.

Rob McNealy
You can say anything you want man.

Crypto Euclid
Awesome

I used to be a degenerate piece of crap about two years ago and I’ve gotten sober and I don’t Want to let people know that, you know, you can turn your life around? That’s that’s what I want to influence people.

Rob McNealy
What made you turn your life around?

Crypto Euclid
You know what it was? Question? Yeah, that great question. You know, I was I came to, you know, I’m 43 I came to the conclusion that I was basically just trying to kill myself, like, in a way by just drinking so much. And I was trying to escape reality. And I realized that if I continue, you know, doing this, if I continue doing what I’m doing, I’m going to end up dead and I just clicked on me one day. This is too much it was on her birthday. I I stopped doing everything. And you know, I haven’t looked back for 27 months. So it was a decision to start living I guess, you know,

Rob McNealy
Well, congratulations on that. Were you guys together then like married when you were not sober.

Mystical Oaks
Yes, we’ve been married for like 152 years.

Crypto Euclid
We’ve been married for 19 years and together for what? 20 something 24 years. So she’s been through all of it I’ve been so this is my second go at sobriety. And she’s been through the whole thing. So this woman, hats off to her for sticking around with this crazy guy.

Rob McNealy
Well, congratulations, my wife and I are going on well, 18 and a half years, so Wow. High five to that guy’s got kids.

Crypto Euclid
Yes, two.

Rob McNealy
Wonderful, very, very cool.

Mystical Oaks
You?

Rob McNealy
Four. Four too many, I live in Utah, we’re light weights by Utah standards. But we’re not native Utahns so my wife and I are both from Michigan originally, but we’ve been living out west now between Colorado Utah a couple times in Wyoming about 19 years. We literally, we eloped to Utah 19 years ago, 19 half years ago. Wow. So yeah, there’s no It’s sexy place to love to but we did and you told makes it very easy to get married. shocker. But uh, yeah, it’s kind of it’s kind of an interesting place but it’s funny because we’re not like, of the predominant faith so we just fake it really, really well. We blend in with four kids and we homeschool but we’re not. Yeah, but we just look we look normal here.

Mystical Oaks
Yeah, love it.

Crypto Euclid
Yeah, we would probably fit in we also homeschool our kids but yeah, we’re not we’re not really religious people but we would probably fit in just fine with is it Mormons usually up there in Utah.

Rob McNealy
There’s a lot of they have a long name now. They don’t do acronyms anymore. But yeah, it’s that’s the long name of the church or that’s the name of the church but they only go by the law. They just rebranded. Told God told him to rebrand and they did.

Crypto Euclid
Time to work on marketing. It seems that sales were down have a

Mystical Oaks
They have a Twitter account.

Crypto Euclid
Yes. That what are they called tipping with You like whatever tithing, tithing, and they were down, so it’s time to do a rebrand.

Rob McNealy
They actually have a lot of marketers involved with the church. One of my friends is a pretty cool guy. And now, my friend, he’s a little weird, but he actually was a consult. He was a marketing consultant for the church for a while. And he is really hardcore. They use some really interesting tactics. But the the church actually owns like movie movie studios and radio and TV stations and newspapers and everything. They’re like, really? volved in the media.

Mystical Oaks
Oh, wow. Okay, well, I think, yeah, I think that’s pretty common. You don’t think about like religious organizations and churches, like being involved in media, but I think there’s a lot of that, that we don’t even really realize.

Rob McNealy
Oh, well, I mean, I think it was like, a few years ago, like the Catholic Church had some investments in like some, you know, firearms companies and stuff. They got a lot of shit for it. Not that I care. But, you know, hey, I thought it was kind of interesting. definitely interesting. You guys are Do you guys ever been out to Utah?

Crypto Euclid
No, I don’t think I we may have driven through we’ve done a lot of like traveling in our days. We drove I don’t think we have cross country a couple times and I don’t you know what I’d have to look at a map I’m really bad with with a geography will come visit so we’ll have to see if the i

Rob McNealy
Do you ski? Come come visit in February.

Crypto Euclid
Now I don’t I’ve never snow skied. I’ve always wanted to, you know, we grew up on the, on the gulf on the water. So we’re like water people. I’ve always wanted to snowboard, but uh, never have Yeah.

Rob McNealy
But uh, so we do a we do a we’re doing our second conference this year, we kind of do hit do a weird conference called off chain where it’s like a mash up of like crypto guns and prepping. On wave and we did our first one last March and we’re doing it again in February and then on that Sunday, we just take a bunch we bought and go skiing.

Crypto Euclid
So you know what that conference pretty much just described all my interests I think yeah,

Mystical Oaks
That sounds really fun.

Rob McNealy
I know a guy if he we actually just opened speaker proposals if you want to come from where you’re more than welcome push on you can talk about something or moderate Is it is it on in Utah?

Crypto Euclid
Okay, that’s all it’s a long drive that we’d have to fly yet you want to fly?

Rob McNealy
It’s so like, because we have for too many children and our most of our families back in Michigan, we generally take the family truckster to from you know, city Detroit every year by driving. So I drive a lot and then like, you want to fly if Tennessee? I’m guessing it’s probably actually a little further I would guess. So. Yeah.

Crypto Euclid
We must have driven through Utah tamarah because it’s on the waves have driven from from California to Florida. So yeah, no, that would be extremely that would that days and days of driving so we would have to fly but yeah, we’ve, we’ve we’ve done it a few of the conferences over on the West Coast with our our youngest one and we’ve done like some Vegas conferences and he flies with us, but unfortunately he has air sickness.

Mystical Oaks
So it’s really fun, pretty bad. You know, it’s somewhat managed, you know, you think that you haven’t under control, then you stop and you get like, mac and cheese or something. And then you’re like, probably wasn’t a good idea to get mac and cheese and the airport.

Rob McNealy
Our nine year old, who is our youngest, and he is definitely the baby of the family and he gets really bad motion sick and he is the biggest drama queen.

Mystical Oaks
The best friends.

Crypto Euclid
Yeah, ours is 10. So I think they would get along.

Rob McNealy
It’s pretty interesting. And it’s funny because that wherever you talked about any of the questions actually made questions and stuff for you guys. But you guys sound a lot like ours my wife Christy, actually, we have a weird life. So we my wife.

Mystical Oaks
Weird is good. Where does it go?

Rob McNealy
Yes, we are very a typical so my wife is a trained medical doctor by profession, but she never worked as a physician She works in. She does work in healthcare, but she does receive manages big research projects, but telecommutes to DC. So she works out of the house. And then my day job, I’m a forensic consultant, and I own my own consulting company, which gives me complete flexibility to work on our crypto stuff. And we’re both co founders and our crypto project, going back two years, and then we homeschool our kids. So we’re kind of like literally like, just before this interview started, I’m like, get out of the office. I gotta do my thing now, because we share office. So it’s like, it’s just kind of funny because we’re like, always around each other. And we’re always around our kids. And I brag on my kids, but you know, I’m around them way more than most people around their kids, you know, yeah, but don’t homeschool and don’t work from home. And then it’s kind of funny because I was, you know, I think it’s interesting. You guys are like this duo working together and crypto and my wife and I are like the only husband wife kind of people that I know that are also like a duo working in crypto. And it’s one of the things that why I want to interview you guys because I think it’s unusual. And you probably know that. And so what made you guys like want to work together?

Mystical Oaks
Oh, well, we’ve been working together like since we met basically. Yeah.

Crypto Euclid
We’re both always been entrepreneurs and had you know, done have our own businesses. And we’ve always, you know, you know, work from home. But as far as crypto Do you want to tell the story? You want me to do it? Okay.

Rob McNealy
You tell the story.

Crypto Euclid
Yes. Yes. How about we both tell it at the same time you say one sentence okay. No,what happened was, I got on, I found crypto Twitter. I was on Reddit a lot, you know, like the Bitcoin subreddits and stuff when I started. You know, learning more about Bitcoin and stuff. And then I found crypto Twitter and I fell in love with it. I was like, wow, this place is funny. Everyone’s you know, quick witted and it’s just fun you know, and you can just shit post all day and, and have fun and I kind of like just got addicted to it right away. And I’ve always wanted to. So my friend and I, when we were in high school had a pirate radio station, he had the giant CB antenna, illegal CB antenna, and we would we would do like a radio show. And so I’ve always kind of like dreamt about being like, you know, I don’t know, like a podcast or or like a howard stern I you know, it’s just always sort of been a thing I wanted to do. So I started to do a podcast and I interviewed some really, really funny people on crypto Twitter that I met. And Tamra heard the interview and she was cracking up. And she was like, had things to say as she we were listening to the episode she had funny things to say She’s also very funny. And in fact, she’s where I get all my material only a little that says, tell everyone that but she writes all all my jokes. But yeah, so she, she was like, Whoa, this is this is crazy now she already had a Twitter account for her business and she was already on Twitter but she wasn’t very active. And I was just always on Twitter, you know, always because, you know, I have like an addictive personality, and it’s all or nothing for me. So I really just buried my face into crypto Twitter and really got involved in it. And she heard the show and she had so much fun, you know, listening to it and the next episode, she was on there with me. So we’ve pretty much and then you know, she started interacting with me on Twitter with her Twitter account, and we have a lot of fun and you know, we talked to each other on Twitter even though we’re sitting in the same room or in the same bed

Rob McNealy
I’m I’m guilty of that myself. So yeah, we like why are you doing that? Like, give me a sandwich for like your next to me. No. No, you get the sandwich.

Crypto Euclid
Yeah, I want to say this to really quick, my long rant. It’s important that if you do something like as much time as I’m spending on Twitter with these be strangers and stuff. If you’re not involving your wife, then there could be issues because, and I’ve seen this with a lot of my friends on Twitter, where they’re just absorbed into it in the social media stuff, and they’re interacting with these these strangers, but they become like part of your life. And they’re their partners, their wives that aren’t involved don’t understand. They don’t they’re so confused, like, why do you spend so much time with these people? And you know, and I could see how that could cause marital issues. So it’s, you know, I think is good for our marriage that she’s, you know, we’re we’re doing it together because honestly, I think there would be a lot of, you know, just like time where we’re not interacting if we she wasn’t on there with me. So it is like the crypto stuff your your how you make a living yet full time are you guys still doing entrepreneurial kind of things? So I don’t trade I suck at it I’ve only lost Bitcoin doing trading I might long term hold holder. I we you know, we are getting to the point where, you know, we’re having people send us to conferences and things like that and we’ve had you know, we’ve had sponsors for different shows that we’ve produced, we’re certainly not the answer’s no, no, this is the answer. We’re, we have it we’re getting there. We’re building and I’m certainly not this is costing us money. Andyes, so yeah, no, we’re not. We haven’t really, you know, we’re working on it. Obviously, we’re in this space and we’re content creators and, you know, we provide, you know, a service to potential you know, businesses and things but it’s just As it is now it’s we’re sort of just I guess we’re building and we’re still figuring out as we go. But to answer your question, not so much and thank goodness, you know, Tamra is working hard and supplying, you know, the money for this hobby that I your hobby. I love it.

Rob McNealy
No sugar. mamas are important, right? entrepreneurs.

Crypto Euclid
Exactly.

Mystical Oaks
We switch every..

Crypto Euclid
I yeah, there was a time when I was really I was, you know, raking in all the dough. And I had an online business doing really, really well. And we’ve done we’ve done well for ourselves. And, you know, now it’s her turn now I’m no, no, no, I’m gonna sit back.

Mystical Oaks
I’m gonna tag you again.

Crypto Euclid
And I’m gonna play on Twitter all day. And she’s, and eventually Tamra, this will all pay off he think. Okay,

Mystical Oaks
knock on wood, right? Yeah, there you go.

Rob McNealy
My wife’s been very patient with my optimism over the last two years so she can she can relate. Yeah, really? Can. I shouldn’t have her We could have done like a four way kind of thing. Kind of actually next time we should do that, because that would actually be a lot of fun. But yeah, it’s been interesting because we started our little project originally almost two years ago and and we just bootstrap. We didn’t do like an Ico or anything like that. And it’s like, we’ve we’re been the purse strings for the crypt, our little crypto project. So we’re the ones that actually invested money and like, crypto has been something we’ve spent a lot of money on over the last couple years. Like I thought it was supposed to be the other way around. We’re supposed to make money and we’ve been spending money but I’m like, and I’m like, honey, you don’t work out. It’ll work out so great. Yeah, let’s say that a lot.

Crypto Euclid
How are you guys doing? Like right now considering like this, it just, it just seems like it keeps going down?

Mystical Oaks
The price of it, though, because it was just like, it was just three something not that long ago, and now it’s up. I mean,

Crypto Euclid
but every I mean, I’m personally like I feel it too. It’s just such a malaise right now. Everyone’s just like, Oh,

Rob McNealy
you know what I want them always the last one. Honor realized, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, well, not even from an investment standpoint. So I, I don’t know if you know much about what we’re doing with Tusk or anything, but we and I can give you the whole sales pitch at some point of what we’re doing. But long story short, I like the time that it’s quiet now. Do we just launched our own blockchain like we were a token two years ago and we just spent the last year building out our own community blockchain and and all this stuff. So and we literally are going to resume trading here, couple weeks week, something like that on no more this weekend, because everybody’s got a day job. So they are coders actually code on weekends. So to me, I actually liked the idea of launching one it’s dead and quiet and people are bored. No one’s marketing anything because I think it actually is good for our project. And hopefully I’ll make a stand out more. So I’m like, let’s just have it quiet for a couple more months and get some traction, the news cycle slow all the people who wanted to get Quick Left, and they’re bored now when they want to, but I feel really positive about what we’re doing. So I’m I’m not worried about I don’t, you know, I don’t sit there and worry about what the prices are and what things are trading at. That’s not like why I’m here. I’m here for the tech. Well, yeah, but But seriously, we actually we’re actually really focused on solving problems and so and getting customers. So to me, if we do those things really, really well, then the money will come and I’m not worried about it. And so I tell people don’t even worry about it things things are going to pan out because we’re on the right track. Yeah,

Crypto Euclid
I think for me, it’s like it sounds kind of corny and weird, but I think like my thing on Twitter’s I’m sort of like, like a I don’t want to sound egotistical, but I’m kinda like a personality, okay. And, and, and when I, my, my gifts to this community is by really dumb tweets, and they do Way better when everyone’s happy.

And does that make sense? Yeah.

A better crowd right? The crowd is happier. Exactly. So room imagine cryptid Twitter’s a room, and he got a bunch of pissed off people. It’s really hard to tell jokes, right? You don’t I mean,

Rob McNealy
why I my jokes are really not politically correct. So, yeah, I gotta be careful about that. But I went to it’s interesting because we’ve been going to meetups for a couple years in Salt Lake City is kind of a crypto hub, you know, this interesting project. So yeah, there’s some, you know, like overstocks here and Raven coins founded here. And then so there’s, you know, this is just kind of like a hub. And it’s funny because the the meetups are dead. Like they used to be used to some of these meetups used to have 100 people show up and now there’s like 12 on a good day, you know, and I think you know, all the Lambo get rich quick people are pissed off because they they lost right You know, they bought at the top and sold at the bottom whenever else, you know, I think I would be crying too. And and you know, my wife and I started investing first and that’s what got us interested because we’re like really, you know, you know, we’re looking at a lot of pride and like we can belt the project. Like, no seriously, we really got everybody got done laughing and I’m like, No, we could really do this. She’s like, you can’t cut I gotta find coders. And they did. And it’s interesting because when we were trading we were really fortunate on like, some really really stupid shit coins and sold them like at the right time before it all crashed down and you know, it’s like that made it a lot easier I guess for us financially but I mean, you know, we don’t live paycheck to paycheck so it’s not really a big deal. We have normal investments and this is part of our high risk investment stuff anyway, so we just kind of Oh, you did is that but I can see definitely the Malays out there in the real Twitter world not not real Twitter world because they’re It’s not real world world but the real world. In the crypto realm, there’s, it’s just people have lost interest because it’s not exciting right now. But you know, you’re, I’m I’m older than you. And so I remember very clearly the.com bust, and this, to me is exactly like that. And, to me, I’m excited. I’m actually more excited about crypto and especially what we’re working on now than I was even a year and a half ago, because I see the resemblance to what happened during the, you know, 299 to 2001 era. And what came out of 2001 is Facebook, Twitter, Google, and all the major players in online marketing and online commerce and retail and social media all came out of that space. When everybody was bored, miserable, broke, lost, all those companies went out of business. It’s happening again. And to me, if you see it like that, and you’re building a project, you should be excited right now. excited about what we’re doing right now?

Crypto Euclid
I am so well so here’s my thing I’m very like just moody anyway and I have like ups and downs in and you know even when everything’s going great I still can have issues with just whatever it’s being down but

Rob McNealy
the way they like happy is he

Crypto Euclid
I it’s you know, it’s sometimes it’s at a time Yes. But so with us though like I Yeah, we got into bitcoin before you know the before the giant rush up to 20,000 so even you know we haven’t like lost our asses or anything so it would be harder for Yeah, you know if we weren’t still up, you know, like still want to do this, you know what I mean? But I will say this. I do believe in it too. And I just it for me it wasn’t about the you know, oh, this is like the money is like amazing, you know that it keeps going up and up and up. And that has something to do with it. But it was just the you know, the All the stuff behind it, and all the community and how, you know, these people like Andreas antonopoulos out there, you know, preaching the good word of Bitcoin, it just like I became a disciple I just this is my, this is like my religion and I believe in it, and it sounds corny and weird, but I think it’s going to, to, you know, change the world for the better in the long run long term and I think it’s a I believe in it. So I I that’s why I’m still here. You know, and I think that’s in Tamra too. I think she’s seen it like me, you know, you seen the community how it’s just I think it’s, they’re generally the Bitcoin and crypto currency community, the people that really do believe in it and that aren’t here just to make a buck or whatever, are really genuinely good people. I think in most everyone that we’ve met, we’ve met a lot of people have been just really cool and they’re inspiring and they’re intelligent. and creative and funny, and it’s just a group of people that I like to say that I’m a part of.

Rob McNealy
Wow, you know, you just converted me to.

But But I have to agree, I think, you know, I’m optimistic that the world’s going to change. And I’m also pessimistic and nihilistic enough to realize and I think we’re in a race to dystopian future. And if we don’t get ahead of it with the centralized technology, we’re really fucked. So to be, you know, it’s like, you know, look at China, right? Or, you know, I am not like, I’m not riding I hope Iam right now, I believe, technology, you know, is is a weapon or a tool that can be used for good or evil. Right, yeah. And, you know, when, you know, China just decided all of a sudden, right, they’re gonna like, now they’re going to embrace social You know, they’re going to embrace you know, blockchain and, you know, crypto currencies, and then you see the whole crypto world go nuts, right? And I’m like, we’re talking one of the most authoritarian regimes on the planet. If they’re and if they are interested in cryptocurrency and blockchain, it is going to be in a way that they can control and enslave people with it. Not because they’re gonna, they’re, you know, they’re not going to support any technology that in any way takes away their power and control or threatens their power and control. And so if the Chinese all of a sudden decided that they really really really really, really like crypto, I think that’s probably vvvv really, really bad thing for people in China and maybe outside of China. What do you guys think?

Crypto Euclid
Certainly, I think that you know, any, any kind of technology with enough, you know, mind power behind it can be, you know, converted to where, like, they’re using it for their own goods. And I don’t, I’m not enough of a technical nerd to know if Bitcoin is even susceptible to that, but I, I’ve heard I’ve heard things like that being said, I think it’s possible. And yeah, I think some superpower like China with that much money and manpower. Certainly it could be a threat to crypto, you know,

Rob McNealy
yeah, I don’t think China is gonna, you know, rapidly push Bitcoin as a currency that they use in country I don’t think that’s what they’re going to do. I think they’re going to probably create their own state Chinese currency crypto currencies that are easily traceable. And it’s going to be part of that, you know, their typical Orwellian, you know, surveillance state kind of stuff. But, you know, I think crypto world a little weird, you know, you know, they get all excited when government gets involved and some politician says, Hey, we like crypto. But I always say you know, the whole point of crypto at least, you know, the whole cyber phone kind of thing that got me interested in crypto was to get away from the banks and get away from the state and get around. That is to help people, you know, become more free. And yeah, so I think that I think the crypto world is really kind of divided as it’s kind of grown bigger, you know, over especially, I think if you look at what crypto did two years ago is exactly what the internet didn’t like. 99 2000. Right. It blew up went crazy, but it put it on the map for everybody. So every time I go and talk to you know, people that aren’t into crypto, I haven’t found anybody who’s not heard of crypto or have not heard of Bitcoin. Everyone I know, everyone I meet, they’ve all heard of Bitcoin. They don’t necessarily understand it, or they think there’s a negative, you know, negative stigma around it. But they’ve heard of it. And I think that’s kind of where we are now, but I’m really kind of, you know, I, I think if we don’t really get back to embracing our actual decentralized routes, and I see that there, I believe there are threats coming into the space, the technology is going to stay. I don’t think crypto is going anywhere. The question is who’s controlling it and which are the dominant kryptos that are going to be used out there. I don’t have the answer to that yet.

Crypto Euclid
Yeah, I don’t think anyone does. You know, maybe that whole thing with Libra and the Facebook coin and all that stuff. You know, maybe that’s why everyone’s so worried about Libra. And you know, because here’s the thing with Facebook Who the fuck is still using Facebook the old like our parents, that’s who uses Facebook and guess what they are the most inept, like they don’t understand technology. Like for some reason our parents you know, we’re early 40s don’t know how to use technology very well. But for some reason, like our grandparents are geniuses on the computer I wouldn’t say genius or at least they understand their their phone. But our parents are like I don’t do

Mystical Oaks
it for me Mrs. To they understand their

Crypto Euclid
day. Can you print this web page out for me? That’s what like our parents say but in there, the ones that are using Facebook you know and i wonder like is that the one that’s what’s more that’s what’s scarier to me

Rob McNealy
is soon as you’re not gonna say okay boom or now are you

Crypto Euclid
know, you know it’s funny is that thing that Boomer thing is so funny because that was like a little meme that I thought kind of started on crypto Twitter and then it just is mounts like mainstream mainstream. Boomer, there was a guy on crypto Twitter reptar who started calling everyone he tweeted out everyone that’s over 30 is a boomer and it like everyone like lost their shit. It’s hilarious and this was like months ago. So it’s like is he responsible for this nationwide mean over

Mystical Oaks
it was like a year it

Crypto Euclid
was like a year ago he tweeted that out and I was like, Oh, this guy’s hilarious. But

yeah, so Anyway, I digress. Yeah,

Mystical Oaks
we went

Rob McNealy
as an XOR I just say screw everybody but you know, you know where the where the generation everybody forgot about and and I’m okay with that. You know, you guys just start you with Well, actually, technically 43 I think you’re technically an extra two. Yeah.

Mystical Oaks
Yeah, but I don’t even care. It’s like, you know, listen,

Crypto Euclid
that age thing is Yeah, so listen, sometimes I get though, but serious seriously guys, he say camera says she doesn’t care. You say dumb. Honestly, guys, Can you believe that? We’re this age? I don’t I can’t believe it. I can’t fucking believe that I am like 43 years old. I can’t fucking believe I don’t remember my 30s at all. I don’t remember my third I

Rob McNealy
kind of wish I didn’t.

Crypto Euclid
So what happened? Like, like, how did this happened? How did we get to this age old time?

Rob McNealy
47. So I tell my kids like are mortified. I’m like I was born during Vietnam. Right? And they look at you like what? And then I’m like, you know, I graduate from high school in 90, right? So I literally went through high school Navy’s literally my first freshman year was like, 86 or something. And it’s like, Don’t feel old. Like I look old. My Everything hurts other than that it hurts. But mentally, like, I’m still like, 20. Like, I still, like want to do the same things. I’m still hungry in business. I’m still excited about trying new things. I’ve always been like an early adopter of stuff. So I always like to try new things. I still want to travel again, you know, and so I don’t my parents were, like, always old. I don’t know how your parents were. I grew up. I grew up in the Midwest and like, and my parents were always old. Like, my mom had blue hit. My mom had old lady blue hair from the time I was like,

Mystical Oaks
thank you. This is like, I have pictures of my grandparents in their 40s and they they look like they did like now you know, I mean?

Rob McNealy
The same. Same old lady perm, you know, and I’m and I’m always and even when I was a kid. I think that’s what made these one of the things that made me so angry when I was younger. is like I’m like, I was thinking okay, Boomer before that was A thing like when I was a kid, I was like, okay, Boomer, that’s how I was with my parents, because they didn’t make any sense to me at all. You know, like, Why are you being old? It’s like, they really were. I think you can have an old mentality mentally or a young mentality and I still feel like I’m a kid. And just an old guys body, which kind of sucks but it is what it is. But I can say hey, I you know, a joke around I’m like, get off my pager kid. Because you know, I grew up in Rangers. I didn’t even I had my first cell phone I had when I was 28. But I grew up in the pager generation like we literally would be like, you know, doing the little pager codes. You guys have pagers when you were

Crypto Euclid
Dial 911 minute emergency 6969 that call me back like right away or something? There’s all these codes

Mystical Oaks
All I knew it was nine one line. Yeah,

Rob McNealy
So we always had like ID codes. Mine was 777 So you knew was me you’d be like 777911 phone number. You know if you type all that out and people like us Like we had heard someone said they made fun of me the other day I’m like you didn’t know the codes. You didn’t know codes you have to know codes if you’re using pagers. You know, it’s just kind of funny, but I’m old enough to remember CBS two, and I actually had 100 I had an illegal hundred amp linear amplifier on my CB, back in the 80s when that was still kind of a thing and a big weapon Tana so I’m old enough to remember that. So get off my pager.

Mystical Oaks
We had road trips, and we found that either we so I bought a car in Atlanta. When we first started dating and he installed like a CB in our cars that way we could keep

Our car and the CD my but we would play CB tag. Did you ever do that?

Rob McNealy
I think so. We Well, there was all sorts of weird games. But if you look at it, CBS were like crypto Twitter of like the 70s.

Crypto Euclid
How channels were like, shared so you could go Oh, yeah, if you end up obviously you don’t get on the trucker chain. But you grandfathered it. Yeah, you get on the trucker channel if you’re driving and you want to know if there’s Smokies up the road

Rob McNealy
well, everybody’s so everybody think about it. Think of the corollary. It’s just analog social media. So you got like, sudah you know, everybody’s got a pseudonym, you know, yeah, everybody’s, it’s a shared channel. Everybody’s Noxus to each other and are jerks and, and there’s trolls, and, you know, just retarded people. So if you think about it, like, see bees were are really that still are in some ways, but back in the day when non truckers really were instill in the CD culture. CBX culture is just social media culture, right? Is the same bad behavior. I know

Crypto Euclid
it is. You made it, he called it something that makes sense is shared channel and that’s what Twitter is. It’s just a shared channel on the same, you know, channel, you know, blurting out our nonsense and fighting with each other and, and you know, whatever, calling each other out and praising each other and what Ever. Yeah, right. Real quick. I had a thought before I lose it because it is it annoying that the way that you met

Mystical Oaks
Hmm, did you say, isn’t it? Yeah,

Crypto Euclid
thank you Isn’t he said in it? I thought,

Mystical Oaks
I know.

Crypto Euclid
Isn’t it annoying that the human body and the brain works so that when we’re young whippersnappers and we have like our strength, you know, like our, you know, we’re in our young, young 20s Our brains are like, mush. Then when we get older, and our brains have evolved, and we’re more wiser and we learn things, then our bodies start to fail. How, how ironic is that and you said that, you know, you don’t feel old, like your brain, you know, is still thinking young, but unfortunately, our bodies are just decaying. You

Mystical Oaks
know, okay,

Crypto Euclid
yes, it looks at it lately how you know?

It’s like it’s just devolving into this like blob of mess.

Rob McNealy
I’m not a religious person but if there is a God he’s an asshole for doing that.

Crypto Euclid
Exactly. And I know like what’s with the you know, the diseases and stuff like why why are we so flawed and why is there like mental health issues? Like why is our brains you know, trick us into thinking everything sucks like why is that you know and I guess

Mystical Oaks
everyone to be Stepford Wives I

Crypto Euclid
want I want our bodies to stay good mostly the time and not do the case so quickly and I want our brains to just work better. That’s what I want. That’s all you want.

Rob McNealy
Yeah, well, well think about like this right? It’s like and I believe there’s you know, the small Allah crazy people that have anxiety and are nuts and are depressed are all smart, smart people tend to be more nuts or and then they do dumb stuff because they’re being nuts because they’re smart. And the other choices you can just be dumb and make bad decisions because you’re dumb. We’re just kind of fucked. It’s not a not a great situation.

Crypto Euclid
Don’t you wish this sometimes you were just pleasantly Like, now you didn’t know how horrible it is really the whole how you know that

Mystical Oaks
if you actually are pleasantly dumb? Well, that’s possible.

Crypto Euclid
I don’t, but you know what I mean? Like, you know, knowing how like, like wackadoodle The world is sometimes as a curse and being like having like intelligence to understand, like, you know, there’s really no old white man in the sky that’s going to be there for us when we’re dead. You know, that whole thing and like, understanding that, you know, I don’t know what your beliefs are, but like, to me, it’s just like a scary thought. It’s just like, we have no, no idea why we’re here. We’re just these like bugs on this blue orb. And sometimes I wish I didn’t believe that sometimes I wish that I believed you know, it’s all going to be fine. You know, and every there’s a reason and there’s a purpose. And sometimes I think it’s good to, you know, you you would you want to just be

Mystical Oaks
I spend time worrying about what that is that you will never know of, and just live in the now moment because living

Rob McNealy
Yoga right? Tamar does yoga, right?

Mystical Oaks
A little sometimes?

Crypto Euclid
spiritual? She’s very spiritual. I’m more of a like, why am I here? This doesn’t make sense

Mystical Oaks
to say whiny, I’m afraid

Crypto Euclid
on air.

What’s the reason for my existence? I dread the existential dread. She’s more of a like, calm, grounded, like you’re here because you’re supposed to be, and you know, that kind of thing. And that’s why, you know, I’ve struggled with substance abuse because the brain is flawed because of her. No, you’re the reason I’ve gotten better multiple times. It’s the it’s my own brain left to my own devices. You know, I just don’t do well.

Rob McNealy
I don’t have a good answer to that. It’s kind of one of those mysteries and I think it comes back to breathe in and breathe out. And then or I can be really nihilistic say, we’re just here to suffer that. That is the reason we’re here to self right? Well, that’s a good goodness

Crypto Euclid
is hell. Listen, that’s a good positive spin like The horror, like the suffering that you’re experiencing is supposed to be so just go with it,

Rob McNealy
and deal with it. And and, and I agree with that. And yeah, it’s tough. I mean, I think, you know, I know a lot of smart people and it’s interesting, like all I pretty much every smart person I know struggles with anxiety or depression across the board. And I think that’s tough because I think, you know, and I think it’s really you know, we’re evolved from this like lizard brain kind of thing, right? So, you know, smarter people if you think about it higher IQ people what, there’s all sorts of, you know, thoughts on it, but you know, if you think about it, the the smart people why why do you have anxiety? Why do you worry about the future? Right? Well, maybe that comes from the fact that maybe your ancestors came from a cold environment or that they faced starvation and if they didn’t think and worry about the future, then sit on the grass and starve to death a reason to death. So are we evolved to say, you know, we need to think about putting Nuts away for the winner like a squirrel. And I think that’s part of it I really do believe that’s part of it is that we we had to evolve to learn to think ahead and plan and I think that ultimately anxiety is some kind of vestige of that you know, biologically now I have no idea if I’m right or wrong it’s just my own opinion on it, but it seems like it makes sense to me. I you’ve not been I’ve been the first person who said that

Mystical Oaks
or it could be like if you believe in past lives or something, maybe that past life

Crypto Euclid
see the scientific brain will immediately says no. I think there is something to like what you said and and what a luxury we have now where we’re like, oh, just live in the moment because everything’s fine. You know what I mean? We didn’t have your God. You know, we didn’t have we didn’t have that luxury. So the just

Mystical Oaks
just the just live in the mo is just it just calm you’re when you’re in those like Ras like Worried anxious things a way to deal with it is just to calm down and just, you know, be in the moment that you’re in Try not to worry about all the because you’re not gathering nuts for, you know, you’re not having to do that. So why Why are you putting yourself through that? And everyone around you know, I know just down, enjoy have fun.

Crypto Euclid
I’m not arguing good. That shouldn’t happen. I totally You are correct. We shouldn’t be, you know, worrying about shit. That’s not happened yet, but it’s, it’s hard to not, I guess because our brains are wired for that.

Rob McNealy
I think Tamar and I are both right. I think we’re nuts because of the way we’ve been programmed. But the solution to that is breathe in breathe out and do yoga.

Crypto Euclid
I agree with that. It’s certainly not you know,

lose your fucking mind and go batshit crazy. It’s like just brief.

Mystical Oaks
Little more sensible.

Rob McNealy
Yeah. You know, and I think there’s something to that and I really do. It’s funny because I listened to like all this like, really piano music. Now when I’m working, I found that even like, you know, I’m more of a suicidal tendency punk rock speed metal kind of guy growing up, and it’s like now I will be in my office and I’m like, nice acoustic piano soft music like the vanilla candle because I’m trying to, you know, be

Mystical Oaks
relaxed. George Winston, when you say piano that if you haven’t heard him then listen to him. Really good.

Rob McNealy
I, I really got into Lynn Trudeau

recently, and she’s like, not a big thing yet, but she’s amazing. So it’s on Spotify, Lynn Trudeau. And, but I’ll check out the Wednesday night too good. Because breathe and breathe out. It’s a good thing. We don’t we shouldn’t lose our minds were more and the thing is, here’s the thing, regardless of why people are stressed out and everybody seems to be stressed out, you know, if we’re not stressed out, we’re more likely to be nice to each other. So why don’t we just Do it for that reason alone.

Mystical Oaks
Exactly like when you’re high tension, high stress, then you’re, you’re short fused. So yeah.

Rob McNealy
There you go free then breathe out. breathing.

So you guys have had a lot of interesting people on your show you’ve had, you know, the cardano guy, Charles Hoskins and him had and Dre as at novelists. And so, of all the guests that you’ve actually had on your show, who would you say would have been your favorite one so far? Not big ones, but the ones you actually really really liked the interview? Oh my gosh, that’s a tough question.

Crypto Euclid
Well, okay. So we’ve actually on another show, we’ve done we’ve we’ve actually we’ve interviewed like Roger, fair, we’ve interviewed john and Janice McAfee, McAfee and, and then so out of and then you include antonopoulos and Hoskinson. Is that not the big names just out of everybody. Oh, and now Everyone, you know, honestly like so I don’t I don’t really like to do like the interview thing so much like I had coming to that conclusion. Like I that’s how I started was doing these long form, you know, interviews we have a guest and on the show we’re doing now that Bitcoin show I like the episodes where it’s just Tamra and I just cutting up and I realized that that’s kind of what I want to do But to answer your question that’s going to be too difficult. Why you think of it all answer? I mean,

Mystical Oaks
I, that was that was a good conversation. It wasn’t so much of an interview as much as like we I felt like we were just we were just in all like, sitting there listening to him tell stories. So so but that was good. That was a great experience I loved I love the conversation, and I loved how that went and antonopoulos was amazing. So those are my two favorite and I know they’re big, and then I’m going to go to small ones just because we love antonopoulos. So so it’s Fighting, just having, you know, just having his time getting to have a one on one conversation with him. So that’s mine. But then some of the ones that we’ve done in the past were my favorite. I can think of a couple like we were on an on a show around the corner. So I guess we did an interview with eight ball that was one of my favorite and then more recently, but still, like a year ago, I think what am i top favorites is when we have just multiple people on we had crypto breakfast on and we had PP like Pied Piper coin, which I don’t even know their apps anymore. I don’t even know brekkie switched is but we’ve had that we’ve had some just really way off the wall conversations with them. And that was fun.

Crypto Euclid
Yeah, the philosophical stuff when we really get into it. I mean, obviously I’m a huge antonopoulos fan and I really dig what he’s doing. So that would probably be my favorite one, but yeah, I’ve I like the ones where we really got into, you know, the philosophical stuff with something just our friends on crypto Twitter, you know, and, and then some of the group things we’ve done in the past are really, really fun. So

Rob McNealy
So you mentioned that you like working together and cutting up stuff. So, you know, one of the things that you do that spend kind of funny you do a lot of this weird, wacky kind of skits and creative stuff and weird CGI stuff, you know, what kind of got you to even experiment and go that direction.

Crypto Euclid
So it’s a funny story. I’ve always like wanted to play I’m kind of a, you know, a little bit of a nerd when it comes to like, you know, just producing stuff. And I like, you know, playing with the gadgets and things and I wanted to do when we first started our podcast, it was just a podcast and no camera or anything. And then once I like Like, you know what I’m going to you know Doc’s, my parents. And I started to do you know, like, the videos of my of myself with my phone or whatever. I was like, you know, it would be fun to do like a show where there’s a camera and a desk. And but the problem was like, upstairs or something. There’s like the wall. We didn’t want it like the wall was ugly or something or you didn’t like the way it looked or something. I don’t know. So we were going to I was like, Well, I can hang a sheet up. Right? There’s like too much stuff clutter in the background. Okay, you didn’t want me to put a camera because there was like clutter and stuff on the wall.

Mystical Oaks
It wasn’t clutter. It was we have because we live in an older house. Yeah. And we have with panel. So that’s,

Crypto Euclid
like, you’re so embarrassed to

Mystical Oaks
know what is hideous. Okay, so you don’t like the way it looks.

Crypto Euclid
I didn’t like the way the wood paneling looks like. So you didn’t want me to do and I’m like fine. I’ll hang a sheet up

Mystical Oaks
right now. look so much better a sheet.

Crypto Euclid
So then I’m like, wait a minute, why not just do a green screen and start messing around with greens? Yeah, do it right. So I hung up a green screen, I bought a green screen from Amazon and I hung up a green screen. And I started messing around with OBS and learning how to you know, use chroma key and all that stuff. And I started just the first thing that I you know, did was just start making like, dumps you know, funny stuff. And yeah, so that’s how it happened. It didn’t happen because I was like, I want to make green screen spaces.

Rob McNealy
Tamra was embarrassed of your architecture,

Crypto Euclid
like I mean,

Mystical Oaks
I always make things better you see how I even without trying to I feel like he could have left out that whole middle part of the story and just said, you know that he got a green screen and put it up. But I think the more it goes back to our our sense of like what we think is funny and like we’ve always been into kind of the sketch comedy

Crypto Euclid
where we grew up on Saturday Night Live and kids in the hall and yeah, the state and yes, all That Monty Python. So that’s definitely our sense of humor, and I love that stuff.

Mystical Oaks
So even when we’re out, we just we are making up silly things. We’re like, wouldn’t it be funny? If you know, until we have this whole scenario, and then it’s fun to actually do it, you know? So the things we can do is great. Now, if we had some kind of major budget, we could do so much more.

Crypto Euclid
Yeah, it’ll happen. This whole thing, honestly, is just a, like my body of work. And I’m waiting for someone to discover me. That’s what this is. This is my thing. I’m like, I’m putting it out there and doing the show. I’m like, hey, look at me. behind the desk. I got my wife here. And it’s funny stuff happening and I’m imagining that some studio head sees this and it’s like, oh my god, get get him on the phone. Right. Right now, we need this guy, get them on because in my mind, I am going to have like a show like, like, like, like stern or or Dave Letterman Yeah. Eric Andre that’s what’s going to happen with Eric Andre. He’s hilarious. He’s like newer, I guess like past like 10 years or so he kind of blew up he has like a really crazy like, it’s like on Comedy Central like late at night jet cribe that minutes he’s like he’s like, he’s just crazy like he goes out on the street and does just like ridiculous stuff. But he has like a look him up Eric Andre show. It’s funny. I don’t know if you like that stuff kind of humor. But it’s it’s it’s really funny. Tim and Eric too. I love Tim and Eric.

Rob McNealy
So why did you guys move up to Tennessee?

Crypto Euclid
Well, without getting too much into it, basically the Hurricanes were like now and I don’t even want to get into like oh because Florida makes you

Mystical Oaks
crazy about the wood paneling, but he doesn’t want to mention that the actual truth is like Florida literally. I don’t know if it’s the heat or what because you know, he already has issues.

The anxiety and stuff we talked to

Crypto Euclid
the Florida that makes me crazy.

Rob McNealy
From from what I see on the internet it makes everybody crazy

Crypto Euclid
it does I don’t know if it’s the heat or what but it’s very odd but I can’t stay in Florida for more than a few years I lose it Yeah, I just can’t get there and that we have lived there since the fourth grade so

Rob McNealy
yeah Tennessee but you know if I if I’m throwing a dart against the wall I have my own weird stories about why like where Why would you move to Salt Lake City of all places? But why would you pick

Crypto Euclid
Tennessee literally a dart right? Like a dart we are

Mystical Oaks
no okay, so well see this always happens but yeah, for some reason you know when you’re at the ocean, I guess you just think of well if I’m leaving the ocean, I’m going to the mountains extreme you know so the first time we left Florida I was like we’re either going to North Carolina or New Zealand. You know there’s and I don’t even know why I was just like those that’s I guess I was looking at property we vacation in North Carolina. So in the Smoky Mountains, so it’s like Smoky Mountains are we’re going crazy and going completely out of the country. So We went to North Carolina and we also went to New Zealand and then we went back to Florida so here we are back in Florida and we were looking at places and I’m like nope live there. No been there. No. And then we came across Knoxville and I’m like You know what, I don’t even think we’ve even driven through Knoxville so

Crypto Euclid
and it just has like a lot of

Rob McNealy
just we’ve never driven there let’s just do it we’re

Mystical Oaks
just we know we wouldn’t look at property and we kind of we found a house we loved and and then you keep loved the city so you know

Crypto Euclid
I like the big the beep beep and the noises in the cars and pretty light it’s like a small of the city. Now I like this I just love I love Knoxville and this the Gulf a little bit I miss like I like water sports and stuff. But I really really love Knoxville. So how

Rob McNealy
long you been there now? Three years,

three years. So you’re fairly new transplant? Yeah, yeah. So were you doing anything crypto related before Moved Where did that start afterward?

Crypto Euclid
I like most people was trying to purchase some things on the internet that could only be bought with crypto back in the day you know back a while ago so that was my only dealings with crypto you know back then. And once we got here is when I was like whoa this stuff is really you know, it’s starting to really go up it’s weird it’s a little bit of Bitcoin I had left in this circle wallet is now worth like, a lot more than you know, I paid for it and Whoa, and that’s when I found like Reddit and and started really getting into learning about it. And yeah, here we are.

Rob McNealy
So I know you guys you know, organize local events and things and go to meetups. What do you think the responses down south Do you think people in Knoxville are open to it? I mean, you guys travel a lot. So I mean, you probably talked to crypto people from all over the place. Do you think that people in the south are any more or less open to crypto then say someone in the middle Midwest or maybe in an urban area.

Crypto Euclid
So we haven’t really we don’t really organize meetups and things here. I’ve done some my runs that I do. I’ve done a couple of those and the conferences that we’ve been to the one in Toronto and the one in New York, but we have a weird meetup did a weird meetup here in Knoxville, we met a bunch of our crypto Twitter friends. This was a year over a year ago. We rented a year in August Yeah, so we rented a big like huge house in Gatlinburg, Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and we got all of our crypto friends, you know, that we knew on on Twitter, haven’t met any of them in real life. And we all just rented this big house and we stayed there for the weekend for the weekend. And like go big or go Yeah, you know, it was Yeah, it was fun. We did

Mystical Oaks
that. But yeah, it was a great time we bonded with all of them and

Crypto Euclid
but as far as like reaching out here locally like in Knoxville, I at one point I was looking kind of like at the local like Knoxville subreddit. I don’t really know of Too many, you know, crypto stuff happening here like just right here. We also visit our friends over in Nashville. Or is it Memphis or Nashville Nashville, and we hung out with some of them there. But it’s not really like a meetups. It’s just like, you know, friends that we’ve we’ve known on crypto and met on crypto Twitter and we just like kind of get together and hang out.

Mystical Oaks
Yeah. unofficial meetup.

Crypto Euclid
Yeah. It’s not like we’re like, okay, you know, let’s talk about Bitcoin. You know, it’s, we end up doing it anyway, because we’re all crypto nerds. But, you know, I mean, I just like people I like to hang out with my friends.

Rob McNealy
Well, that’s a good thing. We’re getting close on time. And, you know, I really do appreciate this is it actually went a completely different direction than the whole list of questions I printed out. So I’m actually actually it’s more fun this way. I like just kind of talking to people and you guys are pretty real. So I mean, that’s really kind of cool. Where can people find out more about what you guys are doing?

Crypto Euclid
You know, right now, the best way To you just follow us on Twitter, you know, I’m @CryptoEuclid on Twitter, and she’s @MysticalOaks. And we have a show. It’s called That Bitcoin show. We I uploaded as a podcast and I also put it on YouTube. So we’re building our YouTube channel, but I guess the best way to find in all the latest episodes and stuff is just ThatBitcoinShow.com.

Mystical Oaks
I do want to say that I’m looking at your list of questions which, which like after speaking to us, which is the craziest one you have on there to ask us like the far like far fetched that you would ask us now like you’re looking at it and you’re like, there’s no way I’d ask them this question.

Rob McNealy
Oh, I don’t think there’s any of my wouldn’t ask you. Okay, which is your favorite then? I was going to ask you who was going to be your most eccentric guest, but you already threw McAfee out there. So I just assumed that would be that would have been him?

Mystical Oaks
Um, no. Richard Hart.

Crypto Euclid
Yeah. Richard Hart was interesting.

Mystical Oaks
Yeah. Most eccentric?

Rob McNealy
Yes. Cool. You know, we should do this again. I’ve had a good time. I’m talking to you guys. Maybe we should live maybe get my wife. I’m like cameras and we’ll just kind of sit there and shoot. I think it’d be a fun, guys, thank you so much for coming on today really do appreciate it.

Crypto Euclid
Yeah, definitely. This was a lot of fun.

Mystical Oaks
Tell your wife hi.

Episode Links

Audio Interview
Video Interview 
Interview Transcript

Don McEnroe Dinosaurs Are Fake Transcript

Don McEnroe Founder of Dinosaurs Are Fake

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

Rob McNealy
Today I am talking to Donnie Mack he is with dinosaurs are fake.com. And this is going to be a fun interview today, we’re going to look all about we’re going to learn all about the dinosaur conspiracy theory. Now I’m pretty new to this theory. And I’m not sure I’m buying it all because, you know, I grew up in a science based kind of environment. But, Donnie, welcome to the show. How are you?

Don McEnroe
I’m doing great. How are you, Rob?

Rob McNealy
Good. So I want to say a shout out. I got some swag you sent I got a little dinosaur shirt on. dinosaurs are fake. So I am definitely interested in what you had to say. I love the logos, by the way. So tell me a little bit about yourself. How’d you get involved with this? Where did you come from?

Don McEnroe
You know, I’ve got a background that’s mostly in entertainment. And I don’t I don’t really view The dinosaur site as you know, as an entertainment venture, it’s it is I do view it as scientific and not a conspiracy theory. But, you know, I come from I’m from California, I was born and raised in San Francisco. studied English at Georgetown. And since then I’ve worked in mostly in, in entertainment in mostly in mostly in film. Lot have worked at Netflix for a long time. And or for several years at least. And now I do mostly consulting on the on the creative side, and the and the dinosaurs dinosaurs. I’ve been working on the site for you know, for a couple of months now, but the topic has interrupted me for a few years.

Rob McNealy
So what kind of got you in got interested in this thing? I mean, I just I knew like, you know, I thought I knew everything about You know, I’m not saying it’s a conspiracy or not, but, you know, conspiracy theories, I’m usually pretty well versed, like, you know, I’ve studied them all. And so I just heard about this one. And that’s pretty interesting because it’s like a new new thing for me. So, educate me a little bit what is what is the theory that dinosaurs aren’t real?

Don McEnroe
You know, okay, the, the way I got interested is, was sort of one step at a time. And, you know, how, if you, you know, on on your phone or on your computer, if you click on certain articles, you start to get, you know, typically, that feed starts to appear more and more based on the algorithms based on you know, sort of the sites and browsers and things that you’re using. And, and what happened to me a few years ago, I, you know, I, at one point, I can’t remember which one it was, but I clicked on some dinosaur article and it I believe you know, it’s what I think it was, and it could have it could have been a different one. I think it was a Turandot on find that they were that they were talking about and I read the article, you know, and at the time I believed in dinosaurs, I mean, you know, I was a kid I was bombarded with dinosaur stuff and just didn’t think anything of it, I believe the dinosaurs, but I read this article. And it, you know, internally there were conflicts in the article and I was just sort of scratching my head saying, Okay, this, this is a little little fishy, but it’s just, you know, it’s just one article. These could be something funny going on. And I and the other thing that jumped out at me is I saw the picture of the dig. And, you know, it was a whole bunch of people all you know, standing around happy with their pickaxes, standing by a bunch of stuff and it wasn’t it wasn’t a Turandot on it was just stuff and but they had it in this article with all these pictures of their renditions of what Taran anons look like and You know, they sort of just made it into this. The big thing like it was this big, Turandot on fine. And meanwhile, there’s a bunch of rocks and people standing around with a pickaxe and so, I remember at the time thinking, you know, this is just this is fishy, and, you know, there’s no Turandot on in this picture. And if they found a trend, and why wouldn’t they? Why wouldn’t they show it? Or if they found a bunch of trend about so then what happened to me? So this was a few years ago. And what happened is, you know, since I clicked on that article, and maybe a couple others like it, I started to get a lot of these articles into, you know, into my, my feed on my, on my phone on my computer, where when they had a find, they would, you know, I would see the article and so I would click on it. And, you know, I was in, I was always looking, you know, after a while I just, I just felt like there were too many internal contradictions in the articles themselves about what the people said. But I always also noticed the same thing that would be You know, whenever there was a picture, it, it didn’t look like, you know, it looked to me like, okay, there’s a rock or something or somebody is holding up a rock that is shaped like maybe shaped like a tooth, you know, or something. And, and I was never convinced by the visual evidence. So that’s when I started looking into a deeper and I started to say okay, well what’s what was going on here and I started to look into Richard Allen and Barnum brown and, you know, the rest of the industry and I started to listen to what the paleontologist themselves said, and, and just look really carefully at each find and the practices of the museums. And sadly, you know, because I, I love dinosaurs, I have nothing against dinosaurs. I think T rex would have been really cool if he existed. But sadly, I’m just I’m not convinced. You know, I don’t I don’t think based on the evidence that is put forth and based on the practices of the museums and the paleontologist and so on and so forth. I just don’t think that exist.

Rob McNealy
So that would help and literally like 180 years of like, accepted science to say that dinosaurs don’t exist. There’s museums all over the planets. There’s governments all over the planets that, you know, put money into looking for dinosaurs and fossils. And, you know, just paleontology in general. Why? Why would they be doing this? If dinosaurs were nothing?

Don McEnroe
No. And that’s, that’s what happens. So when you come out and and take the step to say, hey, dinosaurs are fake, or dinosaurs never existed, when, you know, immediately you get blasted with and I’ve only been on dinosaur Twitter for for a month, you know? And, and I was, you know, so I was new to sort of the public discourse before, before I, before I sort of went public with it. This was just me, thinking about it and reading and evaluating but what What happened is when you say that you get immediately hit with the tag of conspiracy theorists you know like like like any any of these any anything that you say is out of the ordinary if you say Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself, you get tagged with conspiracy theorist or whatever. So So I noticed that but I you know, the way I envision the dinosaur you know, what I call the dinosaur hoax or the dinosaur industrial complex, the way I envisioned that evolving wasn’t as a conspiracy theory where a bunch of people sat down and said, Hey, we’re going to make up we’re going to make up dinosaurs and build industries and products and and an academic field around it. Nobody said that. Nobody did that. It you can you know, it was it was a snowball effect conspiracy, but really started with one man, Richard Allen, who was competing with Charles Darwin for attention in the scientific community and Obviously, everybody knows Darwin had a ton of it, and no one had his own fair share. But he wanted more. He was a he was a competitive and very interesting guy. And he was the one who coined the term. And you know, and so I would sort of dispute the notion that it’s bending 180 years of science, it’s bending 180 years of popular thought, based on, you know, based on Richard Allen making up the word and then, you know, suddenly a few years later, after he made up the word and made some drawings and made some, you know, wrote some papers and did some things about what he thought these creatures were, then suddenly, people started finding them, you know, and it’s sort of like, you know, a self fulfilling prophecy if a popular scientist creates an entire category of animals, and there’s money to be made in fossils and books and all the things you know, later on. Obviously later, the bigger industries, the toys, and the and the movies and all that stuff. Certainly that didn’t happen immediately. But I don’t think it was I don’t think it was science. I think it was, you know, popular storytelling started by Ellen. And I don’t think it was a vast conspiracy. I think it was one that just built sort of one person at a time and you had you know, Richard Oh, and starting it and then, you know, so and so building on it with a fine and then suddenly you had characters like farnum Brown out there, you know, magically finding dozens of dozens of fossils, even though he’s, he was also involved in, you know, with the intelligence agencies and with the oil industry. So, so I view it as up ending, storytelling, and 180 years of storytelling regarding dinosaurs and Tyrannosaurus Rex and Brontosaurus which they they change to Diplodocus and Triceratops and all these creatures that they sort of just got into the popular imagination and then pounded home with, with propaganda via storytelling. And, you know, to the point where most people never questioned it because they’re hit so hard with Dinosaurs when their kids don’t have the ability to, to, to step and I was the same way, you know, they didn’t have the ability to kind of step back and say, wait a minute.

Rob McNealy
So you say that they never really saw dinosaurs before until they kind of found the first one. And then people started finding them everywhere. Could that be accounted for? Because maybe they never looked before? And then all of a sudden, they had a reason to go lucky for them.

Don McEnroe
Yeah, it absolutely could have been that’s what happened. I mean, I think that is that accurately. What happened? I would just dispute the notion that they that what they found was actually dinosaurs. So yes, there was a Gold Rush so to speak, or, or an attention rush or a science rush to find dinosaurs, and that would, you know, incentivize people to get out there and do it whereas there they weren’t before, I would just take the next step and say that the that what they did was manufacture the you know, essentially turn you know rocks or or other bones of other animals into into what they wanted to find to fit to fit the narrative that was sort of commercially and academically or quote unquote, scientifically by

Rob McNealy
so I’ve been to a lot of natural history Museum’s along the ways. You know, I go to the Natural History Museum here in my hometown in Salt Lake City. And actually they got all sorts of dinosaur bones and fossils around on display. So if dinosaurs are all fake, would you say that everybody at that museum is actually in on the hoax or they try perpetrate a fraud, then is that I mean, is that because it sounds to me if that’s what’s happening, you know, that they’re all trying to just take people’s money is I mean, would you say that, you know, you know, every natural history museum that’s out there that has these bones on display? are actually they know that they’re fake and they’re putting him on anyway.

Don McEnroe
Now not at all, not at I would not say that at all. I think there are a ton of I would say there are a lot of good faith actors in the dinosaur industry who believe in dinosaurs and have, you know, have have good intentions. I think. I would, I would think, and I have no way of knowing this. This is just a guess. But I would think that, you know, well over half probably well over three quarters, maybe even over 90% of people in the modern. You know where we are today are good faith operators. They believe in dinosaurs. They’re holding up a thing that they really think There’s a tooth of a of a Tyrannosaurus Rex or whatever. I think that the there have been bad faith actors along the way that you know that they get it started and people you know, people are trusting people, people trusted Richard Allen, when he, you know, when he said what he said and sort of created the category people trusted, Barnum Brown who was, you know, very, very obviously, obviously, to me at least I mean, I guess, you know, anybody can debate what they want. But, you know, this guy was obviously a huckster and obviously a fraud. And he was out there, quote, unquote, finding dozens of skeletons of dinosaurs. And so I think that the bad actors are more limited. And there’s a lot of good people and well intentioned people in the industry today that have simply built, you know, and sort of piggyback on stuff that they didn’t necessarily know like everybody else they didn’t necessarily know was a fraud.

Rob McNealy
So would you say that all the fossils that you would see at a museum then they’re all just fake? Like, like completely just not real or do you think they’re Miss identify? Do you think there’s some other kind of animal creature or category that we were, you know, not aware of yet?

Don McEnroe
Yeah, I don’t think there was obviously a lot of in a lot of cases it’s disclosed that the replica so that there they are made or not, you know, it’s not like they pieced together a bunch of, you know, cows and mammoths and giraffes and whatever. And that’s what we’re looking at their it’s known that they’re that we’re looking at replicas, I would just, you know, so my, my position on the replicative themselves, is is not not really that they’re fake. They’re replicas, they’re just they’re myth. It’s a combination there, Miss constructed. They’ve extrapolated, you know, they’ve extrapolated entire animals from something You just can’t extrapolate an animal from and especially when you’re dealing with. Remember, in a lot of cases, they’re making these replicas from rocks because they’re saying, Okay, these these things are 60 million years old, so it’s not a bone anymore, it’s then it’s gone through this process. It’s fossilized. And so, you know, I think in a lot of cases, if, if you’re trying to extrapolate a whole animal from one sample, which believe it or not, does happen, though, they’ll find, you know, one thing that they call a bone or a tooth and build an entire animal around it. I think that, you know, if you’re doing that the, your margin for error is, is just, you know, I mean, your tendency towards error, I should say, is just incredibly high. And you can’t do that you can’t take a rock that you say is a fossilized bone, and then and build an entire, you know, build an entire animal around it with any kind of certainly, especially when you don’t know, you know, there’s no way to know how old it is. And I know they say the good into that, you know, 60,000,065 million years old blah, blah, blah, but you can’t, you can’t date a rock with any with any kind of scientific certainty. You just can’t do it. So I think, you know, again, it’s kind of the same thing. I think that it’s not bad faith all the way around on the displays. I think that, you know, it’s a combination of building into a system that people believe that many people believe in, and that they’ve been, you know, programmed and conditioned to believe. When you when you grow up, seeing shows and movies and books and toys of Tyrannosaurus Rex, to the point that you don’t question it at all. And then you’re tasked with building a model of a T rex for a museum. That you know, that’s based on a bone or a ticket. You don’t feel you don’t really feel any qualms about doing it. At least I would imagine. I’ve never done that.

Rob McNealy
Sure, sure. And and I agree with you, if you’re you’re replicating dinosaurs based on like, you know, a little teeny fragment. You know, I think there there is probably a lot of possibilities that there’s some, you know, margin of error there. So I guess the question I would have, you know, I just kind of understand your worldview of things. I know that in certain religious circles, like there’s a lot of questioning about things like evolution and flat earth and things like that, and I’m not saying you believe those things, but, you know, is some of this you know, are you in? Do you believe in evolution? Do you believe in creation? What would what’s your background?

Don McEnroe
I’m not a I’m not an expert on either of those. I’m not okay. And so, I’m not an expert enough on evolution to say that I believe in it or I don’t believe in it. I don’t really know what the theory is. I’ve never studied in depth enough. I think that you know, from my from My view of things I think that evolution, you know, I think that evolutionary tendencies or evolutionary characteristics are pretty easy to see when you look at different species, or you look at, you know, the way things have gone. So. So I would say without endorsing, I don’t I don’t know, enough to say that I believe in evolution. I just don’t know what that means to say that. But I would say that I do believe that in evolutionary trends or in it in the fact that species have evolved. So in other words, I’m not endorsing any macro evolution theory because I haven’t read enough Darwin to know whether I whether I buy it or not, I don’t I don’t know I never really cared that much about about Darwin. So on evolution, so I would say I don’t know if that makes sense. But I believe in the notion that species evolved without endorsing Any sort of big, big picture or particular theory of evolution, which I don’t know what it is? And on the other question, I’m 100% not coming at the dinosaur angle from a theological perspective at all. I am a Christian. And but I’m not, you know, when I looked at dinosaurs in the first place, I didn’t even realize I’m this far removed, removed from that world. I didn’t realize that there had been an existing debate that that sort of a theological and and that’s just not my angle.

Rob McNealy
Well, that’s what I was going to say is that among the group of what they referred to as young earth creationists where there’s a certain segment of Christianity that believes you know, the Earth is like 6000 years old. So you’re not saying that the earth is only 6000 years old?

Don McEnroe
No, that’s not that’s not my angle at all. My my skepticism towards dinosaurs evolved since Believe from looking at what they said. So like I said, looking at the articles looking at the fines, looking at what they said about, about dinosaurs and just not buying it, you know, it had nothing to do with with any bigger, bigger, you know, theological worldview. And, you know, I don’t know how old the earth is, and it’s not that’s not that interesting to me to even, you know, to try to figure out if the if the earth is 60 million years old or 6000 years old, I don’t know, I don’t really care. It doesn’t really affect me. But what I do care about is if I see sort of what I view as, you know, systemic propaganda being pushed in what for whatever the reason, and and I think that we have this issue with a lot more than than dinosaurs where something is just repeated over and over until you can you know, until there’s no questioning and then they can just sort of get away with saying whatever they want. So that’s, that’s my take on it. It’s not it’s not a theological disagreement, and it’s not a it’s not an attack on evolution. I think that, like I said, I think that you can see evolutionary characteristics and trends in species across the board.

Rob McNealy
Do you think that all fossils are faked or miss identified? So for instance, you know, I know a little bit about rocks in sedimentary rocks, like limestone has all sorts of seashells in it. And would you say that those aren’t actually seashells or those aren’t actually fossils do? Are you saying that fossil the process of what is called fossilization? Is that not a real thing? Or do you think that just some things are fossilized, but some things are not?

Don McEnroe
Yeah, I would think that no, I’m certainly open to the idea of fossils. I don’t have anything I have no reason to believe that there are fossils of This, that and everything that actually existed. So my point is only that the that what they’re saying, you know that that these particular fossils that they’re saying came from and belong to dinosaurs. I don’t buy that. It’s that simple. But in terms of other things being fossilized, sure, why not? I have no reason not to believe that.

Rob McNealy
So do you. So when they say dinosaurs, do you think that some at some point some animals that are not dinosaurs that might just be like big birds might have been fossilized and then call the dinosaur?

Don McEnroe
I mean, whatever they whatever they are, you know, I definitely I think that, you know, there’s obviously animals. I should say, if I believe strongly that there’s animals that existed before that maybe don’t exist today or animals that have been fossilized I’m just specifically saying that I don’t see enough proof for the cat, you know, for this particular category of animals as mostly represented by the popular ones so the T Rex, the Diplodocus Brontosaurus type loans, the Triceratops, you know, I’m definitely open to I mean, we know reptiles exist because we can see him so I’m, I’m open to like, you know different type of reptiles are different type of turtles or whatever you know, or crocodiles or even things that that don’t exist today that you know that existed in the past. I’m open to all of that it’s just I don’t see evidence for these creatures in particular.

Rob McNealy
Okay, I can get that. So, you know, there’s a lot of things. There’s a class that’s, you know, the Extinct Animals called megafauna. Are you familiar with that term? Yes. During the Nice to see an era which would have been the last ice age, you know, 10,000 plus years ago that 40,000 plus years ago. Would you say that those are different than the things that you’re concerned about called dinosaurs? Would you say like megafauna. Like, for instance, they’re uncovering, you know, you know, 567 thousand year old things in the tundra up in Siberia, of different types of animals and dogs that don’t exist today and mammoths and things like that. Would you say that those are real or those part of the dinosaur coax as well?

Don McEnroe
No, I never said I would say that, you know, and I haven’t done a deep dive on on mammals but I would be inclined to believe I would be inclined to believe them because in them because of the what I’ve heard, and I haven’t seen statues of my own eyes, but when I’ve heard about the quality of the preservation also, it’s a very believable animal in the sense that we you know, we know elephants exist and we can so we can extrapolate and say okay, you know, this, this would make sense if if something like this This woolly mammoth and also we have a nice specimen of it here. And the story lines up so, so absolutely, I think that, you know, it goes, it goes back to it comes back to the quality of the evidence and and just just, you know, the fact that that, you know, it makes sense. And we’re not asked to make a leap from Oh look, here’s a here’s a rocker or something that we’re calling that to or a theme or whatever and boom, there’s a big, you know, Dragon like lizard, you know, that, that walks on two legs and has, you know, sort of the all these characteristics imputed by Island, you know, so, absolutely, I’m open to mammoth to different kind of dogs, all that stuff.

Rob McNealy
So you’re saying that dragons can’t exist either because that’s going to really make me disappointed as dragons.

Don McEnroe
Well, that’s that’s what everything but I mean, you know, I’m not going to go so far as to say that dragons don’t exist because I I don’t know. But but I’ve never seen proof. I hadn’t seen proof of them. I you know, same with giants. I can’t say that there were there were no giants. But I can’t say that I have proof that they existed either.

Rob McNealy
So I know you’ve raised concerns before about like a massive meteorite strike. Do you believe meteors exists?

Don McEnroe
Sure, sure. I think. I don’t think meteors are out of the question. You know, what the problem that I have is with the growth of the particular Meteor theory that now is prevalent on, you know, in the dinosaur industry where, you know, if you look back at the literature, it wasn’t that long ago that people would say, well, we don’t know how the dinosaurs went extinct. It was it was an unsettled question, and I’d have to go back to put an actual date on it, but it wasn’t that long ago. And suddenly, something happened, you know, in whatever period of years these last year, I don’t know if it’s five years. 10 years. 15 years. But were they they settled in on this theory that it was definitely a meteor that killed the dinosaurs. And that I don’t by, by the possibility of a meteor hitting the planet. I 100% Do Not Disturb. Do not by the fact that it’s conclusive that a meteor struck the planet and wiped out this whole class of animals that we just you know that Richard Allen, essentially, whatever you want to call it invented in 1841 1842. I don’t I don’t see how we get there. I’ve read a lot of stuff about it. I’ve read a lot of what they what they put forth. I just don’t get there.

Rob McNealy
Have you done any public debates with anybody in the industry?

Don McEnroe
You know, I have, I have not this is my first podcast I’ve done it was my first you know, sort of public speaking on dinosaurs. I started the dinosaur Twitter account a year ago. I’m sorry, a month ago, I started looking into dinosaurs, you know, only a few years ago. So I’d be happy to do it. I’ve seen you know, I’ve watched some of the YouTube stuff of you know that there was a guy on Joe Rogan, I forget his name, but he was he was a paleontologist, it was debunking a different guy that said, dinosaurs don’t exist. And, you know, I’ve just got a little, you know, I’ve got a little different take on it from sort of the people that I see out there. You know, for the reasons we talked about I don’t have a an anti evolution bias. I don’t have I’m not making a theological argument. It’s it’s more of an empirical argument based on you know, what is being put forth directly by the industry. So I’d be happy to do it. I just haven’t done it. This isn’t you know, this is I’m partly doing this for fun and, you know, it’s it’s something that it just You know, we live in this, this mass media era where things become truth through repetition. So this is just one little attempt to say, you know, Hey, wait a minute, this this story that everyone’s been hammering home for the last hundred and 80 years, it might not be true and what else is true? It’s kind of one of those things. So I haven’t debated anyone publicly, but I’d be happy to do it.

Rob McNealy
Well, that’s one of the reasons that I wanted to talk to you in the first place is that, you know, oftentimes the the people that are espousing what would be considered anti science perspective on you know, something that most people considered settled science, right, even though I hate the term settled science personally, because science is a process. But you know, when they come from a religious background or religious bent on these things, it’s really it is easy to dismiss them out of hand of having their own, you know, faith based bias. And so that’s why I was interested in talking with you because I did I mean, when I first started looking at your Twitter account and stuff, I’m like, okay, I’ve never heard this before. This is kind of a new thing to me. And so but you weren’t espousing the normal, you know? Oh, well the earth is 6000 years old. Okay, well, okay, well we can fundamentally right there that kind of disqualifies people in my mind, or when they say the earth is flat. You know, I think to me that that makes me a little more skeptical. But you’ve come off from an you know, a more of an empirical perspective. And so it’s intriguing to me To be honest, I I’m gonna look more into this this this belief because I’m it’s just kind of new to me.

Don McEnroe
Yeah, yeah. Now and it turns me off, too. I mean, I you know, but I think here’s the interesting thing. I think that’s what’s being used against me more you know, for example, I i’ve never, you know, I the Twitter’s pretty young, you can go back and I mean, you’ve seen it, but the amount of times that you know, I make put forth an arguments say, hey, look, you know, I’ll post an article and say, this, this this doesn’t add up. This doesn’t make sense what they’re saying. And oh, by the way, this picture is baloney. Right? Then what comes back at me is Oh, you’re a flat earth or you’re a religious fundamentalist or whatever. And I’m kind of like, you know, now are you are, you know, they’re bringing up the moon or, or they’ll bring up, you know, stuff that has nothing to do with what I said. And so it’s interesting, because I think, in my case, the shoes on the other foot in the sense that the arguments that are being used back at me are either just hand-waving, like, no, it’s, you know, everybody knows dinosaurs existed for 180 years, or attacks based on things that have nothing to do with. And so, so I think that, that it’s interesting, because I’m not I’m not interested in theological debates, there’s I mean, I am in different context, I can maybe you know how to have that discussion, but that’s not what this is. And I interested in what people in the industry are posting and saying that they found and the evidence for it. And you know what I, you know, when I really started looking into it, I was very shocked as a guy who grew up believing in dinosaurs having no reason not to believe in dinosaurs because they quote unquote, day, you know, were telling me that these existed. I was shocked at how flimsy the evidence is. And it’s really, you know, it’s really that simple for me.

Rob McNealy
So are you blacklisted from any museums?

Don McEnroe
Yeah. They always check my pockets on the way out because you know, they, they can joke about that, but I’m not blacklisted from from anywhere. I did. I did get I don’t want to say roughed up by you know, I was out at the archives in London trying to read Richard Allen’s papers. And they gave me a pretty good thorough checking on my bag, my bag and everything on the way out the door. mature I wasn’t trying to steal anything, which I wasn’t. So I’m not not blacklisted people you know, most people keep a pretty good spirit about it and I’m not you know, I’m not attacking anybody or or whatever. Most people there are a few people that get really angry right away and start screaming and yelling about flatter or the moon or, or science denier or whatever, but most people are like, you know, though, they’ll listen to, you know, to what you have to say. And when, and obviously, if you you know, if you say something stupid, they’ll say, hey, that’s stupid. And, and I’m comfortable with that kind of back and forth because then I can say the same thing when I see someone holding up, you know, an object and claiming it’s something that I just don’t see how it is. Then I want the right to be able to say, you know, I’m not buying that.

Rob McNealy
One last question. Is Pluto a moon or Pluto a planet?

Don McEnroe
Look, I mean, simply Pluto is a planet because he was upon it and and, you know, I don’t know if you want to hear my reason for it, but it’s, it’s really just because I grew You know, when I grew up so there was a planet and I don’t have any reason to change that I haven’t done a deep dive into into it. And, you know, I sort of like to still hold on to things that, you know, that I was told, and that I believed as a kid, you know, to as long as I can, unlike dinosaurs.

Rob McNealy
Well, you and I can hang out then because as a Gen X or I still believe I’m in team planet Pluto. So that’s kind of my litmus test. You know, it’s not you know, it’s not a moon it’s planet. So. So, Donny, where can people find out more?

Don McEnroe
You know, on, on our Twitter is @DAF1842. And that’s for the year the dinosaurs were invented. Our side is dinosaurs are fake.com. And we have a little bit of writing up there. But we’ll be we’ll be posting some stuff, you know, periodically, every single post on Twitter here and there. And we’re going to be doing some more deep dives in terms of our of dissecting articles that are put out there by the paleontology industry, and just sort of calling out some of the, you know, some of the things that they assert without what we would call basis. And so we’ll be out there just just, you know, trying to get the message home to question these things and question What question what you’re told.

Rob McNealy
Donnie, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I’ve had, I’ve had a really good time and I live think I’ve got something else to look at now.

Don McEnroe
I do appreciate it. I’ll talk to you soon.

Rob McNealy
You have a good day.

Don McEnroe
All right.

Episode Links

Audio Interview
Video Interview
Interview Transcript

Timothy Robinson – Bits and Tokens Transcript

Timothy Robinson, CEO and Founder of Bits and Token Blockchain Media Company

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

Rob McNealy
Cloud. Today we’re talking to Tim from bits and tokens, which is a company based in Florida. I think you’re out of Miami, right, Tim?

Timothy Robinson
Yeah, we work out of the blockchain Center in Miami.

Rob McNealy
So cool. Well, you and I met few weeks back in Las Vegas and did some partying together, which was kind of a hoot. You guys are definitely like half my age and and I had a hard time keeping up. So tell me, what’s your background? Where did you how did you get it back into crypto? How long you been in the space can I can just for our audience, because our audience is not just a kind of a crypto audience. So tell me a little bit about, you know, kind of how did you get here?

Timothy Robinson
So as far as crypto, I’ve always been a really big nerd. And this website still exists, but it’s not what it used to be back in the glory days. There’s a website called hackaday. com, where every day is like a blog every day, they would post the new hacker a new, you know, technological advancement or whatever. And then one day way back in the day they posted about this wacky thing called Bitcoin and I didn’t know you know a lot about it that a little bit more research and then kind of fell in love with what it was supposed to be failed at mining a few times and just kind of gave up, you know, two three years and then kind of got back into it. And then I met one of the other co founders of this and tokens Jerome and he also knew about Bitcoin cryptocurrency and we decided, hey, let’s do a podcast and then I have this habit of just kind of spending way too much money. So I ended up you know, instead of a podcast, I bought lights, cameras action, and we kind of just blossomed into this media company that we are today. Right around, I guess 2017 when the Ico Boom was kind of dying. It was really hard for actual reputable companies to find a media company that would work with them and not charge them an arm and a leg. And we had all the equipment. And we were friends with lots of these companies. So we decided, let’s just go, we’ll just work with them. And they recommended us to their friends and friends of friends. And here we are today with this huge network of companies that we work with.

Rob McNealy
Well, I think you bring up a good point, you know, we as a project been around a couple years to and this is one of the things that I’ve tried to explain to people but why crypto, I think is some way be held back by itself is that you know, during late 2017 in early 2018, when that whole Ico rush was going nuts. companies were raising insane amount of money. And the people these startups that were raising this amount of money also didn’t handle money very well. So they would literally throw money at anything that moved in, I would contend that Non Non, you know, in ways that were they didn’t get a good ROI or they didn’t think about the ROI. So what happened is all these vendors that kind of were catering to crypto startups and blockchain projects just literally gouge the snot out of anything. And so I think that’s what you’re kind of looking at, or kind of addressing there is the fact that a lot of these, you know, vendors were just charging just astronomical rates that they couldn’t get in any other industry. And it’s just because there were just so much, you know, stupid money being spent and floated around. And I think that’s still happening. I think it’s still happening. To some degree, though. It’s gotten a lot better, I would say over the last two years, and that’s part of the problem with like listing fees, and things like that. And so, the the problem with that is, is that very few legitimate projects were an hour I think it’s getting better now, but even Now, it’s still all pay to play influencers, you know, conferences, things like that. What is your take Ben on that, you know, do you think it’s still all pay to play? Or do you think that’s kind of getting better from what you’re seeing?

Timothy Robinson
No. So unfortunately, fortunately, unfortunately, however you want to look at it. I know, exchanges, personally, some of the people who work at various exchanges and their listings these, it doesn’t make sense at all, for someone who’s trying to be a currency. You know, maybe if you’re if your utility token a paying 10% of your tokens, the total supply to one exchange, that might make sense if it’s a major exchange, it gets you a lot of exposure, whatever. But a lot of these exchanges are charging 10% of the total supply of your token just to list you, which doesn’t really I mean, you’re not doing your end users any good by giving one entity 10% of the total supply. So it’s it’s a, it’s a big problem still, I think. But there are some exchanges that are doing good in the world and not, you know, trying to charge these crazy numbers. A change angel is one of them. That’s a really good kind of newish exchange. I don’t think they’re listing fees or anything crazy like that. And they actually work with the projects that are listed there and give them some money back from the fees. So I think that’s kind of a better model that we’re leaning towards now. And then some of these exchanges that are asking for these crazy amounts of money. I think we’re going to start seeing that slow down, hopefully in the near future.

Rob McNealy
Well, I think part of the problem is I think the and not trying to, you know, be discriminatory, but the Asian exchanges seem to be the worst from that and they also seem to be the exchanges that have the most fake volume. So you know, I’m entrepreneur and I’m, I’m a bootstrapping kind of entrepreneur. So every decision every dollar I make, or I’m going to spend, I’m going to be very, very keen on looking at the ROI on that decision. So, you know, we is we’ve talked down and when we were, you know, Vegas together, you know, I was telling you how we just, you know, swapped over. And we’re now getting ready to do a main net with our blockchain that we’ve been working on for over a year. And so I’ve had to re engage, you know, so, you know, it’s interesting having to do this twice, because like, as a token, we spent the first six months trying to get on any exchange, but we didn’t do an Ico so we didn’t have these listing fees. So we were kind of relegated to, you know, really obscure small startup exchanges redexes. But now, so I kind of knew the process like two years ago, and now it’s like funny because we have to go through the process all again, because now we have a chain and it’s harder as a chain than it is a token because they actually have to do some work to integrate it. And so um, I’ve been talking to exchanges lately. Yeah. It’s funny because now we have better tools now out there to evaluate exchanges. And I think if any of this is going to change is that projects need to say no, especially good projects, to those listing fees. So I, I’ve been talking to one exchange recently. And what they want from us is 25 grand, and they want a billion Tusk is what they just I just got this yesterday in my inbox, a bill. That’s like, yeah, as a listing fee, and that’s like, 2% of our supply or something. And the funny thing is, as an exchange, or I’m sorry, as a community project, I don’t even have I don’t even have control to give that right. It’s like, we have to put everything up to a vote of the community whether we would spend that and it’s funny because this is Asian exchange. And then on top of that, this exchange has notorious if you like a coin geckos, you know, rating, their volumes are completely BS. And so there are They’re only like a, you know, couple million dollar a day exchange. And I can’t justify in my brain or as an entrepreneur or as a steward of the task, you know, is I believe that if I’m involved with, you know, helping lead a project, even though it’s not my money, it’s the network’s money, right? Or if there’s, you know, fees and stuff, but if I make a recommendation that the project spend some of that money, I believe I have to do my diligence and make sure that I’m acting as a good steward of those resources, even if it’s not mine. Right. And I just, I can’t I can’t justify that because they’re exchanges. If one they’re not trustworthy to me if you’re inflating your values by a huge amount, right? And, you know, that’s fraud. I just start there. It’s fraught, so you’re trying to make yourself look better. And I think I think part of the problem is, is with a lot of these exchanges, is that their business model is listing fees because they don’t really have enough time. actual volume to make any money from trading. And so there so the business model is the listing fee. And to me, you know, it’s harder right now because there’s a lot of exchanges that are really have legitimate volume, they’re not faking. The problem is, those exchanges don’t charge listing fees, but they also won’t take a risk on a startup project or a newer project, they want you to have some, this is the catch 22 they want you to have some kind of track record. So you have to give you so you have to pay listing fees on shitty or mid mid level exchanges, before the bigger exchanges will even take a risk on you. So it’s kind of like it’s a tough position for like a community project or an actual legitimate project, not just some hype token Ico nonsense, but a project that really has potential it’s it’s just kind of hard, you know, to be in that spot. What to me if you know the whole point of getting on exchanges, part of Is that it makes it easier for the people that want to use our, you know, coin to buy and sell. So there’s more on ramps, more liquidity. That’s, that’s the whole point, right? So if I’m evaluating an exchange, we have to look at it as what are they going to bring to our project, and if they’re really not going to bring any more volume, or any volume to the project, because they’re faking, and I can’t justify recommending to, you know, the test community that they spend the money on listing on that, and so, it’s interesting, you know, and I’m glad that like, coin Gecko has a really, really good setup. They’re like, they’re like kinda like coin market cap, but they’re kind of newer and a little smaller. They are live interest they have a I love playing yakka I’ve interviewed their CEO before the guy will email me back like he’s, it’s funny because I can get to the president of that company. And he usually emailed me back personally within a day every time I’ve ever emailed them. And, you know, try to get ahold of somebody claim market cap. Let me know how that goes.

Timothy Robinson
They respond back on Twitter about about stuff I’ve had that experience.

Rob McNealy
Well I think part of the problem is and I’ve talked to a lot of people and I’m not here to bad mouth you know anybody because that’s just not my thing but you know coin market cap has there I don’t know if they’re always acting and good face and you know they they’ve been the leader right so they’ve been the big dog for forever. So everybody looks at them and being unclean market caps like kind of a litmus test for a lot of people. So if your project isn’t unclaimed market cap your garbage but then on the other hand, you’ve run into that same kind of problem is that you know, the way you get tracked on coin market cap now you have to be on some exchanges, and you have to pay stupid listing fees for those exchanges. And some of those exchanges that coin market cap requires have questionable volumes. So you know, what do you do you know, The waste 100 grand to get on an exchange that probably won’t add any value to your project, just so Queen market cap will list you Is that fair? You know, that’s the kind of thing that I get a little frustrated with with this community in general or this industry is because for crypto to grow that shit needs to stop. To be honest, this shit needs to stop. Anyways, I’m sorry I’m ranting right now anyways, about..

Timothy Robinson
These exchanges are for the most part where people first go to look to buy different crypto currencies, obviously, you know, you have some on ramps like coin base, which it’s almost impossible for you to get on coin base and you know, etc, etc. But from there the next place are these exchanges. And you know, from there, if the exchanges are making it hard for actual real projects with a real use case to get lifted, this also than making it hard for people People that are trying to get into crypto to actually get into crypto. So as someone who’s a big proponent of adoption, I’m right there with you.

Rob McNealy
Well, I mean, think of it like that. Right, like, so the system, I believe does have an air of corruption to it. And both, you know that and, you know, I’ll just say I’m here for the tech. I am here for the tech. Sure What I love to have a Lambo Sure, you know, but you know, my driving force is after we’ve been building for two years, you know, our focuses, and we got a plan to get adopted, and we’re making huge strides in that direction. But to me, it’s like, it’s almost like you have like a cartel in some ways of bad actors that do control what people are seeing where people that are new to crypto are seeing. So one of the things that I think is the future because I actually am a big proponent of decentralization. And one of the things that I think is going to be the future and there’s no way to track this and as a project, unfortunately, Got to look at if I get on an exchange, you know, one, are they a reliable exchange but to have a properly tracking volume so people can have an accurate picture of what your project is or is not doing. Mom right now I like like you mentioned earlier change Angel, by the way, I’m interviewing their founder next week. So I’m already on those guys. But there’s like, the top. Yeah, but I think his name’s Ben. And, and so I’m going to be talking to the change. And you guys next week. And one of the things I think the future as far as I see it, I’d like to see more control of the industry getting taken away from the exchanges. And I think the atomic swap app community, which seems to have really exploded over the last six months, you know, you get vert base and you got change Angel and fast and a bunch of these others that are now coming into the market. I think that that is the future where you don’t have to go through an exchange. You just can go through an app and and switch between tokens and to I think that goes back to the heart and the root of decentralization. So, but the problem is as a project so here’s another one of those catch 22. Right, I see the world through being a project now both as a token and as a coin. Right. So I have kind of a weird experience, you know, seeing it is that there’s really not a way for projects that are on those decentralized, you know, atomic swap apps, their volume of how much is moving through there isn’t tracked, you know, by these decks or laser trackers like coin market cap and coin Gecko. And I think there’s some reasons for that. They say that, you know, the, the volume from those is coming is actually being put through different exchanges. But I think to me, that’s kind of I think that’s where the future should be. But there’s not a mechanism to really as a project to track those kind of more on chain transactions versus just what’s, you know, happening on exchanges. I mean, what do you think about the comic swap apps like, you know, we’re pace and change Angel and those things.

Timothy Robinson
While I’m a big fan of them, because, you know, if, if I’m a merchant or not even a merchant, if I’m just anybody and I sell something, and your preferred currency is not specifically my preferred currency, I don’t have to turn down that fail. If I know that there’s an app where I can easily go and just swap it out. And I’m not really losing a ton of money in fees. That That makes a lot of sense to me apps like that. So I like you said, I think that’s more. I don’t know, if decentralized exchanges or these atomic swap type apps, you know, which which of the two is going to be you know, what people look towards in the future but what one of the two is going to win out over these exchanges? For sure.

Rob McNealy
Yeah, I’m a big fan of I’m the one hoping that happens because I think there’s too much power consolidated and concentrated in too few too few hands right now. But You know, I still think we’re really early in this space. And I think that there’s just a lot of things shaking out. So besides the fake volume that we’re seeing out there, what other things do you see as being like impediments to adoption?

Timothy Robinson
Just not having access, for example, like, you know, binance shut down. And that was a major exchange that we were all using. And then they came out with binance. us except for Florida, and you know, some other places. So I still can’t use binance in the US, because it’s not yet in the state of Florida. So the issue that I see is that there’s not uniform ways where, you know, in the United States at least I can’t speak on other countries because I don’t live there but in the United States is not uniform on ramps and off ramps for people to accept crypto and then cash that crypto our they need us dollars. Again, obviously for us, the main goal is to get crypto and stay in crypto. But you know, for the average person who doesn’t know how to pay their rent with Bitcoin or, you know, do groceries, you know, with crypto or whatever, you know, they might want US dollar again. And it’s, there’s not an easy way there’s, there’s regulatory uncertainty, which doesn’t make sense. You know, and so I just I feel like there just needs to be something simple. That makes sense. You know, when when you when you go to your bank, they don’t teach you about all their encryption and tell you about what kind of locks they use on the ball. You just trust that your money is safe. You don’t know the technology that keeps it safe and you’re fine. And that thinking kind of got people in trouble because now money is just being printed crazy, but it’s easy for them. They go they set up a bank account, they see a smiling face, they’re happy they swipe a card, they spend their money once crypto reaches that level. There’s not going to be an excuse anymore not to use it, not to accept it, not to embrace it.

Rob McNealy
I agree, I think you see this a lot with like, people bring up volatility, right, like I would accept, you know, XYZ crypto if it wasn’t volatile. But I always point out, you know, and then they say, you know, use a stable client, I am not a fan of stable coins whatsoever. And I got my own reasons for that. But one of the things that I say is look is, you know, crypto is so volatile right now, because people aren’t using it for buying and selling goods and services, you know, in any real degree. Everybody’s just speculating on crypto right now. And that’s what’s driving the volatility. You know, you know, fiat currencies, I mean, us, you know, what’s the US dollar peg to right, the US dollar is the most stable, you know, fee out in the world right now. And it’s, it’s very stable, and it’s stable because it’s being used and it has huge liquidity, whereas other fiat currencies around the world are not, you know, they’re They get very volatile very quickly when people lose faith in them, and they don’t use them anymore. And I think, you know, once crypto starts getting adopted, I think it’s going to stabilize out, it just means it’s just going to have to actually be used for things other than investment purposes. And I think that’ll happen in time. But to me, I’m not a fan of stable coins. What do you think of stable coins I like I always hear people’s opinions on those.

Timothy Robinson
There’s only one stable coin that I kind of agree with. From my understanding the partnership with coin base and circle or whatever it is to make us DC. My understanding with that is us DC is only mental because it’s a mental token. But it’s only minted when someone actually buys it. And then it’s destroyed when someone cashes it back out from my understanding of it. And I think that’s exactly how stable coin should work if it’s going to be stable and it’s going to be pegged to something every single time. It’s purchased, it should be minted. And then when it’s cashed out, it should be destroyed. I think as far as stable coins that’s one of the only ones that I actually agree with. The fact that tether is even considered part of the crypto market cap kind of infuriates me because they can literally just print whenever they want. There’s so many different versions of data there’s ERC 20 there’s a tether that’s based on Bitcoin, there’s a Tron version of tether now that it’s just, it’s crazy. They can just meet whatever they want, and it’s supposedly as money. Well, we don’t know that. I think that’s crazy. But the way that Coinbase does it, I don’t agree with everything Coinbase does, but I think they’re doing stable coins, right. If I had to pick one, that’s the one I would say.

Rob McNealy
Well, I mean, that’s a much better way to do a stable coin. I think the problem is with tether and so many others is that they just got this random artificial peg and you know, I mean, you could even make, you know, you’re going to talk about maker as well but, you know, it does maintaining that are Artificial peg with bots is just really ripe for being undermined or imploding. And, and corruption is what we’re seeing, at least with, you know, the lawsuit with Tether, you know, out of New York, you know, I’m not an attorney, but you know, I do look at some of those docs, you know, documents and pleadings, and I’m just like, This just looks like one big cluster F of corruption all the way around. And in, you know, you got guys that probably shouldn’t be in the financial world whatsoever, you know, being in charge of things that are worth billions and billions of dollars that they’re just making out of nowhere. And it’s like, I don’t see how that’s better than the dollar To be honest, or any kind of corrupt government, you know, issuing ci that will it just seems like the same thing to me.

Timothy Robinson
So, I like what you said, I’m going to kind of add on to that a little bit. I saw a quote the other day from someone who was saying, like, you know, why should we Why should we trust crypto currencies and why why aren’t we trusting you know, government to make the money for us. And it was you know, someone said like the nerds that made the internet which is the most amazing thing ever also made cryptocurrency the government made this money that has depreciated over time like Which one do you trust more? So I’m what I mean by that is I’m kind of okay with the nerds you know experimenting and figuring things out for a little while but we do need some we do need some order. A little bit but I think as as someone who’s like a really big like, you know, I’m okay with with capitalism just existing in its purest form. I think with how trustless cryptocurrency is, and with me being okay with capitalism like that, I think we’re going to figure out which money is sound money and which is not. And unfortunately, for tethered i don’t i don’t think that that sound money. And I think that anyone that looks at it from a trustless standpoint, you know, actually very terrifying things on chain can kind of see that tether is not really something that we should put our faith in. So certain things like that will get shaped out. Over time, I’m not I’m not overly concerned with, you know, scammy projects and stuff like that because crypto is kind of forcing people to get smarter and to learn more. And even though, you know, like I was saying it needs to be easier for everyone else to kind of get on board. I think the people that are here now are doing a terrific job of managing what projects make sense and which ones don’t. And kind of informing the rest of us and that’s, that’s why we exist, to educate and, you know, make videos and teach people about stuff. And that’s why you do what you do as far as you know, interviews and talking to real people in the industry that are actually doing something so well. What about it?

Rob McNealy
Well, that’s why I’m talking to you because, you know, I believe that you can learn a lot by somebody by just meeting them face to face. I like I like to develop personal personal relationships with people. And I’m a pretty good breed of people in general. And I got a really good built bullshit detector. And I think the markets already changing, the crypto world is changing, it is getting better. It’s not quite there yet. And I think we have these centralized Oracle’s right now telling us, you know, in maybe with some corruption and you know, conflicts of interest, what is a good project, but what I think is going to happen, and what has to happen is how we evaluate a crypto project needs to change. And I think it’s going to change and I’m a simple guy, you know, I am not a developer, I don’t claim to be a developer. I’m an entrepreneur, and I’ve been an entrepreneur, fairly successful my life, you know, and what I still I’m a simple guy, right? People can come up with these really complicated models that I don’t understand. And this is what I find. The more complicated the model is, the more likely it’s not gonna work and fail and more likely, it’s going to be corrupted. And then on top of that, to me when it comes to business, whether it’s a crypto project or any kind of startup, right, at some point, things like paying customers and sales numbers kind of have to be part of that equation. And to me, ultimately, even if you have the greatest tech, you still need to have a market for that tech. You know, and, you know, I always kind of see when, you know, I know a little bit about angel investing, right? And you know, in the angel investing world when you you know, which have very, very much smaller raises on just in general, especially in early stage startups and what these crypto Icos are racing, right, you know, angel investors, you know, they might invest you know, 50 grand, hundred grand, a couple hundred grand at a seed stage business, and to go and the diligence they do to invest that small amount of money in comparison, is they do background checks on the founders like criminal background checks. They have a whole resume on the founder. They do credit checks. I’m the founder. They not they have not just a white paper but they actually have a business plan which talks about how that entrepreneur can get to market and get customers and and things like that. And to me when we were looking at Ico world, you got people that have scrubbed LinkedIn. So they’re 40 years old, and they’ve only been had jobs for three years according their LinkedIn. So you don’t know what the guy was doing three years ago, which is a big red flag. You don’t they don’t have any kind of like, you know, go to market plan. They’re just like, here’s a white paper, we got something nifty. We’re going to put XYZ on blockchain. And that was insane. You can’t invest like that. That’s insane. And and so a lot of people did lose a lot of money because it was insane to invest in things like that. But I think it’s changing now. And I think as we look to reevaluating the the value of a project, and we have different metrics applied, I think crypto will will be a more mature and more acceptable industry but we have to get there. You know, it can’t just be about, oh, they got 1200 people in their telegram group, they must be a good project when you know, some guy paid you know, bounties to get, you know, three guys in the Philippines to go set up 100 or, you know, 100 or 1500 accounts, you know, to join it and which that’s what’s happened, right? These people are raising money on fake Twitter follower numbers, which is crazy. Anyways, I’m ranting again, you know, I have an opinion about this.

Timothy Robinson
And it’s about opinion. I’ve seen, I’ve seen too many bounty programs where it has nothing to even do with the project. You know, like, like this tweet from this person, retweet it and you get, you know, 500 tokens, join the telegram 1000 tokens and it’s like, Okay, what do these tokens even do You know, what is your project about? I see more about the bounty than I do about the actual development. And I would, I would rather have it the complete opposite way, you know, have be all about the project and not about, you know, the actual bounty itself. There’s a bounty that exists. You know, that’s cool. But it should be like sharing, share the white paper with your friends and get their opinion about it. So I don’t know, like something that actually makes sense towards that particular project instead of just like, show us and we’ll give you fake money that we’ve created.

Rob McNealy
Yeah, well, I mean, that goes back to kind of like, you know, getting investors and, you know, goes back to the metrics, right. So the incentives were geared toward the metrics that people were either raising money on or getting on exchanges with and the size quote unquote, the size of the community is one of those metrics that the exchanges look at, but the problem is a lot of those followings are dead or fake. So it’s, you know that I think that’s what drove that. And hopefully it I think it’s going to change at some point has to change because it’s just not the real world. It’s fraud. It’s just make believe. And I, you know, with our project, you know, I actually spend more of my time in the industry we’re focused on rather than just the crypto space. And, you know, I do see that I actually talked to potential customers and potential retailers in our space. And the things they keep bringing up to me is, you know, it’s volatility is one of them. But the the most important one is that they think that they think crypto is a scam because of the industry has a really negative stigma attached to it. And I think unfortunately, it’s because so much of the industry has been a scam. That doesn’t mean that there’s not really really amazing opportunities for legitimate crypto projects to change the world. And I think that will happen. I don’t know which projects they’re going to be that do that, but I think it’s going to happen how to happen but I think the things that you guys are doing with bits and tokens are you know, and hopefully what we’re doing with what I do you know, we’re going to hopefully be a part of that. So little bit more about you, you know, you guys so you guys do a podcast you guys have a media production company What else do you guys do? What exactly would be the services say I was going to hire you for something, what can you do for me?

Timothy Robinson
So we’ve got a lot of things for people basically the way that I like to put it we can be as full service as necessary when it comes to media. So let’s say for your project for example, you know, someone should be focused on just developing and making it the best that they can make it and then someone else should do the social media the you know, marketing aspect, the actual media for it, you know, graphics, video, things of that nature, for wires will have you. So we do things like that. But then also we have hosted multiple events across the country. People will pay us for like emceeing doing az, you know, audio visual stuff. So, live streaming events and making sure the audio and like slideshows or, you know, appropriate for the appropriate time. You know, interviews. I mean, our list of services is so big, but pretty much anything that involves, you know, a camera, whether it’s photography or videography, from Production Direction, all the way up to just if you already have the whole idea, you just need me to hold the camera. A ton of things. Our main focus and what we do like for our channel is just documenting cryptocurrency and the blockchain revolution. We do we do a lot of different words as far as you know, the companies we work with commercials and things of that nature.

Rob McNealy
Where would you like to see yourself as in your business say five years 10 years? What would you What would be your goals?

Timothy Robinson
So we have really big aspirations.We right now are South Florida’s largest growing media company, which is cool. And I want to keep adding on to that. So in five years, I’d like to be a major news outlet for cryptocurrency with you know, multiple people in multiple parts of the world, gathering content and doing interviews and you know, really figuring out who is to be trusted and and, you know, who we can verify as a as a good person with good intentions. Sometimes.

Rob McNealy
Big goals are I think important, and I think the fact that you even have them says a laugh because so many people don’t you know, when you It’s funny. How many kind of startup companies or small companies, yes. What’s your goal? And they can’t even articulate what their goal is. They look like they don’t have a plan. And to me if you don’t have a plan, you can execute a plan. Where can people find out more about you guys?

Timothy Robinson
So probably the best place is following us on social media. Obviously bits and tokens calm is there has links to everything. So you’ll be able to find this all just by scrolling through that page. And then you can find some of our services and stuff like that on there as well. But yeah, probably social media is the best place we’re all really active on social media, especially mean Annalise, one of the other co founders here. So my my handle on Twitter is BTC weatherman. And then her handle is Annalise underscore BMT and the spelling is a and and a lie, se. And then, yeah, just find this on Twitter and reach out and say hi. We’re real friendly. We love making friends. So that’s what this is about is just meeting people and growing together and pushing forward for the same goal.

Rob McNealy
Wonderful, Tim, thank you so much for coming on today.

Timothy Robinson
Oh, absolutely. It was a blast. Thanks for having me.

Rob McNealy
We’ll do it again. Thank you.

Timothy Robinson
Yeah, for sure. Do you later.

Episode Links

Audio Interview
Video Interview
Interview Transcript

Jason Brown – Komodo Atomic Dex Transcript

Jason Brown - Komodo Platform

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

Rob McNealy
So today I am talking to Jason Brown is he is head of business development for Komodo platform. And I’m real excited to have him on the show because Komodo platform is doing some really amazing stuff. David, how are you today?

Jason Brown
I’m doing great. Thanks for asking.

Rob McNealy
So we met a few weeks ago back at World crypto con, and I had a really good conversation with you. And I thought it was kind of interesting how once you started explaining to me and educated me a little bit on what Komodo does, it actually made a whole lot more sense for me, I got a little more excited about it so far, we’d kind of jump into all the nitty gritty kind of stuff. Tell us a little about you. How did you get into crypto and how did you get into working for Komodo?

Jason Brown
Sure. So um, back in 2012 when I was working overseas, I came across Bitcoin and I think was a wired article. And I had heard about it before, but you know, at that time, do you know minecarts was around and you know, the The hype started really catching up so I decided to buy my first Bitcoin which was a lot harder back then and then it is today because there were no real exchanges that you know one accepted PayPal there there was no coin base there was nothing so I looked around on my local bitcoins but the closest place to me was over in Japan The Alba reach and so then I found a site called weird box which excepted Linden Dollars as currency in the game called second second life,you know, personally they exchanged Lindon dollars for Bitcoin. So I was able to buy Linden Dollars in exchange for Bitcoin, probably not the best rate but it was my first Bitcoin and then you know, from there, I just started you know, investigating deep into the field of time there were there was some forks like like coin came out, you know, the precursor dash I called dark coin was out and bunch of, you know, basic forks of Bitcoin and around 2014 I came across a project called NXT and NXT like blew way my mind it was basically it was like the first real like platform that anybody could just really build on top of without any in depth, coding knowledge and had a very lively community. And, you know, I just got involved I from NXT, there was a sub project called supernet, which was really the precursor of what Komodo is today and they were working on cross blockchain protocols and, and things to basically connect all these different block chains which were like islands and we wanted to be like the, the, you know, the bridges to all these different islands. So, you know, if you have coins on one chain and but when did you use the service on another chain, you had a way of doing such And from that around 2016, we started Komodo and, you know, created the delayed proof of work consensus mechanism, which, you know, helps secure block chains. And, you know, from there, we’ve been just developing this idea of a multi chain architecture that we see the future of blockchain heading towards. Yes. Cool, quick history about me and how I got involved.

Rob McNealy
That’s really cool. So you’ve been in crypto longer than most of my kids have been alive. So that’s actually pretty cool. But it’s funny because you you say in this space, I mean, it’s such a new industry, right? Like, no one’s been in this a long time. And this is a pet peeve of mine to like, people that have like, are 30. I don’t know how old you are, but I’m in my late 40s. So it’s like I see anybody who’s like in their 40s and they’re in crypto, but you look at their LinkedIn and only goes back three years. It’s like, have you not done anything the last 30 years? What do you been doing? I always think it’s a big red flag for me. It’s like what have you been doing before crypto? Right. And, you know,

Jason Brown
It’s funny. Yeah, it’s sad. A lot of people you know, they caught on the hype and now everyone tries to be some expert because they, you know, saw some YouTube videos and such before crypto, I worked in the nuclear industry. So to answer your question, I was a nuclear attack to power plants in South Korea. And wow, lab tech and for Westinghouse, so yeah, I had some science background and yeah, basically, went from nuclear work to crypto. Well, this base brings all types of people.

Rob McNealy
Well, it does and like I’m an entrepreneur, I don’t hide anything that I do. I still like my day job is a job you would never even know existed. I’m a floor inspector and a walkway auditor. And those are two jobs. No one’s ever heard of Yeah, and there’s there’s like the but it’s kind of interesting. I’m I’m a forensic expert witness and consultant in the flooring world. And so I deal with like construction defects. And I deal with personal injury cases where people die and have serious injuries. And so I work all over the country doing that kind of work. And I still do it it because Tosca is a community project. Everybody’s got a day job, everybody works a real job besides task. And so I don’t hide that even in my like my Twitter profile. I say, I’m a foreigner, because that’s what I am. But I’ve been in the space like 15 years, and I do really well. I’m actually pretty recognized in my industry, because I’m pretty good at my job, but it’s like, I don’t hide that. Yeah, I have I crave to go to my LinkedIn, I got my crypto stuff and my floor kind of stuff and that’s who I am, at least to me. It seems weird but I’m an entrepreneur and and I’ve had other projects and businesses and stuff along the way too. So it’s like to me this is not weird. It’s just it’s but I’m being honest about who I But it’s actually really tacky to you wouldn’t think about it, but it’s a lot of physics and concrete and similes and all sorts of stuff. So, but it’s a really weird set of knowledge and as a niche, you know, and I think that’s, it’s just a fun niche, but I’ve really flexible schedule. So I can actually Well, well, well, it’s great because I mean, I do I get paid, I get paid a lot when I’m working, you know. And so essentially I have a full time, nice salary, so to speak, for part time work so I can work on crypto almost full time and not have to worry about making a paycheck because I haven’t made any money off crypto as far as our projects in the two years we’ve been doing, in fact, have spent a lot of money working on our project over two years.

Jason Brown
So yeah, nature of the beast. Yeah, you guys.

Oh, absolutely. And I’m sure you guys are doing that with Komodo to I mean, I mean, even a community I mean, we didn’t launch as a our own blockchain originally. But it’s like you. I mean, just going to conferences is expensive. Yeah. You know, we were both in Vegas and even if you’re doing it on the cheap, but still a couple grand for one guy just to go to a conference, I mean minimum. I mean, that’s what it costs, you know, every meals 20 bucks and he’s know every hotel and hotel rooms a couple hundred bucks a night or whatever, you know, it’s like, yeah, Vegas.

Rob McNealy
Especially Vegas. So yeah, I think it’s interesting. And I think that’s cool that you came from kind of that background and I wish more people were honest that they had a life before crypto because it’s so young that I would expect people would have a life before crypto, right. But then you get all these like influencers that are in their mid 30s. And they’ve done crypto for like a year. And that’s their whole life and I’m like, okay, is what tells me is you were like working at like 711 before crypto. You know, that’s what I think I mean, may not be true, but I mean, don’t don’t hide who you are. I mean, and even if you came from the bottom, I would actually have more respect for people, if they’re like, yeah, I worked a 711 year ago, I learned how I taught myself trading from watching books or reading books on technical analysis. And now I make 100 grand a year for my house. That’s a story I want to share with people. Right? Yeah, get it, you know what I’m saying? But they don’t have that. It’s like, you know, and I’m just, I’m just here and I’m like, okay, anyways, I digress. Right? So Komodo Tell me a little bit about what, what is Komodo? Do you guys do a lot of different things. And you know, when I first started looking at Komodo as a super non developer, you know, I’m more of a business guy, a marketing guy. Some of the stuff was like over my head. So basically, what would be the big problems that you guys are trying to address that right now? That’s what you can offer as a service.

Okay, so some of the big problems that Komodo has know platform and is trying to address this one is the security of a smaller blockchain we’ve seen 51% attacks happen across many different coins and exchanges, you know, being robbed essentially because of the attacks. And it ruins the credibility of that chain and you know, the in law these chains on the, you know, dying off if they, you know, get tact often enough. So Komodo one of the major things we do is provide a layer of protection called delayed proof of work for these small chains that can’t get enough miners on their chain to be to prevent, you know, such of attack. And today, it’s lot easier to do these 51% attacks now on small chain so it was in the past. Beyond these days, we have nice hash and mining rig rentals and, you know, even many farms and stuff you can contract out to to run out their hardware. So a chain that only has maybe a couple hundred 86 words On it can easily be overpowered by some guys just willing to, you know, spend some money and nice hash. So, this is a real problem for for smaller chains. So, you know to help them out. And also because we are a multi chain ecosystem So, we have these problems as well. We created the system that essentially checkpoints onto the Bitcoin blockchain. So, to reverse a transaction or reorganize a block essentially past a certain motorisation point, you would have to attack the Bitcoin blockchain first and then also attack your your target chain as well. So, this makes it a lot harder for an attacker to execute this kind of attack on blockchain. So, so, if I had a proof of work blockchain right so this is for proof of work only case. It can be done for Other types of changes. So hybrids proof of stake, as well, proof of stake has some different kind of attack vectors. Then proof of work chains, buddy, it’s primarily made for proof of work change. Yes.

So if I just you know, and I don’t have her for change, but if say I had a proof of work chain project that I was working on. So do you guys come in, you’re coming in just like and supplying a bunch of hash power to kind of insulate the blockchain? Or are the you basically combining with their blockchain? Or is it more like a denial of service protection? What what kind of vector? How does that actually integrate? I guess is the question.

Jason Brown
So okay, is to integrate delay proof of work. We have a group of 64 nodes that will all run a full node of the chain we’re trying to protect. And so there’s normal nodes on the network. But every so often, every 10 minutes, they take the latest block hash, and then they write that block out. First on the kinetic chain and they write the block hash that all the all the protective chains block caches are on into the Bitcoin blockchain in and transaction. So this can be referenced if somebody is trying to do a reorg tax so what that is that a Meijer will mine privately basically they’ll take a chain will split into the mind privately one and they’ll mind normally the other and they’ll send a transaction on the real chain. Okay. And then at a later point in time they with their private chain which they have tons of pass rate on, they, you know, basically broadcast that as the rule chain because so many so much more of the hash rate because his paid hash rate agrees with that private chain, it basically rewrites the history of the blockchain. So, with these motorisation they can only do that a certain only to a certain depth Because of how expensive financially and computationally this is, you know, trying to reorg within a 10 block period is not very feasible. It’s doable. And if there was a sense of transaction, you could just say, hey, you have to wait till the notarization is done. And then once the notarization is done, you know, it’s good. So, basically, the the nodes, they are their full nodes on the protected network. They view the incoming block caches, they’re writing to the kinetic chain, which writes into the Bitcoin chain. If somebody tries tactic protected chain, they could reference these hashes on bitcoins blockchain or on the commodity chain. And just, you know, see, Hey, is this the correct hash or is this somebody trying to rework the blockchain?

Rob McNealy
So is, is this something you said that for newer chain, does that mean that over time that they would wean off of this network or was this like a relationship You would like to see go on permanently for some of these chains well, so with how much hardware that there is out there

Jason Brown
in less than that yellow smaller chain could somehow convince the miners to switch over there and they become a dominant hash rate on for their particular algorithm, then they wouldn’t need delayed proof of work but the reality is even amongst large hash rate change, unless you are the most dominant by hash rate for your algorithm, you under threat above 51% attack. So it’s it’s very hard for smaller chains to be fully protected against this type of attack. You know, for example, theorem classic. Quite a large network compared to many block chains up and proof of work chains out there, had a attack happened on it, which was a 300 block. D reorg that wouldn’t have happened with the are delayed proof of work system because they don’t like to go back 10 blocks so, so even, you know, chains that have massive amounts hash rate still faces threat, and the only one that we, you know, sort of for sure, you know, doesn’t really have this type of attack vectors Bitcoin itself because the mass amount hash rate and but the differences between the, you know, I guess you’d call pool ideologies that they would always compete against each other instead of trying to attack the network which would effectively you know, loot less than bitcoins credibility.

Rob McNealy
So, and you don’t have to answer this, but how do you make money with that? How do you if you’re going to engage with a smaller proof forward chain? How do you guys like monetize that work that you’re doing?

Jason Brown
We’re gonna so um, you know, since Komodo, is a community project as well. You know, it’s the service providers who integrate this are the ones who would be a monetizing, and there’s a fee for the integration because all the notary nodes have to run a copy of this protected chains, you know, block chain. So that’s server space and bandwidth and all that stuff. And then just also the integration part itself, the code that needs put in. So that cost is dependent on the chain if it’s a committed base chain, which is a lot more palatable. It’s pretty cheap. So it’s around five grand a year.

Rob McNealy
Okay, it’s not bad at all.

Jason Brown
Yeah, for normal Bitcoin based chain that doesn’t need that much anything. It’s a little bit more seven to 10 then but if it’s a like a custom chain, it might require a bunch of, you know, specific work for that chain to get it to work, but it shouldn’t be too difficult. So you’re looking between five and 10 grand Yeah, typically for You know, this delay proof of work protection, and like I say gets paid to the service provider who actually implements it. And we have several in our ecosystem that we recommend projects to.

Rob McNealy
So it’s a kind of like a vendor, like a part of the community of part of the Komodo platform community actually has vendors that are doing their own kind of like side hustle and participate that way?

Jason Brown
Correct. Yes, it’s it’s like, sort of like a WordPress, right. So WordPress itself is the free software to build websites and stuff with but there’s many different businesses that build plugins or themes that you can buy to, you know, aid onto the initial core of WordPress. So, very similar situation and Komodo that we offer the core and the course stuffs free but like if you want to have your own module create or you know, this protection added, you know, you have to go through a third party.

Rob McNealy
Make sense. I was just that word camp a couple weeks ago to So, good times. So tell me a little talking about barter decks what is the barter decks piece of your ecosystem all about?

Jason Brown
Okay, so a BarterDex, which now is called atomic decks, barter decks was the previous version it is a our implementation of atomic swap technology, which allows two people to exchange trust mostly between each other but no third party in between is works for pretty much all Bitcoin based coins, as well as the theorem in New York City 20. And we are currently working on getting other types of coins and other types of things like assets and tokens to be able to be atomic swap as well right now. So we can be effectively offer over 90% of the existing crypto world the ability to trust this lead exchange with each other. And this has a lot of benefits for for users and you For businesses who would like to use this as well, the biggest thing is security. We’ve heard of tons of exchange hacks happen, even the great binance got hacked for thousands of Bitcoin, right? And when you use a centralized exchange, you’re depositing your coins with them. And they hold it all into, you know, various addresses. But, you know, they’re all pulled together, you know, more or less. And so that’s an attractive target for a hacker to go after. Where with atomic decks, each user, you know, has their own coins, they control the private key to their coins. So it’s, you know, basically there’s no giant target for a hacker to attack like that. It’s all spread out amongst everybody. If you’ve had a hacker meal, luckily comes across somebody’s private key doesn’t affect everybody else’s thoughts. So that’s one of the big Benefits. The other big benefit is others know, because it’s a peer to peer protocol, there’s no KYC no AML that’s required of the users to use this. And this is another big thing and I’ll bring up binance again, is that just after that exchange hack, where they lost thousands of Bitcoin, there was a KYC hack, where people they still bunch of users like ID as their passport photos, all their information they had to input to get, you know, verified on exchange, leave a bit max actually had something like this happened as well recently. So now, all this information that you submitted to centralized exchange is floating all the dark web up for bid for the highest bidder, and they can use that for various identity fraud crimes. Oh, yeah. Opening a loan in your name. Yeah. Like, what

Rob McNealy
What what’s worse about that is that if they got your information from like a big centralized sees, they know you have crypto somewhere. And now I got like a good lead to try to, you know, dig that out. And so I think that can be used to do targeted attacks and and I’m getting more paranoid about my own personal security and online security and my privacy. And it’s funny because I just deleted like 50,000 emails out of one of my accounts because I was using it like a database, which I didn’t realize that was a big, huge problem. So I fixed that problem. And it was interesting, and I’m getting so paranoid the other day, I downloaded an app, which I’m really excited about using and then they mandate that you upload your entire phone book address book to their app. It won’t even allow you to go any further unless you up they don’t give you an option to not allow your entire address book to be used and, and I talked to the owner of this thing, and I said, I’m not giving you who I go. I asked him first I said who gets That information, is it just looking at it on my thing? Or is it uploading to your database like, well, we upload it, but we won’t share it with anybody. Like, I argue with them. But I’m like, how are you? What happens if you get hacked? Now you have all my contacts, which could also or in lots of people’s contacts, which could be used for, you know, social engineering, all sorts of attacks. I’m getting really paranoid. But I decided not to use the app because of that, you know, so it’s like, I think people need to think about that. So with with the Tomic deck so here’s the question I have about the is as a project is your are those transactions like the volume of those transactions, you know, tracked anywhere like coin market cap or coin Gecko or any of those other tracking services?

Jason Brown
Currently, we have a just a way of tracking I’m just a, you know, it pulls the order book and it just displays it but no current there was Now like official source right now we do plan on releasing a, you know, a way of displaying the statistics of the, you know, the use of the exchange, you know, what trades are available, how much volume, what’s the liquidity, things like that?

Rob McNealy
Do you have volume posted? Do you know what the volume is now? Is the network or is that proprietary?

Jason Brown
Now currently, it’s not much. We’re just in the beta testing stage right now. So we’re making sure everything works, right. We just had our first stress test happen on a Halloween actually. And we were started becoming saturated around 100,000 orders on one single order book and our previous incarnation that was in barbacks was able to handle three to four times as much. So we found some areas where to vastly improve and we plan on having another stress test. I here in about a month or so. So the statistics For the usage suffer not out yet. Just because it’s it’s still really new. It’s the first mobile atomic swap deck. So we’re still hammering out bugs, but so far, it does work out pretty well. There are some orders, but there isn’t much going on right now.

So I’ll give you my unsolicited advice, which everybody loves as as, as coming from as a project, right? You know, we’re projects are stuck in this box, right that especially community projects that didn’t do illegal Icos and things is that we’re not able to really get on decent exchanges unless we have you know, a certain amount of volume on smaller exchanges. It’s kind of like a really stupid catch 22 and that’s one of those metrics, I don’t think is a great metrics necessarily for how crypto products are evaluated, but it is one right now. I personally might personal ethos is I would love at least with our project artist project that we just be all on apps that are atomic swap type apps personally, because I think to me, that’s the future, I still believe it or not like the original essence of the Satoshi white paper, you know, peer to peer digital cash. And to me, I think that what’s happened is that the exchanges have gotten so much power now. And they can pick the winners and losers now, and there’s so much fraud with volumes and things like that. But on the other hand, my own so for our strategy, I would love to get on as many atomic swap type apps as possible, because I think that actually is the better way that I think crypto will get adopted and actually be used and people can just really conveniently move back and forth between kryptos on a mobile device. That to me is the best and has the least amount of friction. However, as a project though, most of those apps are not reporting that volume to the trackers. And so in a lot of ways, we don’t get credit for it. You know what I’m saying? It doesn’t So how do you say, Well, I’m on 20 apps, and we’re getting a lot of these on train on chain volumes, but none of that’s tracks centrally. And to me, you know, I’m just giving you a heads up, if you could get that volume that on chain volume track. I think that would be really helpful to a lot of community projects.

Yeah, it helps. I agree. I agree. Yeah, and just for, you know, potential traders are looking at trying a new exchange and stuff to, you know, they want to see the volume on the exchange before they even tried. So, we do have it in in the, you know, in our plan, and I applied is just because right now, it’s, you know, so know, that atomic data, the mobile app just got released in mid July, so it’s only a couple months old that but we do plan on doing this to, you know, like you said help smaller coins to, you know, to track their volume so they cannot, you know, have more to sit The show be a real boy.

Rob McNealy
Yeah. So is this a native app? Or is this a like a responsive, just mobile web app?

Jason Brown
This is a native app. But we do have a, you know, a web browser version being built as well. But currently, it’s a native app.

Rob McNealy
Is it for iOS or Google, Android?

That’s both iOS and a Android.

Jason Brown
Well, when you get that out, let me know because I’d like to I want I’d love to be a beta tester for that kind of thing.

You can actually if you have a you know, a right now you just download right now it’s on Google Play right now to download and iOS requires test flight. So yeah, I’ll send you the link for that. Sweet as long as you don’t want my address book.

Rob McNealy
But, but seriously, I think that to me, is we need more of that and to me, I’m not a maxi right. And I like I like a lot of projects. I’m also bearish on a lot of projects. are considered big projects now I just you know I really kind of look at things differently than a lot of people in crypto but to me my ideal future isn’t like there being one one coin to rule them all to me I think it’s much better if there were three or 400 really strong chains out there that were built for in you know, specific uses in industries that all you know swap between one another to me that’s so much more decentralized and and so you know, for instance if if Bitcoin for instance became like the only major crypto on the planet that people were really relying on for buying and selling which it isn’t now, and you know, if you have one big dog

Jason Brown
Be sad days that were the case especially with their 10 minute block times.

Rob McNealy
Two day confirmation times. Yeah. But But if you think about it, though, if you just but this is what a lot of Maxis actually want, whether and I don’t care if it’s an eighth math, math Or an LTC Maxie or Bitcoin maxy. Right? They all kind of had this weird vision that their their God needs to win. And to me I said well look at it this way if if you were like usurping national Fiat’s across the globe and your your community now has all that wealth centered on you now have you just made enemies of state level actors that have access to quantum computers? And it all it takes is you know what happens now if the whole globe is like on one crypto and it goes down? I mean, it’s catastrophic. I mean, think of it like Fiat’s right now if you think about Fiat’s. Right now every, you know, every country, sorry, every country has its own fee, right. So if you think about it, and they kind of swap between one another, so there’s 130, hundred and 50, you know, paper fee kind of currencies. That’s kind of decentralized. If you think of a country Free as a community, right now, the globe already has hundreds or you know, hundred 50 or so that kind of do that, you know, it’s really easy to swap between fiat currencies right now. So I think there already is an analog for this. And I think that it has basically if you had if you had the Maxis dream of one coin, you basically have centralized something that already was decentralized to some extent.

Jason Brown
Yeah, it I don’t understand the maximalist thinking, you know, Komodo we already came in with the, you know, the idea that there was going to be multiple chains. I mean, that’s just, you know, just look around even a crypto there’s, like 4000 some projects on coin market cap even now and let alone all the ones being built in private or some closed system. And so I agree with you, it’s, it’s not gonna be on one chain feature. I think that’s very naive thinking is just I mean, from a technical perspective, Can you imagine everybody trying to do everything on one chain blocks will be filled? There’ll be some crazy fee market, there will be delays and getting things done. And then not to mention the politics, like with Bitcoin and the theorem. So it’s Yeah, it’s maximalism, it’s, I think those are guys who just want their bags to go out.

Rob McNealy
Yeah, you know what, I used to think that they were just hardcore guys that really thing. I think there’s a lot of ego involved. And if you think about it, right, a lot of these are the same guys that have no LinkedIn history four or five years ago, and they’ve been telling everybody for five years how great their one project is. I think here’s the thing. I think psychologically, when you wrap your identity and your ego around that project, you can’t change your mind. when things change, right. You’re so wrapped up into that that’s, you know, mentally or socially. You can’t come on and I’ve been telling everybody on the planet to buy this one. coin for five years, and now I see the markets change and Maybe I was wrong. Or maybe there’s some better things that have come along. But oh, no, I can admit that I can have no one wants to admit they’re wrong. Right, you know, or they don’t want to be proven wrong, even worse, right. So I think there’s a lot of that and here’s the weird thing. You know, Jason when I, I stayed out of crypto for five years. I mean, I’ve known about Bitcoin and crypto for a long, long time. But you know, why I stayed out before I started investing and getting excited about it was the Maxis. They’re toxic, they were obnoxious. And and I always start off saying, you know, I don’t take investment from guys living in their mom’s basement that, you know, can’t even hold a job down, you know, kind of thing and that’s what a lot of the early guys that were in crypto, that kind of that stereotype kind of fit with a lot of those guys. And I’m like, you know, I’m just not really interested in giving you and your community a whole bunch of my cash. You know, Even though this sounds interesting, and it took really meeting a lot of like some really, really smart people that were a little more realistic in the space before I actually started opening up and investing in crypto, but even now, a lot of those early guys, I think there are wrong. So I mean, even my initial assessment of like, okay, you’re kind of a dipshit. I was right on them. They kind of are dipshits. And these guys team that turned out to be the Maxis. And and I think, you know, Bitcoin is amazing proof of, you know, concept. I think it’s great at what it does. I’m not sure that I think that there’s been better technologies that come out since Bitcoin came out. And I think that the governance problem is one of those things that I think a lot of people overlook. I mean, the one thing, the one concern I have about a lot of these proof of work kind of communities, is that when they have a conflict, they see the whole community fractures in a very toxic and public way. Like there’s no condom There’s no way to do conflict resolution when that happens. And and then everybody else just sees Wow, on the outside, like, Wow, you guys can deal with your shit. You know, it’s like, and that’s not good. I mean, if you look at it from the standpoint, I mean, think about what crypto is, right? I mean, we’re asking people to take what was normally in a bank, like their 401k is like, and that could be for a lot of, you know, middle class people that can be a lot of money. And we’re now telling them to invest in this new thing, you know, and then, and then you look at how that thing is being governed. You’re like, I’m not putting my money with those guys. They can’t even like get along with each other. And, and their avatars, like some furry rodent cartoon guy, and, you know, it’s like, so I mean, I think in a lot of ways, crypto is its own worst enemy, for her from an adoption standpoint. You know, because of that, and I think that’s actually helped. I think the Maxis are actually holding crypto back in a lot of respects. And they will never admit it. They won’t think that. But that’s just my belief on it. And I hope it changes. And I think it is changing as better good projects come in here guys like you with Komodo and other things that are trying to do really good stuff and solve real problems. I think that’s going to change, but it’s not going very quickly, unfortunately. So you guys just talk a little bit about the entire module that some you guys are working on?

Jason Brown
Sure. So entire is our blockchain creation platform. And our modules allow people to add their own form of consensus on top of the traditional consensus bound and proof of work chains. So what this means is that I’ll give you an example if you’re familiar with gaming at all at people off down competitions to see you know, who’s the BEST gamer there was a, you know, a, like a first person shooter games like Counter Strike baiting. Half of these types of competitions and defeat I love data feed in natural selection. Did you ever play any of those? Oh those now not not this one. Sorry.

Rob McNealy
Well they’re on Counter Strike the half life plan you know, so they’re just

Jason Brown
I used to play a long long time ago it’s okay so one of the things we know about this game is people like to cheat specifically with like game bots and stuff that so that they’re always going to hit their target and so what if you could recreate all of the you know movement on your all the keystrokes all the you know, ways that moved and everything you were able to recreate every step into check to see if like, hey, he moved his keys this way. Is this what happened in game you can sort of, you know, you know, determine for cheating or not now, take this idea and, you know, put it on top of a blockchain that a transaction Won’t be valid unless it’s replicatable by every, every node in the network, we’ve actually created a module called cc rogue. Rogue was a early game from the 1980s it was like a dungeon crawling game was done to ASCII. So the there wasn’t really that many, you know, visual stuff is like characters and stuff in it is very simplistic, but the idea of robots Yeah, like I said, dungeon crawler gets the, you know, and and you can you win. But people would cheat at these games, but with our module, you’re able to replicate all of the users movements and you know, what they interacted with. And so you can see, Hey, is this like, item that they claim they have? Is it real or did they, you know, click on an item and, you know, somehow get it or you know, and this allows chains to to validate programs that aren’t your Traditional like financial ledger style programs like we see with block chains today. So we can add a layer of blockchain and forced consensus on top of other types of programs is basically what the entire modules are. So this expands blockchain functionality quite greatly. The one the issues blockchain so released Bitcoin protocol based blockchain says that they’re not turning bleep. This has been somewhat solved with a theorem style chains, with their interpretive smart contracts. However, we can now with these modules, you know, sort of emulate that Turing completeness with and still have a Bitcoin base chain. So that’s another benefit of this as well.

Rob McNealy
So is it just more of a security layer on top of like, Bitcoin based chain or is it actually more does that add actually additional smart contract functionality to We’d like to

Jason Brown
know, functionality as well. So, to give another example, what if you had a module that said that transactions? I mean, come on so top I had that, you know, can’t be sent to a certain address like like blacklist, blacklist whitelist. Saying, also, you know, time locks things that we see in blockchains. Now, we can actually add on those same types of rules to other programs, and have them verified by the chance of so it does adds a basically it’s a new way of doing the smart contracts, smart contracts as compared to aetherium. Where the put the theory, put the contracts on chain, you have to run through it. If there’s an issue, then you’re trying to convince the chain itself to, you know, either roll back or Yeah, have to fork to update the contract some contracts, you know, have a wait 10 they can update. But if something happens wrong on the on a, you know, these what these modules, then the whole network knows, they know to update, instead of, you know, some political back and forth of well, why should we roll back our chain? Or why do we, you know, why should we do hard fork and so on. So, this solid doing smart contracts is, is a little bit different than what you would find on other platforms, but it allows a lot more benefits than traditional smart contracts.

Rob McNealy
That’s kind of cool, actually. I think there’s a lot of potential applications for that. So as far as the atomic decks and these models, what other kind of interesting things do you have kind of in your long term horizon with Comodo platform?

Jason Brown
So, one of the things we’ve been working on is a paid acid system. So if you’re familiar With maker or am maker dow and die that’s a system for eath theorems stable coins, we’ve created a similar type of system to be used it’s a it’s a modules you can add this to any chain that’s created with committed we’re planning on adding it to the committed main chain itself that you could posit Komodo and then issue a stable coin. Now what makes us different than make your dollars and die is that it’s not limited to Komodo as a deposit and is not limited to US dollar as a paid gasa so that you could basically do any day any type of transaction. So you deposit dash and get dash euro you know so I coined it paid to the Euro but backed by cash. So I think this type of system is going to see a lot of use Because there is a a method of liquidations and such that a lot of traders might like in terms of profit taking and it brings more of the traditional forex and stock trading to blockchain.

Rob McNealy
Do you think something like that could work for gaming tokens? Like you were talking earlier about like Linden Dollars from? Second Life? I’m wondering if there’s an application that can be used with that.

Jason Brown
Um, well, they would be to me, I’m sure something could be made here. There’s very little that can be carried out by now. Crossing over a centralized system, like Goblin dollars and issuing a decentralized coin I would require some deep thought on how to make that work, but I’m pretty positive that is doable. Yeah, some issues you have to consider like if it’s on a centralized system. what’s to stop you know, the enter the game from blocking your account like as we see them World of Warcraft, or, you know any MMO RPG if you violate their terms of service and then the how how’s that gonna affect the you know blockchain tied version? There you have your backing it with Linden Dollars how’s that gonna affect a coin that was issued from that backing of the backing got banned or restricted somehow so it’s the I’m not saying it’s not doable it’s just there’s a lot of lot of thought process

Rob McNealy
Oh trust me the the people part the governance part is the hardest part of all this stuff like I tell people even forking, you know a project like you know, you start with another projects code base and we spent probably six months just trying to figure out how to manage it and how it should be governed. That’s the hard part. You know, everybody talks about oh code this code that you got good code Really the coding is not that complicated. You know, if you got some real I mean, it can be but but in the scope of things in my mind, you have to when you’re trying to figure out the whole governance piece one, you got to find something that people will, will think is fair, right? And then you got to figure out a system that is less likely to be gamed or cheated. You know, and, and so, and then a system that people will use and all those things are really, really complicated. And, and so that’s what I tried to, you know, tell people that, you know, making a crypto project, you know, the coding part is super hard. I mean, that, you know, it’s challenging, there’s no doubt about that. And I’m lucky that I got really, really smart people that know that stuff. When I kind of explained this is what I want in my brain and how do we make that happen? But, you know, it’s interesting to trying to work out all the ways people can do bad shit. When you’re building a project. That’s that’s the complicated So I’m always just looking, I don’t have to know how something’s coded. But if I understand how, what capabilities are out there, it always just makes me think because I’m kind of a serial entrepreneur. So I’m always looking like how could this work in this scenario, I’m always ready to, you know, there’s people that are like Applied Science people, like you got the people that are theoretical, and then, you know, like a nuclear technician might be more applied nuclear science. I think like, I’m gonna apply an entrepreneur like I always kind of think like, I don’t need to know how to code that but I want to understand how I can use that. And so that’s how my mind works. And you know, but you need both of course. Well, I do appreciate you coming on the show. Because you know, I’m big fan of you guys do now that I understand it a little more. I’m even a bigger fan. So where can people find out more about Komodo platform?

Jason Brown
People can find out more about us at our website at KomodoPlatform.com. In a we have a lively community on our Discord. Search for Komodo platform dischord going join us out we’ll be more than happy to do explain more about our technology. And, you know, if you have a project in mind, we have many, you know, helpful developers that will help guide you on on your path.

Rob McNealy
Jason Brown, thank you so much today for coming on the show.

Jason Brown
Thank you.

Episode Links

Audio Interview
Video Interview
Interview Transcript

Joe McGill CyChain Interview Transcript

Joe McGill of CyChain Joe Mcgill on CyChain Digital Currency Risk & Advisory

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

Rob McNealy
Hey, today we are talking to Joe McGill. He is the CEO of side chain, which is a consulting company focused on the crypto space. So I’d like to welcome to the show. I’m real excited about this interview. How are you today? Joe?

Joe McGill
I’m good. Thanks for having me.

Rob McNealy
Well, you know, we met kind of on social media, and seems like all this stuff meets these days. But I really wanted to have you on the show, because I really like kind of where you’re focused. And I think this is the security side of crypto, I think is one of those things, and that in a lot of places gets over looked. And I’m not talking about necessarily the technological security, but the physical security, how do people protect themselves, that kind of thing? And it seems like that’s something you guys are focused on. Tell me a little bit about your background and how you, you know, got into starting this company.

Joe McGill
Yeah, so I’ve worked for the US government for the last I guess so 12 years in various capacities from counterterrorism to working cyber criminal cases. And about five years ago with the Secret Service, I first became exposed to crypto currencies and Bitcoin and how criminals were using that to launder funds. by most people, I was skeptical. But as I learned more about the technology actually became an advocate for it, and started reading as much as I could about it. And it’s interesting, you know, when you think of federal law enforcement, you always hear about the horror stories about how agencies are targeting the coins and not necessarily the people using it for nefarious purposes. But it’s actually not like that at all. From a much broader perspective. There’s actually a lot of pro crypto in the federal government and in law enforcement and a lot of people just want to see the the people that are using it to exploit innocent people and and using it to evade detection from law enforcement that are committing crime. That’s that’s typical. The focus. That’s how I got into it about four or five years ago.

Rob McNealy
So what are you doing with CyChain? What kind of is your area focus and from the least the consulting side who Guess who’s your customer.

Joe McGill
So we actually have a few different products that we’re coming out with. And we have a consulting risk and advisory side where we do everything from operational security, where we take a holistic approach to your online footprint will do social media pin test, we do physical security assessments of your company and your location to develop plans and procedures, and the invest something happens we’re also to make sure that your infrastructure is secure. We also have a blockchain analytics app that’s coming out next Friday. And that’s geared towards the everyday consumer. And we’re going to be one of the first to market in that space, because the big guys right now are focusing on enterprise type customers and making sure banks can stay compliant. And our app is going to focus on China. Find ways where users can find out if an address is a scam, receive alerts, fall reports. And so they’re going to be able to interact directly with the sidechain team through the app. And so that’s our other aspect is we do investigations, from due diligence to recovery. And we hope this app will help users identify scams before they send money to the wrong place.

Rob McNealy
I think that’s probably very useful. You know, as is I go out there and I’m talking to people what about our project Tusk? The one thing that I’ve noticed is that there’s not a lack of knowledge of Bitcoin In fact, I see right now, almost every single person that I talked to just out in the wild has heard the word Bitcoin they got a general idea that it’s a digital kind of money thing. But almost every one of those people have a negative stigma attached to Bitcoin. When you say Bitcoin, they’ll say, Oh, that’s that digital funny money. It’s a scam. I mean, have you have us come across that too. Because I think your app might will help, you know, dispel some of that that fear and concern that people have out there about.

Joe McGill
Yeah, that’s definitely interesting. You know, when you think about the left coast and in the East Coast, California Silicon Valley, there’s a lot of people there that know about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency and as you shift sometimes to the south, it’s it’s, you know, a bit pain, Atlanta. So you have a lot of people that are starting to get exposed to the cryptocurrency. There are a lot of skeptics out there. They only hear about the horror stories on TV and documentaries, or people getting hacked. But you know, I think the report came out today. I don’t know if you saw it. I remember what it was called. It basically talks about how there’s a working group together that identified only point 4% of  transactions were fraudulent. I read that this morning as a matter of fact.

Joe McGill
Yes. And so I think there’s probably a lot of people that read that. They get nervous about how wall forcement exchanges are tracking this but I look at it as a good Because it helps the industry. People that are skeptical say, Well, look, we took a we analyze all these transactions, we looked at a lot of different information. And we found that only point four 9% of transactions are associated with criminal activity. I think that’s good. I see that it’s positive for the industry versus being concerned about being tracked. So I think stuff like that, that continues to come out that shows it’s not all for the various purposes and hopefully pushing out our app will help show people that it’s not it’s not all for criminals. There’s, there’s everyday use that helps meet technology issues that some customers are facing that being unbanked and you know, remittance there’s all types of things that I think customers will be exposed to.

Rob McNealy
So when you’re working with the Secret Service D, is there a general percentage of transactions done with cash dollars that they know are fraudulent or illicit?

Joe McGill
Yeah, what’s entering with the Secret Service you think of protection, protecting presidents and then you think of counterfeit currency. So when I think of cash, I always think of counterfeit, and how criminals are using fake money to pass it in. And lot using that to launder money and carry out crimes. But in the crypto side, we really didn’t see too much cash transactions unless it was what you call BTC to plastic to where criminals will launder their money and then set up cash out networks across the globe and ATM. But that’s kind of looking back at the old school carding side on the dark web. That’s how they operate. And these will organize teams and every now and then we would see a crypto to cash type transaction as a way to monetize OR gates.

Rob McNealy
Well, I was saying just as far as comparing crypto versus Fiat, how much of US dollars like what percentage of US dollars are used for illicit activity? You know, if we know it’s point of four, nine or whatever, and crypto what is it what dollars right now?

Joe McGill
I would say it’s much more significant. I mean, the US dollar is the most laundered piece of currency. See across the globe, it’s also my opinion, it’s much harder to track crypto currencies very transparent. And only a small percentage if you take a holistic approach is being used for criminal activity.

Rob McNealy
So I heard, you know, way back in the day that pretty much all the Fiat paper money dollars in circulation are generally contaminated with some sort of drug residue. Is that kind of like an urban legend, or is that a is that a factual kind of statement?

Joe McGill
I’m not sure about that. I haven’t heard that. But, you know, I wouldn’t be surprised as much. You think about how much some of the dollars been passed around. And, you know, I think that’s certainly possible.

Rob McNealy
You know, I, at one point, as an entrepreneur, my wife and I actually owned a retail store in an urban setting in Denver. And it was one of the grossest jobs touching that currency every day. And it was ironic that, I think two or three occasions we actually had fake bills come through that We lost like, we took it to the bank like, this is fake. Screw you. And I’m like what? You know. And so I think it’s interesting just in our little, our little store, this little neighborhood store that we owned, you know that we just had that level where, you know, dealing with fake dollars, you know, kind of thing. And to me, that must mean that a huge chunk of fake currency must be circulating out there, among the real stuff and figure out what do you mean, what do you have any knowledge of what that looks like? Does the government release that kind of information or is it really bad?

Joe McGill
I don’t know off the top of my head, the statistics of it, but I do know that counterfeit currency from my experience of Secret Service is still being circulated. But the Secret Service I’m obviously biased because I used to work there, but they do a very good job in tracking counterfeit currency. And these networks that use it to launder money across the United States, but it’s still it’s still going on. You don’t really hear about it much because it’s more of an old school type investigation and Most people nowadays like to hear about the big cyber cases and ransomware. But counterfeit touches narcotics, and it hits about every type of old school car you can think of. And it’s still being actively used.

Rob McNealy
Yeah, but we don’t we don’t hear the politicians bad mouthing dollars. Do we now? You know, that’s that’s a very good point.

So here’s the question. I guess the big thing is, you know, what are the biggest security threats that you’ve seen with crypto currency?

Joe McGill
Well, I think if we just take a step back, and we look at how much data is being used, and how much data has been shared on users of social media, I think data is the biggest threat to cryptocurrency users. There’s been so many leaks over the last even just year, five years of personal information being put out there that you’re exposed online footprint i think is your biggest threat. And that’s mostly because the data that’s out there can be used to sim swap your phone it can be used to compromise your Bitcoin exchange accounts. There’s all different types of crimes that can be used to compromise your data. So I

Rob McNealy
have always told people that and this is something that we’ve talked about at our off chain conference last this last year in our last March, and we’re going to probably address it again and next year. But, you know, with crypto, what we’re asking is we’re asking the average person, right, if the adoption, mass adoption to happen to now be responsible for not only you know, what, maybe only a couple grand in cash at their bank holds, we’re now asking people in in some instances to basically physically be responsible now for their entire life savings for their equivalent of 401k value. But yet, I don’t really see a lot of knowledge and education to people at least from the crypto community talking about what that really does for people, you know, as far as you know, Making them a bigger target for, you know, the level of security they need to upgrade. What’s your take on that? Because the risk to me seem huge. From you know, not only physical security but losing keys and things like that. Why is the crypto community not really talking about this? Like, to me, this is the biggest, biggest scary thing about the whole thing.

Joe McGill
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. And my personal experience on the law enforcement side first getting into crypto was when I was running accounts where I needed to make transactions for undercover type purchases. Me purchasing crypto, even though it wasn’t my money. I was terrified. The very first time I did it. I was terrified about transferring it to another wallet. I was terrified about pulling it off an exchange and then even putting on an external device. But you’re right. I think the reality is that a lot of people are not yet comfortable with being their own bank. And it sounds great to not to say hey everybody use a physical device. Never keep your keys or your money on exchange but Reality is, in my experience that there’s a lot more people that keep their funds on an exchange than they care to admit, because it’s popular right now to say, yeah, it’s not your keys, not your coins, but not everyone’s doing that. And so, I like to teach people Hey, look, let’s let’s be realistic, if you’re not gonna, you’re not going to use an external device, which in my opinion, I think you should, you’ve got to implement a lot of basic security steps, you’re going to lose your money, and you know, the unbanked and the people that crypto is targeting, there’s got to be a lot more education out there. So they understand the risk of being their own bank and make it more practical.

Rob McNealy
Well, I would say just from a simplistic standpoint, right, and I’m a former you know, EMT and a former firefighter and things like that so I always you know, I always look at things from the the worst case scenario right, your house burns down, and your hardware wallet is in your your house. Okay, so your house burns down, and now your 401k is gone. So what Would so what do you do to mitigate that, you know, kind of thing. And so for instance, you know, what if your house burned down, and you had your hardware wallet in a safe, but the safe was in the basement and the firefighters put two feet of water now in your basement, you know, how do you deal with that? And these are the things that I get concerned about, even with my own stuff, right? That’s not just about everybody else. But to me, these are those there needs to be more solutions and more discussion about this because we got to get ahead of this because as mass adoption happens, you’re going to have more people in that situation. I don’t know if you saw last year but there was a couple reports. I think they’re mostly in like Europe or Eastern Europe, where literally some guy was flashing their wealth on social media and guys like broke into their house and bought a gun to their head and you know, got the Bitcoin right. Have you heard of any other cases like that? That’s happening right now.

Joe McGill
Yes, within the last year, I’ve heard of the few just the law enforcement channels of ransom type cases happening, where people on social media saying, Hey, I’m traveling to this city, let’s do a meetup. And then the next thing you know, because of where they’re operating at some criminals take advantage of that. And so I think that’s one thing that a lot of people do not realize, especially in the influencer space, advertising where you’re traveling before you get there is a risk. So I always say tell people, you’re there after you’re there. But the physical threat is huge.

Rob McNealy
I did that this morning. As a matter of fact, and I normally don’t. But I wanted to promote this event, but that is something that I can I definitely think about. But on the other hand, I’m driving and I’m always armed when I’m traveling when I’m driving, so I’m not as worried about it because it’s driving from Salt Lake to Vegas isn’t a big deal, but I’m always armed. So you know, but that but I am very welcome. Aware and concerned about my physical security most of the time, and very, whereas most of the influence I see out there don’t, they’re just not that kind of mindset, you know, and, and I and I get concerned about it, because I’m trying to look at the future of 345 years from now, what are going to be the problems that, you know, are kind of going to impede adoption? You know, I think there’s two main ones, I think the physical security thing is a problem for the average person. And I think the other thing is the how the IRS handles crypto transactions, I think those two things are going to be the biggest impediments for adoption. And yet those two things are where people aren’t even really talking about yet. And I don’t think they’re talking about the IRS very much because people aren’t really using crypto for buying and selling goods and services to any great degree right now. But I know as a former retailer, myself, that’s going to be probably one of the biggest things that that’ll be the biggest complaint of retailers is how to deal with the transactions and the accounting piece. But I think the These are things that we need to deal with as a community if we want this technology to move forward, and I think that there’s just not enough time and attention being brought to this. So, scams, I mean, you know, as a project now, we’ve been a project for almost two years. And I can tell you that as a project, we’ve almost been scammed multiple times. We’ve never have been, but there’s been multiple attempts as a project or people that are in you know, public about being involved with the project. People try to scam us all the time. What are you seeing out there as far as the scams that are pretty common, you know, around crypto,

Joe McGill
Right, well, phishing still dominates right now the crypto space where attackers now have shifted. Let’s take a look back two years to 2017, the big Ico craze. I know law enforcement, social media cannot keep up with the amount of scams and most of them were driven by phishing just fake websites. And I’m still seeing that a lot just talking to former college exit from the Secret Service, they’re still seeing a lot of phishing links where attackers are now pivoted though. They have these nice, nice web pages that actually looked very sophisticated. In some cases, they look better than some current websites that are up there right now. I know there’s a scam right now that my crypto is tracking. They’re very good, very good security conscious company, but they’re tracking a scam that I think is is targeting about seven or eight different phishing websites and couldn’t be more than that by now. But it’s definitely I think one of the greatest risk for crypto users.

Rob McNealy
So if someone does become the victim of a scam, what can they do? Is there any resource for them right now?

Joe McGill
There is and a lot of it’s tough because a lot of it depends on where they’re based at if we talked about the United States, it depends on their geographical location, the amount of theft they’ve lost and the type of exposure from a federal perspective to get a case taken federally, typically the last amount has to be pretty significant. So you know your depend on working with If your local law enforcement department and they usually have very good investigators, and so the first thing you can do when you’re scammed is make sure you just save all the information, take screenshots of the scams, record all your IP addresses and try to have as much information as possible to provide the law enforcement and my experience of the Secret Service. You know, we were very successful. I was a recovering stolen money from attackers, but it’s a very long process, it can’t happen. But the people that are out there that are probably still waiting to get their money, know that it’s not just something that happens overnight, you have to be prepared for, you know, several months to a year, sometimes you get the money back.

Rob McNealy
So how can you get the money back is that, you know, require the, you know, cooperation of the exchanges somehow or are they able to, I guess it would be dependent on the chains, but what would actually that look like how do they get the money back from a scammer?

Joe McGill
Yeah, so, it’s interesting. A lot of exchanges have to make a business decision and if they’re working with individual customer that provides information They could have the discretion if they wanted to assume to provide the money back. But typically, you know, in my experience exchanges like to work with law enforcement to make sure there’s a legal legal record. So a lot of it is done by issuing legal records such as warrants to recover the money for the individuals. So the exchanges will send it to law enforcement, the law enforcement will give it back to the the people who lost her funds.

Rob McNealy
So would you know, pivoting to like the privacy concept, one of the main benefits of crypto at least is how was originally reported was that the anonymity or pseudo anonymity that using crypto for payments allows. Now that seems to be you know, completely at odds with what most governments want with OFAC and funding of terrorism and things of that nature, sanctions, that kind of thing. What do you see the future of privacy coins look like?

Joe McGill
Yeah, so first of all, this isn’t me endorsing a specific privacy coin. But I think the challenge we see out there right now is you look at coins, like z cash. I know they’re very regulator friendly, because you have the shielded transactions and the non shielded transactions. And so I think if from a government perspective, speaking generally that if they can look at a privacy coin and say, well, they’re there is the opportunity to look at transactions that are transparent, then they can also have privacy mechanisms. I think that’s a plus. But there are coins out there that offer 100% privacy, which, you know, I’m torn. I think that’s a good thing. Because if for you as a merchant, it’s none of my business how much money you’re making per year, or what type of transactions you’re doing, and I shouldn’t have free access to that without the proper legal disclosures. And so, I think there has to be a balance and I’m not exactly sure what that answer is, but I do know privacy coins are probably going to continue to see some, some interest from the government because of their use for criminal activity. But I think we also need to remember that there’s a lot of pro reasons for using privacy coins. If we’re going to have mass adoption, we have to have something beyond pseudo. pseudo privacy, it has to be complete privacy. You know, a big bank, like Bank of America is not gonna work. If they switch to crypto for some reason, the next few years, you know, they’re not going to want their competitors to know what their daily remittance looks like, or how much money they’re sending back and forth. And so I think a privacy layer is necessary. I just don’t I just don’t know what that answer is. But it’s it’s definitely of interest to the government, I’m sure.

Rob McNealy
Well, you know, as a project, that’s something that we are concerned about, you know, same deal. Like and I think because and this is my opinion that we’re so early in mass adoption hasn’t happened, that these big valid concerns really aren’t being super talked about right now. You know, it’s all about theory, right? But To me, I always kind of put myself you know, I put my mindset is a former retailer and someone who is concerned about privacy, there’s real security risks. If someone like for instance, if you can try to trace back every transaction to someone’s basically 401k one, you can figure out how much money your neighbor has conceivably you know, if they if your neighbor now has you know, a million dollars in their quote unquote hard, you know, their wallet somewhere. Now, you as a sophisticated criminal or burglar might not know that they keep that off site at a bank deposit box and cold storage, you might think and hope that it’s at their house, and you could plan you know, a home invasion based on that information. And I think the same thing with you know, retailers, you know, you there’s strategic competitive reasons why you wouldn’t want to know what your you wouldn’t want the public to know what your daily sales are, for instance, and so to me, there, there needs there are very absolute safety concerns and security concerns around that privacy piece. Because if you can trace back these purchases back to one hardware or one wallet, you kind of can unravel, you know, all the all the main transactions. And to me, it seems that there, you know, as from a retailer standpoint and our project today, we’re really focused on retailer adoption, that’s kind of our thing. And so we’re concerned and we’re trying to figure out on one hand, the government’s been pretty clear, they really don’t like Mineiro. And they really have concerns about privacy coins, and I we’re already seeing the moves with, you know, exchanges that want to deal with the American, you know, banking system that they’re starting to delist privacy related coins. But on the other hand, what do you do at that situation? And so this is something I’m really, you know, I’m interested in, you know, as a project, you know, we want to be able to implement those kind of features later on. Because we think there’s a real security risk around, you know, not having privacy, but on the other hand, we’re trying to balance Figure out what will the government allow? For instance, we don’t want to, you know, get in trouble for violating sanctions, for instance, if someone does, you know, use our crypto in some manner. So these are those things that we need people like you to tell me what to do. So that’s an interesting con, you know, thing I know that recently you’ve been, you know, posting about that theory and developer, Virgil Griffith, what’s your take on that?

Joe McGill
situation? You know, so obviously, you know, I think it’s important to take a step back and say, Look, I’m also very supportive of your innocent until proven guilty, but just looking at what was in the actual criminal complaint. You know, if that stuff is true, it’s definitely pretty dangerous for someone to do that type of thing. I know it’s not popular to say that teaching someone to evade sanctions is not is not popular right now. But the reality is teaching Someone about blockchain is very different than teaching someone about how to launder money, especially when you’re talking about a rogue rogue regime. That’s a threat everywhere, not just United States, but South Korea across the border. There’s many countries that are threatened with this rogue regime. And so if you’re going out and you’re teaching people how to launder money, using crypto currency, I would strongly advise against that it’s different than educating people on the benefits of Bitcoin and other kryptos but sanction evasion is not a not a good look.

Rob McNealy
Well, My take is this and I’m someone who’s, I’m Can I can be pretty anti government, my own political views because I think government does a lot of dumb stuff. But I also realize there’s a spectrum here, right? You know, I’m in crypto because I actually believe in that concept of decentralization. But on the other hand, if you’re going to be out there and saying, Hey, this is just you know, free speech and you know, I’m gonna Help a government get involved with crypto. To me, I think helping that particular government is not the key. You know, I don’t want any government getting into crypto Personally, I’m just kind of like to me, I just don’t think government manages things very well. Let’s just start there. It’s not a good steward of the money that they have. And they’re not and regulations can often be counterproductive. But in the case of that, the Virgil Griffith I, I’ve been very outspoken about this, that he’s like these. This is like one of arguably one of the worst governments on the planet. Now, I’m not a fan of government at any level, and I got lots of criticisms of the American government for sure. But Kim Jong Hoon is not a nice guy, and he’s not very nice to his people. And in anything you do to help that guy is not going to, in my opinion, it’s probably not going to filter down and trickle down to the people gaining freedom this might take With blockchain technology cryptocurrency, any communist regime especially that embraces, quote, unquote, you know, celebrates, you know, blockchain and crypto, they are not doing so because they believe in the decentralization aspect of it. They’re weaponizing it, and they will use it in a way that keeps them in power and probably keep subjecting their own people in a more efficient manner. And that Griffith guy, you know, I didn’t know who he was, you know, I but I did do some reading on him. And I guess he did some things with Saudi Arabia few years ago, too. So this guy’s got some interesting you know, if you’re a big believer in decentralization, he sure got some interesting ideas on who he wants to work with that space. And, you know, Saudi Arabia, even though they’re an ally of the United States, I would contend that they’re not a very good country and their government doesn’t treat their people very well. But I digress. So we’re getting close on time. But I wanted to see what would be the main tips that you could offer from a security standpoint for the average person getting into crypto would be the main things that you’d recommend that they do as a way to protect themselves.

Joe McGill
Very first thing I would do and would be to disable SMS verification from all of your devices, you need to use Google Authenticator. Step number one, if if Uber has to FA which they do enable on Uber, you know your to FA you should be able to scroll through Google Authenticator because we have so many apps that are using that. Don’t take any any app for granted use it for everything. The second thing if you store your your crypto on an exchange, if you must whitelist all of your addresses make it a requirement to send money outside of exchange there has to be a delay period of at least 48 hours. The third thing if you have a storage device, an external key use it because it’s very important. If you’re going to be your Be your own bank and you have a lot of money you need to make sure you have a good plan in place and and make sure that you’re using the proper procedures in store that don’t just keep it in Houma, Georgia. Keep it in a fireproof safe, keeping a safety deposit box. Make sure you’re just being responsible.

Rob McNealy
Joe, where can people find out more about CyChain

Joe McGill
CyChain.com.

Rob McNealy
Joe, thank you so much. You can get really good information. And you know, if you’re open, I’d love to have you come back on the show in the future and keep us up to date on what’s going on out there.

Joe McGill
Yeah, that’d be great. Thanks for the opportunity. Thanks a lot.

Episode Links

Audio Interview
Video Interview
Interview Transcript

Jason Fishman – Digital Niche Agency Transcript

Jason Fishman - CoFounder of Digital Niche Agency (DNA)

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

Rob McNealy
Today I am excited because I am talking to Jason Fishman. He is with a digital niche agency, a digital marketing agency based out of California specializing in the blockchain space. We met a few weeks ago at World crypto con, and I had a really good time hanging out with them. So welcome to the show. Jason, how are you?

Jason Fishman
Good. Thanks for having me. Rob. Excited to be on and chatting in front of your audience.

Rob McNealy
Well, I appreciate it. So what’s been going on? What are you been working on lately?

Jason Fishman
Sure. Sure. is in the conference schedule. Going to Australia in a couple weeks right before I saw in Vegas, was at Paris blockchain summit on a marketing channel and CC forum London on an investor panel. So always busy with Thought Leadership type activations, have a article come out in Forbes tomorrow, excited to be on the podcast today. That’s where a lot of the focuses are during this time of year. In the same breath, I could go into my history. also working on some private rounds campaigns as well as blockchain user acquisition campaigns. So you know, I always say, if I’m not busy, something feels off. I like balance. We’re running an agency. We’re working on 15 to 30 projects at a time. So gives you a lot of different things to be creative about, and anything less than that. Yeah, feels like under you there.

Rob McNealy
So what’s your background? How did you get into the marketing world?

Jason Fishman
Sure, sure. So, to go all the way back. About 12 years ago, I started in marketing as an action sports consultant. I grew up snowboarding skiing, Surfing here in California, have a lot of friends in those industries and started as an agency working on some of the biggest brands for their accounts, and getting into the world of top, specifically around video sharing platforms. One of my projects was then acquired based on the success in marketing launches, and I quickly started building my portfolio with accounts and other verticals including music, fashion, telecom travel, eventually moved over to a different agency and led the new business team and being part of the whole pitch process and coming up with these creative ideas before going in house and played a role at a social gaming company here in Santa Monica, raised 3 million in seed capital. And as part of that initiative from the timeline is an idea on a whiteboard all the way through funding into branded licensed entertainment games. That’s where I really learned user acquisition models. average revenue per user, essentially arbitrage traffic and buying traffic lower than the cost that you’re selling it really ins and outs of the whole digital marketing landscape before getting into the world of ad tech. And that was through a partnership that we had at the social gaming company was able to work with a lot of top 100 advertisers in that period of time, and oversaw Product Marketing, as well as sales. So I got to sit with publishers figure out the best ways to engage and monetize their audience, to then take those ad units over to advertisers and find rollouts for these different pieces of inventory that we’re going to hit their goals hit their deliverables. My overall focus has always been business growth, being able to leverage marketing, to do so and algorithmically at that was very exciting to me with that, at this point in depth, record and success without the partner in this company, digital media agency DNA marketing DNA since January of 2014, since we’ve worked with over 300 clients, startups to product launches of larger brands as well too, but generally building a community and pushing them through a funnel to hit initial milestones, and then scaling from it. In doing so, working with startups, we found fundraising to be a common theme, a common initiative, whether it was working on pitch materials for enrolling investor meetings, working on the marketing sections and business plan or even more so the revenue sections of a business plan to show which channels we’re going to drive each different metric in their projections, eventually into equity crowdfunding and still in 2014. Here, I was bringing third party data of accredited investors, user investors with over a million dollars net worth outside of their primary home or significant income over the past three years. And bringing them to offering cages using third party data we were hitting surpassing some of the biggest agencies in the industry. And therefore we’re getting a lot of calls from portals from platforms. And we’re running these type of campaigns from websites. Think of it as an exchange, but just around the sale and purchasing of that private equity, not in the trade of it quite yet. But when the industry is limited at that point, and the laws opened up more in 2016, as acknowledged by the SEC for us to use different filings, and raised from both accredited and unaccredited investors. That’s when this really became the biggest part of our client list. We saw those type of inquiries change to initial coin offerings in 2017. And particularly with the momentum in that year that became our sole focus. So you know whether they were international or equity crowdfunding campaigns with a token offerings with a token component to it. Some cases being voted to tokens. We were working on investor acquisition. And we invested into the development of our own first party data. So data that we then tested out for our clients and soft performance, and at this point have records of investors who participate in private sale investors which participate in public sales on the equity crowdfunding side to throw a bunch of acronyms but reg, CF reg, a reg D, all the different filings we have investors specific to those restrictions, have it broken down by geo targets to markets, essentially records of millions of investors and we then find audiences to a B and D test against each other for these campaigns, and can measure depending on how we’re tracking and depending on the actual campaign setup, the cost per acquisition of each and every 30 return on adspend and essentially provide opportunities for our clients to scale. Beyond fundraising, as mentioned, as well, as we’ve seen, things evolved from my field as to some ideas this year. We’re also doing a lot of blockchain user acquisition campaigns, whether that’s wallets or different types of apps or software, even some projects on the business to business side of things, finding ways to provide company’s value and, you know, continue to build up their user base.

Rob McNealy
So of all the different projects that you’ve helped, you know, do raises What was your biggest success story look like?

Jason Fishman
Sure. So we have published case studies, and I could speak to a few of those. We also have white label relationships were more in the background and more restricted contracts, where we’re bar in the background so longer than I can’t share, but I What I plan, there is a $50 million raise project for a hybrid exchange that we worked out a few years back. Some of the team members were very public figures. They’ve since been acquired and shaded. But hybrid block was a campaign where we had worked on user acquisition for their telegram, community audience most focused on their their public sale. So yeah, it’s in very large metrics there. Beyond that have worked on over 100 fundraising projects, majority of which blockchain and in a full spectrum from, you know, green energy to mining to exchanges, to various markets, specific currencies. Again, really a full spectrum of different projects. And you can buy them even more than the ones that we activate directly to.

Rob McNealy
So what do you see yourself The challenges of fundraising for you know, these different types of crowdsource, you know, kind of projects. What do you see is not only what are some of the challenges, but do you see the biggest mistakes people are making when they’re trying to raise money?

Jason Fishman
Sure, sure. So raise money can be very broad. You know, we’ve seen companies raise money by having a few conversations with people in their network and be able to close everything out from there. We’ve then been part of very visible public sale campaigns with high volumes of investors. So and everything in between, of course, so there can be a lot of different variables for any of those. timeline is something that I often see projected off by projects where they think they’re going to be able to raise funds very quickly. channels in which they’re going to do so whether it’s their personal network, whether that’s through specific capital groups will keep it product capital groups, but through specific Venture Partners, broker dealers, in regards to marketing, we’ve seen groups think that they’re going to place a token sale page, do a couple paid article placements, and you have a telegram channel have some type of community channel, given the point in time that they’re out, and they’re just going to be able to, you know, close out the round very quickly. I’ve certainly seen that happen. We’ve certainly been part of that happening, and oftentimes reflecting market conditions. But for me, it’s all about creating a well oiled machine of a marketing funnel. And to take it back even further than that, to have a resorting an algorithmic strategy, where it’s showing me exactly which channels are going to use what you’re anticipating the channels can produce in terms of its digital impressions, clicks and conversions, and some offline metrics for direct outreach, such as responses meetings, and you know, different types of written verification that you want to track all the way through to complete it investment, the only way to measure anything is with numbers. So without having that type of strategy, without having that type of plan, there’s no way in which that you’re gonna be able to tell what’s really working, what’s not working, or to be able to effectively optimize if if the channels not working for you. Again, if that’s a broker dealer relationship, or if that’s paid advertising, you won’t be able to tell where in that algorithm, you’re not getting the right traction, and therefore to be able to focus on improving things there. And you can say statements like, oh, broker dealers didn’t work for us. Advertising didn’t work for us, you can completely missed the mark on these tools that are stepped into other groups.

Rob McNealy
So speaking of tools, you know, kind of being in the crypto space it you know, a lot of the normal channels that, you know, a company or a project might use to market would be things like Facebook and Google and Twitter. And a lot of these platforms have, you know, outright ban crypto related kind of content and advertising. What kind of challenge does that pose to you and how do you deal with it?

Jason Fishman
Sure, sure. So, we get blanket statements all the time, such as, Hey, I heard we can’t advertise on Facebook. I heard we can’t do anything on Google. And when I look at how I grade A good marketer, I’m looking at their problem solving abilities. Anyone can set up a marketing campaign, as followed by a template or an approach. Anyone can use creative that’s been supplied by the clients or Very basic creative that is reflecting competitors. But simply seeing success out of the gate doesn’t make a marketer effective. What I like to see is their problem solving abilities, what do they do when things are not working. And now that’s where you can gauge true tower. Because campaigns are going to fluctuate, it could be the biggest brand in the world or a new startup, you will not see the same level of success day in day out year after year. It just doesn’t occur like that you have to be able to effectively optimize. So when I look at any of these channels and the restrictions, the same thing for me, it’s how do we problem solve here? How do we get something approved? When speaking was reps at these platforms? and ask them how do we do this compliantly they tell us what gets campaigns blocked certain rewards can ticker currency can’t say Ico. However, you can say distributed ledger technology, you can talk about the function of the technology, you can give out info that serves an educational purpose without using those words. And therefore taking audience down a funnel, where eventually they have an opportunity to directly participate in a security token offering as an example. So it’s all about how you use these channels. You can create a Facebook page, advertisements, a landing page, or mentioned URL and that landing page as well to that all do not use bands, trigger words. But meanwhile, speak to your target audience and convey the value of your offering. And after that next landing page, be able to take them down a funnel that would be tougher to get approved. This is true was very categories. A few other examples, go all the way to financial advising supplements, but include CBD, firearms, various types of verticals, where if you bring an audience in to more of a homepage, or something that can get approved and doesn’t talk about anything that’s a little more gray. You know, use the sporting goods store example and a firearms are sold at that sporting goods store and someone clicks through to it, it’s not going to be banned. If it’s not mentioned in the advertisement in the land engage yet audiences could store and purchase purchasing an item or participating let’s say an investment deal that if it was blatantly listed in the advertisement or landing page could be looked at as restricted. So by building funnels, we’ve been able to leverage this challenge and we’ve had to do so because those channels perform Over 40 million cryptocurrency and fuzziness that I can access with Facebook’s third party data. It’s a combination of their first party and third party data support pages that they like and data partners that they have that have identified audiences with an affinity for digital assets. And bye bye by looking at their ad placement by looking at the click through rates, which are about 10 times higher than a standard banner ad click through rate by looking at the sheer conversion nature with by catching someone in their social advertising in their social media experience. It’s something that can’t be ignored, even if it’s nothing else than the targeting. And they have Facebook, Instagram, the audience network, the audience network hasover it has a high volume of top tier sites, we can continue to retarget you can continue to reach a user again and again and again. So I wouldn’t look at these platforms and say look them Or blanket statements such as my audience isn’t on Google, they’re not on facebook, facebook has over a billion users a day. And again, through their their reach new can touch people essentially everywhere they go online, I would look at how I can use them. And then my whole philosophy towards marketing as a whole, which again, is a utility for business growth beyond just created my whole summary. My tagline, if you will, for marketing is summarized in three words, test, optimize scale. So I’m not saying use all of these channels, new them forever. More importantly, find some channels to test figure out as I mentioned, in regards to the plan, what audiences you want to go after their what creative that you want to use their the projections for full algorithm of performance metrics all the way through, and then optimize to improve performance and then scale the channels that are working best. That that’s been my approach to it. It’s been different in terms of the top dragging channel campaign to campaign. But there’s definitely ways to leverage these platforms for what you’re trying to do.

Rob McNealy
So a lot of the crypto world says, you know, rightfully drawn arrows from pay to play problem, you know, a lot of influencer marketing, advertising that comes off as journalism, but it’s actually advertising. It’s all paid for. I know, that was really important back, you know, a year and a half, two years ago. Is that still important now? Is it is there a really an ROI on doing those types of, you know, paid campaigns, um, you know, when we were initially, you know, launching our token two years ago, I had people that had like, 1000 people or 1000 subscribers on their YouTube channel, and they wanted $10,000 you know, in some cases to come and just get an interview. So, yeah, and, and I always looked at it like, I just don’t see how the There’s a return on that investment, you know, from the marketing side of it. What’s your take on that?

Jason Fishman
Question? You know, the overarching statement would still be test, optimize scale, look at the ones you want to test out. But I’ll tell you why it matters why it’s still good to consider these opportunities. Not just roll them out. People don’t trust what they see online. Social Proof third party validation is a big part of a successful marketing campaign. And if you’re able to leverage the right media publishers, the right influencers, the right communities, the right you know, organizations of various types to validate what you’re doing, refer them to your your pages to your assets. It can really go a long way. They can make the entire difference. It’s hit or miss. We’ve seen anything answers with very large audiences perform marginally at best we’ve seen them perform in zero metrics that we could measure. We’ve then seen influencers with you know, under 10,000 or 1000. In some cases, that the moment they talked about a campaign everything you know, Spike. So you know, it is a matter of testing it out. We still do straight influencer marketing campaigns now we call them outreach because of the way the influencer world has changed and the ways to interact with influencers. But essentially, when you’re running an influencer campaign, you’d want to test 310 30 different influencers depending on their size, and all in slightly different disciplines, slightly different audiences is a good way to look at it. You don’t want to put all of your eggs in one basket, going back to some of the shortcomings, I’ve seen groups hit in the past. And I thought, Hey, we’re going to have this one guy posts about us. And we’re going to close that around in a few hours. And since he didn’t occur like that, I going to have seen ones that that has happened. But best practices would be more to diversify. So let’s try a few different publishers. Let’s try a few different influencers, if it’s paid advertising, which could speak at length about as well here too. Let’s try a few different ad placements, few different data sets, and different creatives, you want to have something to compare something to again, a and b test. But yes, it still plays a role. The pay to play sponsored content prices are going down. There was a point there in 2017, first half 2018 where everything was expensive and everyone wanted to be opportunistic, regardless of the effectiveness of their their media and More speaking to their own revenue model and what they thought that it should it should be valued at. So, you know, there’s a lot of ways you can work with an agency or third party, even over a phone call not even a formal engagement, where they can give you a few tips on how to structure these conversations. with publishers, with influencers with any type of paid opportunity, there tends to always be some level of wiggle room. If you’re speaking, managed service. If you’re talking to another human. I can give you a few ideas on how to do it if it doesn’t seem like that avenues available. But I would definitely evaluate them. They definitely still serve a purpose. And we’ve seen it be very effective for clients.

Rob McNealy
How do you see marketing in the crypto space changing over the next year to three years?

Jason Fishman
Yeah, yeah. So I want to want to be able to have a strong prediction here. So marketing is obviously changed as the industry has over the past two years. past two months, you know, campaigns in September of 2019 look different from December. We’re planning and activating this week in in 2019. And when it comes to investment opportunities, we’re seeing a lot more attention around private rounds, which means longer sales cycles, smaller investment amounts, and, in many cases, offline touch points in person meetings with investors, which groups projects looked at as not as necessary, two years ago, marketing plays a large role in that. When we’re looking at digital marketing, seven touch points are more on average are required for conversion. And if we’re Reaching that audience with the same creative, same messaging, same channel every time, it’s going to have that fatigue, where if we’re building a content marketing funnel, and showcasing momentum, giving investors the feel that, hey, this is moving shifts going in this direction. And I want to be part of that. It’s much different than if it’s a stagnant conversation with a lot of repetition. So, you know, being able to have more good fundamental marketing, best practices implemented into these types of campaigns, which again, groups did with very little digital marketing couple years back. Now I’m going to go out and say that’s going to be more of a best practice of having more of that. I don’t want to say corporate, the more professional look and feel of a larger organization, I think is going to be true for brands and if nothing else, to convey trust. And seeing the groups who have surpassed the crypto winter and overall thinning of groups in the industry, the groups that are surviving that are structured well. And they have, you know, good operating procedures and all air in many areas of the business, including marketing. So going more to what does a brand look like? How should a company be operating? How should the decentralized organization be operating and what should look and feel be both on the platform and marketing off to attract more mass adoption? I think mass adoption is really the game moving forward here. And some of the biggest thought leaders speakers in the space I’ve seen moved from pointing at smaller projects to change the world to even saying things like, hey, it’s gonna be the enterprise level businesses that are going to change the world. Going to be them that are going to drive mass adoption of cryptocurrency mass adoption of blockchain. Massive name any group specifically because I’m still filling things out in the direction of where those organizations, sure initiatives. At the same time, when you look at groups of over a billion users and how they can bring that type of adoption to this technology, very exciting. And what’s the follow through Maryland, you know, look at the chess game. And you know, strategies were five moves deep, where the audience is going to be a lot of possibilities open up. So even if it’s not enterprise appearing enterprise is going to be a big part of marketing strategies moving forward, I believe.

Rob McNealy
So last question, what does your ideal client look like?

Jason Fishman
So our values as an agency is being able to work with Which means not limited to just one client, communicate early and answer with algorithms. It’s how we approach this. I say it because it’s important and marketing conversations, regardless of the dynamic, and, you know, to that extent and so for we are we look for situations we could provide value. In some cases, it’s a quick advertising engagement or at the last part of their campaigns, bringing traffic from our audiences and showing the very strong return. You know, more of our standard models, starting with the marketing strategy, getting into the content marketing stages, driving traffic into that funnel, paid ads, while doing direct outreach to those four areas. But for me, it’s looking to align with projects that can have a you know, I don’t say disruption or anything like that, but a very measurable impact in their vertical To be able to align ourselves with projects that could leave that type of positive change, to be able to have case studies that showcased numerical results for those launches and how we play the role and we’re part of it was working while it wasn’t being able to scale from there is our ultimate goal. So anything that’s new or different, I like talking with them. I work with a welcome to warm marketing conversation anytime. And, you know, I’ve seen so many amazing ideas over the years and dating back to, you know, the first agencies and telecom projects have gotten, you know, just amazing technology that never saw the light of day, or that, you know, had a very, very low awareness level. Marketing for me is the answer. That’s why I focus on this I can get millions of people, all types of top groups, or in some cases, it’s very specific individuals to look at our clients, what they’re doing the ultimate goal that they have around it. And the effect is going to have on all of their users and how that translates out not to sound too idealistic, the killer world. That that’s really what’s exciting about we do about what we do. So anywhere where we can really serve in that type of role to amplify and scale the right problems.

Rob McNealy
You know, that’s actually good answer. Jason, where can people find out more?

Jason Fishman
Sure. So I’m accessible through LinkedIn. Jason Fishman. Our website Digital Niche Agency. So DNA stands for DigitalNicheAgency.com. And like I mentioned, I was happy to provide insights, packages recommendations for ya, whether we have the opportunity to collaborate or not. So yeah, feel free to reach out Listen company, feel free to reach out to me individually. always like to connect.

Rob McNealy
Jason, thanks so much for being on the show.

Jason Fishman
All right. Thanks for having me, Rob.

Episode Links

Audio Interview
Video Interview
Interview Transcript

Landon Ainge – Gabb Wireless Transcript

Landon Ainge. Senior Vice President Gabb Wireless

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

Rob McNealy
Today I’m talking to Landon. And he is the Senior Vice President of gab wireless, which is a new type of phone company. And they’re doing some really interesting stuff. So I’d like to welcome the show. And Landon, how are you today?

Landon Ainge
Doing great. Thank you so much for having me.

Rob McNealy
So where are we talking to you from today?

Landon Ainge
I am actually surprisingly, in my house today, just at home. Yeah, normally I’m in the WeWork working in the office there but caught me in between investor meetings. And now I’m at home and going all the way WeWork.

Rob McNealy
And you guys are based in Utah. Right?

Landon Ainge
We are based in Utah, yeah.

Rob McNealy
So tell me a little bit about..

Landon Ainge
The founders are based in Palo Alto.

Rob McNealy
Well, we won’t hold that against the company. You know, it’s interesting. There seems to be a lot of divide coming out of At least on the political side when it comes to like, you know, more like, you know, West Coast tech people and even you know, I think even in Utah because it’s interesting because Utah tends not to be so left leaning, but still tech centric. Yeah. I don’t know. I used to I always tell people I used to like it when I didn’t know the political ideologies of companies that we’re doing business with or buying their products from, but now it seems like everything out of Silicon Valley is all about talking about politics, which I don’t think is always that great. To be honest. When I was a kid, when I was getting my MBA, they always said, you know, you know, the best thing is don’t bring up politics might alienate your customers. And now it’s like everybody’s trying to alienate their customers. And I guess I they went to a different business school, but I did. What do you think about all that?

Landon Ainge
I think with marketing, it’s changed a little bit to where in reality, it’s important in marketing, you actually want to address who your customers are not. But a lot of that is a choice. So the company of who their customers should be. And so by doing those aspects, I think it’s interesting that they’re basically saying, we are choosing that we want customers that are like this.

Rob McNealy
Oh, I get it. And you know, and the thing is, it’s interesting to me, at least with a publicly held company with a private company. I don’t have any issue with that, right? I mean, I mean, basic marketing, you start off with micro, you know, market segmentation, and you figure out who exactly your customer looks like, but generally, you want to get as many of those as you possibly can. And but now, it’s like, was certain, you know, companies, it’s like, they’re choosing deliberately to alienate potential customers. Yeah. Because they don’t agree with them. And that to me, I mean, I’m 47. So I’m a little older than you. And, and that’s new. That’s, that’s very new. That’s five years last five years. It’s totally something I’m just shocked by. But it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out and you know, ultimately comes down to, you know, making money and, and being successful and providing the products and service my mic. And my only thing about that is when you’re a public company, you know, do you have the luxury as a public company technically being a fiduciary to make those decisions? And I’m not and I’m not sure about that, you know, if that’s right or wrong. But to me, it’s like I, you know, to me, I want customers and and I don’t want to alienate them unless it’s something specific, like, you know, what I’m doing with our project. It’s very much a polarizing topic, so I can actually understand why I have to be political on some issues, but other issues I’m not so I don’t know. It’s interesting to see but it’s not about me today. It’s about you, and it’s about gab wireless. So tell me about you and your background. How did you you know, how did you get here and at such a young age because you definitely look younger than me. How did you get into such an executive position already?

Landon Ainge
Well, first off titles in startups mean nothing. So let’s just throw that out there. I think that’s important. Everyone needs to understand that. But second, I think, for me, my journey kind of went through switching back and forth from the investment side of things to operations back to investment backed operations. I think. For me, I went worked at Goldman for a little while then I went and did mergers and acquisitions that I wouldn’t operated in e commerce overstock.com. And to venture capital world. I think it’s a great experience. I think not being tied to one industry is really helpful. And that’s what’s helped me be able to recognize patterns across different industries. That’s truly I think, been the biggest education I’ve ever gotten. And kind of helped me get to where I’m at, to where I’m now at God wireless and I’m a well openly I’m a I’m a dad of two little beautiful girls, and And that kind of what sparked a little bit of me joining gab. gab wireless is a cell phone network company for dedicated and priority providing age appropriate devices. So we’re trying to protect kids by putting giving them devices that are the right way to introduce a phone. We’re trying to delay the introduction of smartphone because of the impact it has on kids when we introduce it to them.

Rob McNealy
Well, I have four children, and two of them are teenagers, and two of them will be teenagers soon enough. And, you know, we homeschool our kids. I don’t know, you know, if I’ve ever talked to you very much about my personal life, but actually we homeschool our kids and my oldest will be 17 and a few weeks and she’s just finishing up her sophomore year college and she’s a full time college student. She started when she was 14 part time, and she didn’t get her first cell phone until she was already a full time college student. Now, definitely she’s younger. And because we were very concerned about, you know, social media and things of that nature. And in fact, with our other children, we have a checkout phone, that we allow what they have to check it back into us. So we’re pretty strict. We don’t allow social media and none of our kids only our oldest right now has even has an email address. So and we definitely, you know, you know, kind of lockdown screentime and limit that. Some people say we’re horrible parents in mean and restrictive and controlling. But I also remember how I was growing up, and I had no parental controls on my life. And I definitely say that I grew up way too early. So what is gab doing to address? I guess, these kind of concerns that I might have, and must back up, what are the concerns that people have? What are the threats that parents are facing with kids having access to a smartphone?

Landon Ainge
Yeah, I think we’ve talked about 20,000 parents. So talk to a ton of parents are going through getting their feedback on what what their concerns are with technology, why? I don’t want to go too deep into specifically what their fears are. But I want to more focus on what the impacts of that technology are. Because the list of impacts I think, are way worse than what people’s fears are. People have lots of fears about like, kids going down dark corners and doing things that they shouldn’t be doing. But really, the concerns are in five categories. You’ve got just sleep deprivation being the biggest, when you have a device with a lot of stimulation that hits a point in kids brains, that keeps them everlean gauge that they don’t sleep, because they want to constantly have more of that. And if there’s one thing I can point to it’s sleep deprivation that’s changing kids and it’s hurting kids and It changes the word academic performance, their ability to communicate, it changes their emotional roller coaster that they’re already going on. But then you can point to kind of the social anxiety involved with social media. Social media is not bad. It’s just at an early age, it can destroy kids, they’re not ready to even communicate in person, let alone understand the complexity in the context of conversations and, and the lack of empathy that it develops with kids at an early age. And then kind of you can point to cyber bullying, pornographic content, addicted to gaming, there’s a lot of anything that does anything to isolate kids for very long periods of time. Pretty much that we can just all agree. I don’t get into politics, but this is parenting, it’s, but we just need them to be a little more careful. We’ve got this thing called technology and we say it’s great. And then we give it to everyone and I think we’re learning that Maybe not great for everyone, and maybe it needs to be a little bit more staged is all and openly, you’re really you’re really like protected, right? That’s who you are as a parent. But we’re trying to listen to all parents to say, We don’t care who you are, we’re going to provide a solution that you to figure out what age you think the solution is best for, you know, your child best, you know, their abilities, you know, their habits, what, what will do it and our way of doing that is pretty unique. And we can talk about that, because I’m so excited about it.

Rob McNealy
And we should do that. I think it’s important. So you touched on a little bit about, you know, the things that you’re providing a solution and all those different, you know, five categories of problems that people are dealing with. What do you say when maybe PE parents might come back and say, well, it’s just a parenting issue. You know, why can’t just let parents you know, be parents kind of thing or, you know, Maybe Do you get any pushback like that?

Landon Ainge
Yeah, I mean, parents are saying, hey, look, we don’t need any restrictions. And I would say, Okay, then you’re not our customer, like I talked to we talked about at the beginning, right? Like, then, if you don’t feel like any controls are necessary, and that’s great. I think what we’re learning now is that we’re taking an adult device and giving it to kids and telling them to regulate themselves, and we’re learning that their ability to do so is not and that we’re just providing options. There aren’t enough options out there. You have a flip phone, and you have a smartphone, and very little in between.

Rob McNealy
You know, I’m not convinced that a lot of parents and adults pivot in and figured out how to like control themselves either. So

Landon Ainge
I have my own issues with that, right? Like I need to, you know, the amount of time that I spend doing work on my phone when you know, maybe I should be more concentrated on with my girls like that’s, I struggle with that dailies right so In a startup world, that’s your life, you kind of, unfortunately, tends to consume. So I think we’re all struggling with that.

Rob McNealy
Well, you know, I think that it’s important to recognize that I think the first you know, thing that you need to do if you’re going to try to change or improve is to recognize there’s a problem. I think a lot. Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t even see there’s a problem. So tell me a little bit about what you guys are doing. What is your solution?

Landon Ainge
Yeah. So what we’ve done is we’re providing a network provides this age appropriate devices. And we’ve launched our first device on our first device. It’s a looks like smartphone, it feels and acts just like a smartphone and hold it up right here. There’s a device so it looks and feels got a touch screen. And so you, your kids get to play on it and they get to do what they want. But that being said, it’s a tool. It’s a functional tool, as a phone as an alarm clock has a calendar as texting even as a camera, but what it what it limits is External outreach or external entertainment. So there’s no App Store. So you’re not going to download any social media or games or any of that aspect. There’s no browser. And then our first phone doesn’t allow you to send group or picture messages. Now why, why that’s important is it truly is just a functional device then. And it’s meant to communicate and help connect people, and adds the benefits of having a touchscreen phone with applications that add function. But our role is to help them maintain a life outside the screen. So parents reason for getting kids fun is to communicate with them. And so their kids can communicate with their, with their parents and with their friends.

Rob McNealy
So why so if you’re just limiting the lot of the Smart App kind of things, why not just use like kind of a flip phone?

Landon Ainge
Well, that’s a good question. Ask your kids openly it’s more it’s a really important thing for kids to understand. For them, it’s their social acceptance foot on some connotation That is really negative. It’s a cause for being made fun of. and appearance is really important to kids young age. And there’s a reason they’re wearing their fake Ray Bans and looking really good and why they look at certain types of clothing, its appearance is really important. And we’ve learned that from past companies that have tried to make kid devices that they made them to Kitty, and that’s the reason why it didn’t work. They don’t want to stick out from a parent’s perspective, even if they don’t necessarily want it. We’ve had teenagers come to us and say, I don’t want social media. I don’t want any of that stuff. And but because I have it on my phone, that’s a path of least resistance to where I just go there. But you know, but that appearance really is important.

Rob McNealy
So is your device capable of adding those functionalities say as a kid grows on Older? So for instance, you can, isn’t it there are options to add in functionality at some point or is it just permanently locked down.

Landon Ainge
So our goal is to provide a stepwise function to kind of help kids graduate. Our first device here, does what it does. And it’s $100 device. So it’s like really easy, really palatable for parents, it’s a month to month contract, introduce it when you want. And then when they’re ready, they’ll graduate to either that next device that we introduce or to the family plan on a smartphone, when they’re ready for that type of behavior will start to introduce those we won’t be doing, you know, we won’t be introducing kind of a, that they’ll have YouTube on this, or they’ll have other entertainment apps on there. It’s really a we will add more functionality and more functional apps but, but none of the entertainment aspects until they’re ready. And once they’re ready for that entertainment. We recommend parental controls on on a smartphone.

Rob McNealy
So what kind of time Technology is this what kind of hardware software? is this? Is it a Linux based unit? What kind of oS? Is it running?

Landon Ainge
Yeah, so it’s a custom binary operating system. It’s actually exclusive to Gabb. But it’s based off of the Google Android system. Because of the unique nature of what we’ve done. It is exclusively to ours. And we work closely with one of the top phone manufacturers in the world zt to co develop that exclusively for our network.

Rob McNealy
I was just thinking, because, you know, it’s amazing and how smart kids are when they’re trying to get access to something. Technologically, I’ve been surprised with my own kids at how young they will, they’ll work really hard to get into things that they’re not supposed to. And I was just worried. I was wondering, you know, How hard would it be to like, you know, you know, crack it or, you know, jailbreak it or something like that.

Landon Ainge
A really good question. It’s pretty hard because it’s done at the manufacturing level. That’s the reason we did it. because it provides greater security and stabilization there, that even to kind of factory resets and other things that they try to do. It maintains it. But that being said, you know, not every nothing is in penetrable in my mind, at least from what I’ve experienced in technology. So I think that someone, I, someone someday, I think will definitely do that. But for most of the children and most kids that we’re doing, dealing with, concerned about.

Rob McNealy
So for the smart kids in there that, you know, they’ll try to do you know, they can still get in trouble with texting, right, because it still allows, you know, you know, Ms. You know, SMS messages, that kind of thing.

Landon Ainge
Yeah, so for the smart kids, but he, I guess my you’re saying people can get into trouble. Yeah, I mean, right. What we’re trying to do is we’re not trying to remove parental involvement for those parents and say, Look, it’s printing problem or parental question. That’s kind of true. This we are here to provide a technology solution that makes it a little bit easier. But a parents still should be involved in introducing a phone that here’s this new responsibility. This is what’s appropriate to text and call and this is what we shouldn’t shouldn’t do. But that’s an easy conversation compared to here’s a supercomputer. Right? Like, yeah, so the question I would have, is there a lockout? Can the kid lock the parents out from seeing what they’re texting? Or is there a way for the parent to have like a super password to kind of monitor that piece? Yeah, so we don’t have monitoring right now and really talking to kids. What they like about phone is look that has a camera and their ability to talk to friends, and then it doesn’t have spyware. Really, we’ve tried to say, okay, what’s appropriate, let’s, let’s drive that conversation. And when your kid is ready to have that responsibility, that’s when they should get a phone now We should get them a phone and then we should try to monitor everything they’re doing on it. Let’s change that conversation and say, is my child ready for a phone? And if so, how do I have those conversations to make sure they are, and that we indicate to go through those aspects. So there’s no monitoring, there’s ability to lock it. We always give out kind of a, we try to recommend a family contract when you give a kid a phone of these are what the expectations are to have a phone. This is what we do. You always share the password mostly because kids forget and lose their password. That’s First of all, but also because it’s important for parents to do it. We recommend centralized charging stations so kids shouldn’t have their phones when they go to their rooms. Just if you don’t want to get your kid into trouble just let’s just say everyone in the family charges their phones in one place that will help adults and kids in our habits that maybe need to improve.

Rob McNealy
I think that’s pretty wise actually. So Gabb Wireless you know starting a phone company it sounds like a lot of work and a lot of money. How are you guys funded?

Landon Ainge
Um, we we ran an Indiegogo actually to get started. So that was really cool. It’s kind of cool as they were telecom real nationwide telecom company right now and we started on Indiegogo. Once we got customers and we got pre orders, we were able to close kind of a Angel round and right now we’re closing our seed round to prepare and we’re about to scale pretty large for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Rob McNealy
So you guys are already out then so I could buy one of these for my kids right now.

Landon Ainge
Get in three days. Free shipping.

Rob McNealy
Are you where are you saw you sold in retail stores or online? Only Amazon? Where can people where do people get it?

Landon Ainge
GabbWireless com. That’s pretty easy. There’s one phone and one plan Choose to take it and we ship it directly to you. You have a account you create month a month. And like I said, flexibility we’re not like, or not like most telecom providers, we’re here to say we’re here to provide a solution and make it easy. And whatever we can do to make your life easier, apparently easier just in a little bit makes a big difference.

Rob McNealy
So you said that the phone itself is about 100 bucks. What are the payment options? What are the payment plans look like?

Landon Ainge
Yes, it’s $19.99. Talks, unlimited talking text with cover policy there. So it’s pretty simple. Just one bucks a month. Here you go. month a month you decided when you introduce.

Rob McNealy
So we’re so we’re coming into that holiday week and I don’t even like to call the day. The day that will be named what the one that’s right after Thanksgiving. Black Friday, so you guys got anything coming up for Black Friday?

Landon Ainge
Yeah, some pretty amazing stuff coming Black Friday. So much. So that like Can’t even up. It’s good. So anyone that is interested in guy was just either follow us on Instagram or Facebook. And we will tell you when it goes live and pretty much if you’re thinking about buying iPhone, you’ll want to buy a whole nother

Rob McNealy
Landon, where can people find out more?

Landon Ainge
GabbWireless.com

Rob McNealy
Landon, thank you so much for coming on the show today and I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Landon Ainge
Thank you. You too. Have a great weekend.

Episode Links

Audio Interview
Video Interview
Interview Transcript

Truth Raider Bitcoin Interview Transcript

Truth Raider, Bitcoin Community Influencer

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

Rob McNealy
Today I have the excitement because I’m talking to truth Raider. He is a pretty big Bitcoin advocate and influencer in the crypto space. So I’d like to welcome to the show. How are you today? Truth Raider?

Truth Raider
Hey, doing pretty good, Rob.

Rob McNealy
Well, good. Well, I really do appreciate your time and coming out with us. I know you’re really busy. I was having some illness this week. So it kind of was a little hard to get everything scheduled out. But so. So for some of our audience, which is not 100% crypto focused. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you kind of came into the crypto space.

Truth Raider
So I’ve been in I’ve only been in Bitcoin and crypto for about three years. I’ve kind of followed the evolution of it although with the dark web and deep web and I’ve followed peer to peer networks. Everything from back in the day with Napster and limewire for us wire I mean, peer to peer is something that’s not new. And I think a lot of people that have been kind of messing around with this technology Bitcoin was kind of a natural evolution. And so that’s kind of how I I knew about Bitcoin since its inception but really never got into it till about 2017 and now I’m here for the ride.

Rob McNealy
Well, it’s kind of funny you must be close to my age when you start using words like Napster I think a lot of these young guys at a millennial type so talking but I do so just you don’t have to doctor yourself or whatever but what what can what’s your your main type of occupation?

Truth Raider
So right now working on a basically, I’m working with a company here at a mining store. It may not have it’s a Bitcoin mining company, based out of Houston, Texas, and then we’re basically partnered with them, and our company based out of Pittsburgh. And right now our big focus area is we’re working on bringing foreign miners into the states, essentially, that’s kind of mine and my partner’s big play right now is trying to get a lot of the foreign mining into the United States, because right now our we only have about 5% of that entire market in the world. So it’s, it’s kind of that’s kind of the focus for me and the company I work for, essentially.

Rob McNealy
So, how is a minor? Say, I’m a minor and I’m in a foreign country, why would I want to come to the United States to mine? You know, from what I understand, it seems like, you know, other places like China, it’s a lot cheaper to get the electricity. What would be the appeal of being a minor in the United States?

Truth Raider
So there’s a lot of reasons why. It kind of covers the gamut. So you’ve got regulations are becoming more friendly. Because of the so you, you kind of got like this, this merging of. So the reason why Texas makes so much sense is because of the oil and natural gas industry. So you’ve already got this infrastructure in place, and certain places like Texas or Pennsylvania, where we’re at more New York, Washington state, where you’ve got everything from hydro electricity to natural gas to existing factories that can scale and do industrial scale Bitcoin mining. Solar is becoming a new play, a wind is becoming a play. And so you have you already have the companies that basically can go from doing what they do naturally, and just saying, hey, we’ll also do Bitcoin mining, or will do or will provide energy for your Bitcoin miners, so it’s kind Like it’s almost like a natural transition for a lot of these energy companies and US based companies to just say, Hey, we’re open to providing you lower costs, and using our infrastructure to just mine. So that’s why you’re seeing like, right now, you’re not seeing a lot of it in the news. But for example, yesterday, it was in the news of a one gigawatt facilities opening in Texas. You know, it’s going to be the largest one in North America. It’s opening, you know, they just started literally 24 hours ago. And then you’ve got company. Yeah, one gigawatt, which is massive, you know.

Rob McNealy
Like a nuclear power plant?

Truth Raider
Yeah, it’s essentially this scale. That’s why basically they took over an old plant that was already being used for within the oil and natural gas industry and just are converting it essentially to new Bitcoin mining, you know, and that’s, that’s one way that it’s going to scale in the US. But additionally, you’ve got companies moving into Texas and Arizona and different places in California even, they’re going to do solar and wind. And then hydro is also going to start growing. So people think that energy is really expensive in the United States, but it really isn’t. When you think about the fact that we already have the infrastructure, it’s just a matter of the old school miner, or the old school energy guys saying, Yeah, we’ll do Bitcoin too. And that’s slowly starting to happen. It’s kind of an education thing.

Rob McNealy
You know, have you looked at anything up in like, Gillette, Wyoming, and, you know, wyotech mines that are up there, by chance as a possible location. I think Peabody Energy is one of the big energy companies up there.

Truth Raider
Not Wyoming. We’ve got a couple places in Iowa, North Dakota. Like I mentioned, Pennsylvania, Maine, New York. There’s A few places that we’re looking to set up shop. But right now, those are usually a little bit smaller in scale, whereas in Texas you have the access, potentially to an unbelievable amount of energy to produce, you know, for these for these foreign miners and so most people just they’re not paying most people right now, like if you look at the Bitcoin or crypto space, what is everybody looking at today? On November, whatever Today is November 21. What do people give a shit about right now today? know the price of bitcoin? That’s it. That’s it, right? Like I’d say 99% of the people in the space. All they do is follow charts and pay attention to what the price is doing. You know, meanwhile, the 1% which is the people like the article I mentioned today, which was, you know, companies dropping 150 million dollar investment into Texas to build a warranty. gigawatt a Bitcoin mining farm, you know, so on on a day where the or the bitcoin price dumped? I don’t even know what it dumped 5% 6% Today, I’m not sure but it wasn’t a good day. However, people that have basically vision are saying, you know, what, who cares about short term price points, let’s let’s look at this as an industry and, and I think most of the crypto space is missing the big moves, you know.

Rob McNealy
So the, you know, when it comes down to mining with a six the two bottlenecks that you know, keep a lot of people out or, you know, one access to, you know, affordable energy that make it, you know, profitable but the other part is the hardware of the miners. And it seems like right now, that so much of the that equipment is just, you know, kind of, you know, made by, you know, one or two companies. What do you think that effect is on the mining industry Do you think that’s going to like There’s gonna be more opportunities for manufacturers to, you know, create more competition to bring the price those basic type processors down.

Truth Raider
So I don’t. So what you’re going to have right now, what’s going on right now and the mining equipment sphere is so everybody in the United States essentially is using at minor s nines, you know, so that that’s kind of what the big, you know, the the most popular minor out there. But once the happening happens and kind of what’s happening right now, is everybody’s transitioning from the s nine to the 17th or Canaan’s got some new ones coming out or what’s minor, where you’re talking anywhere from 50 6070. Tara hash, you know, which is just dwarfs the S nine. So what you’re going to end up seeing is you’re going to see an unbelievable amount of s nines on the market that are basically not even useful to mind with. And so the basically the moral of this story is 2019 and early 2022, mid 2020 is going to wash out most of the the private personal miners. Most of these guys are going to get washed out because of energy prices as well as hash rate increases with the within these pools. And so profits are going to go down. So really what you’re going to see is like, like what I just told you, a one gigawatt mining farm opening with an ungodly amount of miners, you know, that are going to go into that facility. You’re going to see more of that in the States, you’re going to probably every couple weeks, or if not every month or so you’re going to see a story that says, hey, we just built a 500 megawatt facility. Here’s a gigawatt facility. You know, here’s some major companies that are coming in. So what you’re saying is all These small scale miners are going to get washed out. And it’s going to be an into institutional and a corporate play when it comes to Bitcoin mining. I think that’s what I see.

Rob McNealy
Do you think that’s a good thing for Bitcoin? I think, from a centralization kind of point of view,

Truth Raider
I think it. I mean, if you’re talking, I think it is potentially, if the you if us in North American companies, get on board, you know, if it’s just Chinese miners moving to the United States, then it’s really it’s a centralized play, you know, because what they’re doing is just gaining more access to cheap energy. But if you start seeing European and American companies and North American companies saying, Hey, this is a smart idea, why don’t we set up shop and do our own thing? Then I think it’s a good thing in a decentralizes the mining space, but there’s a The problem is that China makes 100% of hardware right now. Right? That’s, that’s the, that’s the issue that the overarching issue is, we really need like a Germany or somebody who’s really good at technical manufacturing, you know, at an industrial scale, we need like a Germany to come online and makes a version of a six miners or, you know, or or some other country to make hardware. That’s what we need.

Rob McNealy
You know, that’s one thing I haven’t figured out is, is, you know, I can see, you know, power plants would that have excess capacity and things, you know, you go talk to the guys with the tall hats and and you just give them a spreadsheet and the chart and they can they can make the they can make the connections right and see the opportunity. It doesn’t make sense to me. Yes. I don’t understand enough about chip manufacturing. It seems like there should be a lot of opportunity in the hardware space that other companies popped up to do that. And you know, is it just that the the chip manufacturers that there’s no is there nobody in the United States can even make a chip? Is that kind of the issue with that right now?

Truth Raider
I think it’s, um, it’s a matter of scale. So there’s a city in China called shins in. And I probably put I probably butchered the name

Rob McNealy
sounds good to me.

Truth Raider
So, basically, this city is a very good example of the way China does business is they’re just they’re out to just mass produce everything. In at scale, so for example, bit main is like everybody knows bit means like, big player, right? Well, I’m a competitor that’s up and coming is a company called Canaan, right? Who they just did an IPO for like 100 plus million dollars in the States. But they’re going to compete very, very heavily with bit main, but the thing is, Kanan has the Same business model is bit me. It’s just mass produce just mass produced in mass mind, Bitcoin. It’s a very simple model. It’s not a very innovative model, as far as the industry goes, but that’s why you don’t see American or European companies competing with them is, for example, like, like I said, with the ant miners, you know, like they had the S nine. Now they’re going to have the 17. They’re just looking for new ways to increase the hash rate for mining. And basically what it does is they’re able to mass produce those devices, those that hardware, and no American or European company can keep up with the pace. That’s that’s the overarching issue. And I don’t see it changing. To be perfectly honest, you know, on the hardware front, on the mining front, I think we can catch up. Or we can bridge the gap. We can’t catch up but we can we can We can close the gap.

Rob McNealy
For that you that location down in Texas, how many you know how many actual miners are going to be running in a facility like that with a gigawatt of power?

Truth Raider
I’m not sure like, I mean, you look at, for example, we’re working with a company that’s trying to they’re trying to fulfill its I think it’s 4000 t 17 miners, and that’s about 10 megawatts, you know, so for about 4000. So, I mean, we’ll do the math on, you know, on what it takes to get you to a gigawatt. It’s a shitload of miners, you know, like, it’s a lot so.

Rob McNealy
So, I was at World Crypto Con in Vegas a couple weeks ago and they had, you know, the whole mining area down there and there’s some innovating stuff, innovative stuff from the standpoint of cooling and and, you know, keeping the, you know, the packs of miners, the racks like really more tight together. So they figured out different ways of cooling and there’s Seems to be there are some interesting efficiencies that they could probably gain, you know, with the cooling side of things as well. So the question I have the havening that, you know, you’re hearing about this a lot, and, you know, everybody’s got a different opinion about it, what it’s going to do to the price. And my concern is Ben, you know, you know, you can’t necessarily say that Bitcoin is going to do what it did four years ago because the entire crypto universe is very, very different now. The markets very different now. regulations are very different now. There’s thousands of new projects that came and went and are still in operation now. So you know, past performance is not always indicative of future you know, results but the question is, a lot of people do think that bitcoins gonna pump and everybody’s going to get excited about the halvening I mean, what’s your take on that? Do you think people are gonna is it gonna pump or do you think it’s just gonna happen?

Truth Raider
I’ve my personal opinion is that I talked to a lot of people on Twitter just going back and forth on predictions and stuff. So, like, for me, I, I think Bitcoin at $10,000 is an amazing price. Like it’s a it’s a stable price, whether it goes from 10,000 to 100,000, or 50, or whatever the number is 10,000 is a psychological number. When people you know, that are out there in the space, say, you know, how much is Bitcoin, right? And you tell them it’s 10 K, they’re just like, what? It just it blows their mind they don’t understand that like it because what’s the price of a physical, you know, of gold, the gold spot price, you know, it’s it’s nothing. So I think it’s a it’s a psychological game. So when the when the block happening, happens and it goes down to 6.25. Essentially, I don’t think that’s going to create a bull run. I think we’re still going to be in a bear market until probably the end of 2020 2021 maybe somewhere in there. I mean, We may go up, you know, we made two or three x the price, but I don’t think the real I personally don’t think the real bull market starts until you have things like ETFs that are that are open, you know, like, you’ve got a multiple ETFs out there, you’ve got multiple institutions that are trading. They’re using Bitcoin openly. And I think that I think we’re still we’re still like two years away from even the beginning of that, from my opinion. So that’s why I think end of 2021 probably is more realistic for a lot of these companies to onboard into bitcoin right now, nobody knows about Bitcoin, you ask 10 people, if you go in the street or to university and you ask 10 people what is Bitcoin? What does it do? You’re going to get 10 probably nine out of 10 people are going to stare at you like you’re crazy.

Rob McNealy
You know, play that game, actually. And my results have been very different. Everybody I asked has heard the word Bitcoin They don’t get it. Like what it is they think that they understand internet money. And that’s about where the extent of it, but the name recognition I find is pretty, pretty prevalent among the people that I talked to. Now their opinion of it is they don’t understand it. Or there’s a negative connotation with the being scammy or rip off. That’s kind of what I’m seeing out there.

Truth Raider
I agree with you. I agree with you that they all have heard of it. But there’s a difference, I think between like I play poker with 12, my buddies, you know, I brought as an experiment, I asked him that question. Hey, guys, you guys know about Bitcoin? Like, yeah, we all heard about it, you know, we saw it on TV, you know, that’s a huge difference from I understand what it does, what the functionality of Bitcoin is, as well as how do you physically use it? Like, that is a huge educational gap for probably 95% of the people in the US. You know, I would say

Rob McNealy
Try explaining a decentralized organization to someone on the street that’s a little more complicated.

Truth Raider
Or even not even trying to explain the the core about Bitcoin, but just how do you physically use it? How do you physically transfer Bitcoin? Most people will look at you like you’re crazy. Just even if you just said what I just said, How do you transfer Bitcoin from one person to the next? Show me how to do it.

Rob McNealy
What I kind of tell people, you know, when it comes to crypto, I always kind of put myself in, you know, in the person’s mind, right? And with our project, I actually am out there talking and doing sales already with our project. And I’m in retail stores talking to retailers. In fact, we started talking to retailers before we coated anything because we built it for a purpose. And what I explain when it comes to crypto is like, it’s like it’s like cash app or Venmo. But it doesn’t use dollars as the underlying value. And they’re like, Oh, I get that. And then in them when I say, you know, there’s no Corporation. It’s the Z centralized project. What I have found is that if you say it’s kind of like a nonprofit that’s built to run this project, you know, project and people seem to could they can wrap their head around that. You know, now I don’t I know it’s not technically a nonprofit, because that’s a corporation too. But, but when if you say it like that, you know that there’s no Corporation, but it’s more like a nonprofit group that runs this. People can make they can make sense of that, I think. And that’s seems to work pretty well, when I talk to people.

Truth Raider
Well, if you try to break it down in its core, right, Bitcoin is software. Like if you just said, If you and how do you explain the fact that Bitcoin is software like that, literally, that’s what it is. I mean, it’s only money because we’ve monetized it. But essentially, is just a software that’s constantly running. And so nobody’s ever going to understand that, you know, like you because then you start getting deeper and deeper into how does it work, you know, and then you start talking about blocks. I mean, try explaining blocks to somebody on the street.

Rob McNealy
You know, I don’t know if I can explain to them myself half the time. But here’s the thing is that try to explain how settlement happens on swift with debit cards, nobody knows. They use the debit card, they know how it works, they know that it works, they trust that it works, they have faith that it will work. You know, I don’t think the average person you know, this is I think we’re you know, engineers kind of ruined everything you know, is that engineers the build it they will come mindset doesn’t work. And I’m not picking on engineer that worked around engineers my entire professional life. So I love engineers, but you don’t want the engineer in charge of marketing neither. But what you find is that people you know, engineer types really want to get their really excited and geek out about the technology or the features, you know, that kind of thing. Whereas people don’t care about features as much as they do about benefits. You know, if this solves a problem for me, show me how it solves my problem. And that’s all they care about, you know, when I started talking to retailers, and that’s my focus is talking to retailers and getting them on boarded into crypto, you know, they want to know, how do I deal with taxes? How does it integrate with my point of sale? And how easy is it to work? And is it safe? That’s what they want to know. They don’t care about servers and miners and block producers and whatever else, they don’t give a shit. And one day anymore? No, because it doesn’t matter to them. They want to know that they can cash out is there you know how valid they are. You know, a lot of the retailers I talked to they are concerned about volatility. Well, it goes up and down. Well, when you cash out quick, you just don’t sit on it if you don’t want. But I think that’s the thing. People get lost, they get lost in the technology and the average person, if you’re trying to say adoption won’t happen till the average person understands finance, economics, the Federal Reserve System, inflation and fiat money, and you have to educate the entire planet on those things. And that’s what adoption you’re never going to get Adoption will never happen. One, most people don’t give a shit. And people don’t give a shit until they have a problem, you know, a recognized problem. And I think that’s where that’s why I think like a lot of people, they’re struggling to get adoption because they still think like, oh, people need to come up in this level of knowledge. And I don’t think they do. I don’t think they need to come up with that for there to be adoption of crypto. I’m sorry.

Truth Raider
No, I agree completely. You’re 100% right. I mean, the problem that a lot of us get sucked into myself included is, you know, because the more I research it, Bitcoin, the more I study it the more I try to educate myself, you fall into a trap of over explaining the simplicity of it. It’s, it’s a natural thing, because you’re so interested in how it works. So you, you tend to oversee, you know, so here’s, I think, the way it works in a very simple manner is like to try to explain to somebody is I guess it’s like Western Union. PayPal without the third party involved. So you’re sending, you’re sending, you’re sending your currency to another person without the third party, but it’s very similar to PayPal, except for you don’t need a bank to settle the payment. It’s just a direct payment between you and another human being, you know, without that third party, and I think, because people know how PayPal works, you know, you got your email you sent to somebody else’s email. And somehow magically, the banking system settles, right. It’s the same as PayPal without the banking system, essentially.

Rob McNealy
And I think even going that deep is probably unnecessary. Interesting story. So my day job a long time ago, I used to be a contractor. And I don’t hide this, you know, I’m very public about my, my, you know, I have a real day job. I’m an entrepreneur and I have a day job and I have our crypto projects so i don’t i don’t hide it on my LinkedIn, whatever. I’m totally docs, but you know, I found when I was this is probably 15 years ago when I thought started getting into sales of I my business. I would try to educate my clients and everything they needed to know to make the best buying decision and my average sales time with these people are 45 minutes to an hour. And I call people back like a week later and they’re like all I want with somebody else but thank you I loved your presentation. What do you mean why didn’t you go with Well, they were cheaper than you. And what I found and and i over I was over explaining what I was doing. It was I was giving me I was doing my job and giving them everything they needed to know to make a really informed decision and be really smart about it because I wanted them to be smart. And what ended up happening is I wasn’t closing sales. So what I ended up doing I found out is I cut my sales pitch by pitch to half the time to a half hour and I doubled my sales in true story, true story and and it was hard for me to wrap my head around it because I was trying To educate people in a way that I wanted to be sold, right? Yeah, the problem is, most you know, and I find this, especially with guys like that are smart. And most the people that I know that are in crypto are smart. Okay. You know, they’re curious, they’re smart. They’re questioning, you know, I haven’t run into too many stupid people in crypto, at least that are working in crypto. And, and so, as smart people, we want to have respect for other people’s intelligence, I think where we’re like, Hey, I think you’re a good person. And I want to treat you with respect, and I want to value your intelligence. So You two must want to have this knowledge. But I don’t think the average person does. I think you lose them. I think it gets complicated. And I think if you know, you have to recognize that there are different people have different you know, they kind of perceive the world differently. They have the world and the average person has an average IQ. So right I mean, that’s not mean Yeah, it’s not mean. But that means but in the United States, right? The average IQ in the US is about 100. Okay, yeah, that means half the people you run into at Walmart or at the mall or at the bank, have below average IQ. That’s how averages work, you know? So you got to just You got it. I don’t mean to dumb it down, but you gotta, you gotta explain things in a way that makes sense to them. And you gotta always have it I always say, you know, you have to sell people in a way that they want to be sold. Don’t sell people on how you think you should be sold. And I found that that made a big difference in my success in business is that you just have to kind of evaluate who you’re dealing with and and make it make sense for them. And and that’s not insulting is just, you know, if you try anything with this way, right, you’re I can tell you’re a smart guy, and I read your Twitter so I know you’re a pretty smart guy. You know if you go in as a smart guy to Someone who maybe is just average. And you try to explain all this technical engineering kind of mumbo jumbo. How they might take that as you think you know it all right? I mean, that happens or if they’re a woman, maybe now you’re mansplaining. You know, there’s all these kind of an end as a smart guy, you’re like, No, I just I don’t think like that. I’m not mansplaining and I don’t think I’m the smartest guy in the room. I just know excited about this. And, and I think that’s where a lot of guys in crypto miss it, because they don’t have a hard time with that. And they do. I have a hard time with it too. But I think that, you know, as we’re trying to get adoption, we just need to be cognizant of the world is not who we are typically, you know, and we’re thought you know, with we’re pioneers right now, people like our thought leaders, they’re, they’re early adopters, early adopters are different than average people. Most people don’t early adopters are the early adopters won’t be a thing. Right?

Truth Raider
And I agree with everything you’re saying, Man, and like it’s hard for me. Like I said, I got it in 20 17 so it’s really hard for me to look at myself as an early adopter per se. I mean, because I’m, I came in years and years after all these guys. But then, like you said, like, I’m not an early adopter, but I got into it fairly early, you know, essentially, because when you talked to people about Bitcoin, they’re so lost, and just the basics of it. So yeah, I’m very new. I’ve only been at for three years, I’m fairly new. However, there’s a huge knowledge gap between somebody that’s never touched Bitcoin, and somebody that has been using it for a while. So when I was I was in Malta a couple of weeks ago, and I was doing I was on a panel for talking about Libra and lightning and da O’s and stuff. And I basically was defending lightning. And so I was looking back at some of the clips of when I was talking, and I was like, probably in that room in that conference room. There was probably like six dudes that understood what the hell I was talking about. The rest of them were all just like, yeah, lightning sounds like it’s a good thing. Because I was I was basically defending lightning because I’m a huge fan of lightning essentially. And, but at the end of the day, like you said, people just want to know that lightning either works, or it doesn’t work. That’s really the that’s the crux of it. And so, I think sometimes people like me and other people that really want to defend it. We get so caught up in the logistics of it all, you know, so.

Rob McNealy
Well, well, it’s interesting because, you know, I and I’m not here just push on what I’m doing. But you know, I’m not I’m working on a crypto project. That’s not Bitcoin. Yeah, and a lot of maximalists and I’m not a maxi though, just so for all transparency. Of the four main projects that I have personal investments in our Bitcoin, a theorem, Raven, and Tusk, which is my project, so I am an investor in all those projects. So understand I’m not here hating on anybody. But, you know, when we started our project two years ago, I mean, lightning was still you much earlier on. And you know, everybody’s like, because I get, I mean, as a project, I mean, you’re in the mining side, but you know, I’ve been in this project for a couple years, almost and you wouldn’t believe the hate that you get for being a project from the Maxis and the different communities it’s pretty awful at times. And one of the person said, Why don’t you just do what you’re doing on Bitcoin? And I said, well, bitcoins not designed for retail never was intended to block work.

Truth Raider
And I agree, I agree the current format your.

Rob McNealy
You know, Bitcoin Cash, and again, I am not political, I’m not in any of those communities at all. But Bitcoin cash is actually more would be better for a retail environment than Bitcoin to court, just what is just not there. And so, but I said this, and someone said, What about lightning? And I said, well, and this is about eight weeks ago on the lightning Twitter long timeline, and this is just like eight weeks ago from now, right? They posted on on the lightning network Twitter, do not or I’m sorry, timeline on Twitter, do not put any more money into the lightning network and still software could be buggy and don’t put any more money into the lightning network that you’re not willing to lose. And that was on their own Twitter account. It’s still there. And, and and I pointed out to this guy, I go, Okay, well, if I’m going in and talking to a retailer and I’m trying to solve a problem with crypto, whether it’s mine or someone else’s, I certainly can’t go and tell them to do Lightning when that’s what’s on Lightning’s Twitter timeline just a few weeks ago, that tells me that it’s not ready for it’s not ready for prime time even yet.

Truth Raider
And that was my argument in Malta. And I’ve never I argue this that that what you just said it’s still in beta, you know, it’s like it’s like an ever I argue that it’s that it can it can be something amazing. I don’t argue that it that it is exactly success experiments experimental right now,

Rob McNealy
You know, once you know crypto is experimental, and this is what I tell people, you know, and and, and I’m kind of agnostic. I know I I it’s funny because with this with even with my, you know, podcast here I interview all sorts of projects in crypto. And then it’s not even though I’m I got my own project, you know, I’m here I want to talk to other people because I, I’m excited about the space and in my happy world, I don’t believe there will be nor should there be just one crypto for the planet. I think that’s actually dangerous inherently centralizing. And to me, it’s like, there will be multiple kryptos and in fact, I would rather there be 200 dozen my own, you know, ideal place. There’s 200 really, really well designed communities around 200 different block chains that all seamlessly coexist and atomic swap between one another. To me, I think that’s actually much safer than having like, you know, fewer and fewer crypto projects that are more and more centralized behind them. And to me, I think that long term that would actually be better for society, because of the beauty of what I see as crypto is that You know, we talked about the honesty and the transparency and the scarcity and, you know, and inflation rates that are known in the open source nature of crypto makes them superior to Fiat. Right. They’re not necessarily subject to governments, politicians whims. But what I see is that the other benefit of kryptos is that you can tailor them and program them for specific purposes, regions, industries, companies, and we don’t talk about that enough that there could be a know maybe there should be a crypto for the shipping industry. Maybe there should be a crypto and you’re starting to see more of that. But I don’t think we talked about that enough. And because there’s so I think, I mean, you’re out there probably more than I am, but it seems like a lot of these projects are really trying to like, oh, our project is the greatest and you know, we hate that community over there and they fight and it’s all stupid, and I’m like, Look, there’s no reason why Bitcoin can’t do one be one thing and This other crypto projects do this other one thing, and they could work together on that. And to me, the ultimate goal is to decentralize and free people from the state as much as possible. What do you think about you know, the idea of that, you know, there can be kryptos for specific purposes and industries.

Truth Raider
Oh, I mean, I’m very extremely libertarian. So I mean, I’m all about the, the decentralized approach, but I don’t disagree and and I’m not a Bitcoin maximalist. I’m a Bitcoin realist. Like I in the fact that I’m a firm supporter of Bitcoin, I will be now and I’ll probably be 20 years from now just because it has its place. However, I agree with you as a realist. Let’s say lightning becomes amazing. It’s the greatest thing ever. Okay, well, that probably only let’s say, let’s say it does just as a use case, that only that would only solve a problem of speed, right? Because what lightning promises millions if not billions of transactions and capability, okay? Let’s say that happens. Well, I guarantee if lightning can do that there will be 100 other kryptos that figure out how to do the exact same thing and to move really quick and move really secure. So I agree with you, there will probably a blockchain project that that does really well in the medical arena. You know, that’s really good with medical blockchain and a shipping blockchain and aviation blockchain. And a I mean, you name it, there’s probably going to be another blockchain That’s better. Even if lightning succeeds or fails, there will be something better that does a specific task retail manufacturing. In real estate, I mean, there’s probably going to be like you said, hundreds of them that are really good at doing something that’s very specified. And meanwhile, bitcoins going to be sitting on the shelf just saying, Hey, keep it out. Guys. Keep going, you know as a store of value and pop Possibly a transactional crypto with lightning. But I think even if lightning succeeds, we’re going to have everything you just mentioned, hundreds of blockchains with a purpose, you know?

Rob McNealy
And we really we already have an analogue for that. Right? If you think about it, I mean, pretty much every government has in the, in the world, every country, every government has its own fee, there’s 150, or whatever, how many countries there are. And they technically seamlessly swap between, you know, between one and are we already have an analogue for that. Yeah. And if you think about it, that makes sense, right? People are no, well, you know, so you can say, look, well, you know, the United States has a coin, right? Switzerland has their coin, or currency, and then they trade and you can go with any airport and swap between one now and you explain, oh, well, can that make sense? So I mean, there’s lots of ways that you know, when you’re talking to the average person, you can explain these concepts went away that they might be familiar with, you know, and say, Look, there’s you know, hundreds of currencies around the world. You know, and they all talk to each other, and really kryptos like that, but just more in the digital format. And you take out the middleman and like, oh, and, you know, and, and I think that that makes a lot of sense. And I like that future better. I think that, I think a lot of maximalists and, you know, especially the old school guys, and you know, I used to be very active, actual big l libertarian politics. And one of the things that I find with being an ancap or being a libertarian is that whenever you get around activists of any hilke they tend to be the roughest around the edges, you know, what I’m saying is the earliest activists, the ones that really are the ones that spend years getting the ball rolling and making stuff happen and promoting it. Those guys do necessary work, right? That’s that’s how they start. But is like as these movements change and get more mature, different people come in, and in some ways usually take over the ones that have better social skills. They They have the ability to see things through. And I think maximalists and a lot of cases tend to be those guys, the earliest activists. So, you know, there’s a, there’s a saying that I’ve heard that I like that says, you know, pioneers, take the arrows and settlers take the land you know? Yeah. And I think that’s, I think that’s pretty true with you know, all these, you know, you know, the cannabis industry is like that, too. It’s like I was, you know, I’m pretty, you know, involved in politics in Colorado, especially during, you know, 10 years ago when they were, you know, getting it law medical and then legal for recreational use. And it’s interesting because the earliest people that were pushing it were literally the stereotypical hippies dude all the free the weed those kind of guys. And now you go to Colorado and in that industry, and it’s funny, because the regulations and a lot of ways pushed all those guys out to anyways, you know, one of the interesting things in Colorado with that is that you couldn’t get a license to work in any marijuana or cannabis related business. If you’ve ever been busted for Drugs.

Truth Raider
Seriously?

Rob McNealy
Yeah. And so think about that, right. Everybody who was in that industry was busted for drugs. That’s why they’re in the industry.

Truth Raider
Yeah, that they got into it because they wanted to try to find a way to get legal after all the drama.

Rob McNealy
And so so it’s interesting but if you go to Colorado now it’s it’s it’s there’s it’s still kind of an edgy industry but it’s very it’s very much corporate that it’s gotten a lot more mature and you know, you’re dealing you know, you still edgy like coat you know, crypto still edgy even the guys that are corporate II, you know, that came out of you know, traditional finance, there’s still the edge lords of traditional finance that are kind of showing up at the conferences, right. You know, they’re the ones that are like, I’ll still wear suit, but I can not wear a tie that’s edgy for them. But, but I think that’s the good I think that’s going to happen in crypto too. And I think eventually, five years 10 years from now the no one’s gonna know who most of the maximalists are, they won’t remember them because they’re going to be so I this is just because I see this with other political other people. Political and in paradigm movements is that those early activist and generally get washed out in the noise once things take off. And so I try not to take those guys too seriously. But I think they still performed a really important thing. And I totally have kudos and shout outs and respects to those guys because they did something important. But they also can be their own worst enemy as well. You know, I always say, say your retail, and I always kind of looking at it from the retailer standpoint, and I own a retail store before so I know a lot about retail. And, you know, say, I want to accept Bitcoin into my, my business. Where do you start? crypto Twitter right? Now, if you’re, you know, the business owner, you’re not maybe super technical, but you want to try something new. you’re frustrated with, you know, VESA screw, and you’re over whatever. And you go land on crypto Twitter, or Bitcoin talk or somewhere else and you run into maximalists. And you have a question about all this. Ch looks interesting. It’s faster than Bitcoin Core or what do you think about that? What do you think the responses to that poor retailer trying to learn? And put all those questions and and they’re going to run away.

Truth Raider
They’re gonna get nuked by 100 trolls getting all this stuff that they’re talking about it, you know,

Rob McNealy
Yeah and and so, to me that is actually an in my opinion one of the impediments right now of crypto is that I think in some ways it’s its own worst enemy and, and I and the bums me out because I mean I sought to up and people like oh you’re gonna do this project I’m like, oh, you’re a scam? What? I didn’t sell anything I didn’t nicey Oh, how am I a scam? You know? I don’t hide who I am. But it’s pretty funny. So, you know you I follow your Twitter and that’s how I actually found out about you originally. And you got a pretty big following on Twitter. What do you How did you get such a big following?

Truth Raider
Would you do so I started doing Lot of like I said, I used to be big into libertarian type conversation. Back in the day and my account I started my account 2015 I used to do more libertarian political type, like I’m pro I’m a pro gun guy. I got a shitload of guns I used to I used to be an ffl dealer back in the day. Nice. So like I’ve, I, I kind of was on that, you know, on the, to a spectrum libertarian guy. That whole, you know, area in it kind of has his place in Twitter, and then it kind of 10 you know, that I kind of just moved into crypto because it was a natural progression. You know, I think there’s a lot of people like me in that in that way. You know, libertarian guys that were looking for something that it was part of that you know, it was I don’t know, it’s it’s, it fits into the mold, really well. The whole decentralized decentralization and libertarian kind of, if you believe in both of those, it kind of go together a little bit. I would say,

Rob McNealy
I it’s funny, they bring up the gun thing. So that’s our, I don’t know if you know what we’re doing with TUSC, but we are focused on the gun industry with our project and then so it’s funny because I, you know, I go I spend more time in gun related conferences than crypto conferences. And I’m the only guy there talking about crypto, because there’s no one from the Bitcoin company or the Bitcoin project at gun things. It’s kind of funny, but you would be surprised, you know, because the gun industry has a really big problem with payments. really recognize problem and I always say this is that for adoption to happen, you need to focus on industries that have recognized problems. If you try to tell Grandma that she needs to go use Bitcoin to buy something at JoAnn Fabrics. And then by the way, it’s going to take maybe an hour or two for that to confirm. Oh, by the way, it’s really complicated. Oh, it’s expensive to that makes zero sense that for Grandma to do that you’re creating a lot more work and trouble and you’re going to stress to your poor grandmother out. But on the other hand, if you go talk to a gun retailer who the fact is they’re completely barred because of politics from using PayPal Venmo cash app, coin payments, token pay bit payments, or any of the other type of digital payment processing things and you talk about crypto, you would be surprised at how open they are to that concept of not getting their business shut down and being able to conduct business online. You know, and to me, there’s seven industries that have a recognized problem in the United States right now with traditional payments, and they’re all distasteful to somebody. And I have to point that out. So but and those are things like cannabis and guns and pornography and prostitution and gambling and pawn shops and refugees and immigrants. And those are the industries right now that have a problem. And to me, if you’re focused is on payments, which is what our focus is. You need to focus on those industries, because those are the places that actually have an issue that and they have a problem that needs to be solved that crypto does solve. And so far, we’ve had amazing response going and educating retailers. In fact, we got 15 retailers now that have already given us a verbal soon as our first payment gateways, that they’re going to accept us for payments. So we’re already real excited about this industry and 2020 is gonna be a really big year for us. So we’re pretty, pretty stoked. But you know, even if you’re in another project, you know, the main thing is, if it doesn’t matter, I mean, you need to focus if you’re trying to sell something to somebody, you need to sell somebody sell something to somebody, whether it’s script or anything else that has a problem and solve their problem. And I think a lot of these guys are like trying, especially engineers tend to fall into this building, they will come mindset, and that’s a myth building, they will not and you know, it’s great if you have an idea that You know, technologically might be amazing. But if you don’t have a plan, and way to put that solution to someone’s problem in front of the people who have that problem, I don’t think you’re going to get very far. And I think that’s what a lot of crypto people run into. But then again, most of the crypto people, I’ve Think about it, most of the crypto projects are led by developers. And there’s a huge least what I’ve seen with developers in general, is is a huge bias against sales and marketing people in general, they just don’t like sales, marketing. And I think that’s part of the culture. Developers are often introverted, and, you know, it’s not a bad thing. Our teams like the same way. I’m like, I’m the guy with the big mouth. So yeah, but it’s, but I think if people started opening their mind a little bit about what they’re trying to accomplish as far as getting adoption, if adoption is, you know, on the horizon, you know, you got to focus on solving people’s problems, and then you got to figure out a way how to get that problem, you know, solve for those people and put that in front of them. And that’s how you win and If you’re not doing that, then I don’t know how why it makes sense to me that there’s not a lot of adoption yet, is because people aren’t really doing that. You go look at the big projects out there and go look at their team pages, ones that actually have teams. And you will see, like, you might see a bunch of developers, but you really don’t see a whole lot in the way of the sales and marketing piece. Especially when you’re talking global projects where you might need, you know, you might need a sales leader for every country, you know, if you’re really trying to get adoption, I mean, that’s what it might take. But you don’t really see that being built out that way. So, where do you think the future is going to be if, say, I’m new, I’m coming into crypto, I want to get excited. I want to be a part of it. How would you recommend the average person who’s new to crypto to kind of get started and get their feet wet with this kind of industry?

Truth Raider
I would say if you don’t know anything about it, just go to go to Robinhood or coin base or an ATM. Just buy some Bitcoin and just try it out. Just test I mean, that’s, I think that’s step one is most people don’t know about that. Most people think it’s really complicated to to access Bitcoin. So I would say step one is if you know somebody that knows about it, just go get some. And that kind of thing that creates like a spark. So like my first the first Bitcoin I ever got was in Jacksonville, Florida at a Charlie shrem ATM and a gas station. I was like that was that that was my first gateway. And it was, it was because I just finished doing a shitload of research. I watch a lot of documentaries. I love documentaries. And I was just going through tons of them. And it just it kept popping up as a theme. So I was like, you know, I’ll go try this out. Let me just see what this this thing’s all about. You know, like I knew what it was. I knew it was used in the dark web with Silk Road. I know. I knew. I’d seen it on the dark web and the deep web. I’d seen you know people buying stuff and I never used it specifically. But I was super curious. And so finally I was like, You know what, let me just go to an ATM and buy it and I did. And and then it kind of you kind of go down a rabbit hole like you You started a project, you start you started the company started a project based on just that initial like, Hey, I think we have something here, you know, with with crypto. And I think that’s kind of what all of us we kind of went down that rabbit hole, you know, and and now we’re here and it’s an interesting ride because it it makes sense. At least to me, it really does. You know,

Rob McNealy
It made sense to me too. And that’s why I tell people I’m more I’m more bullish on crypto now than I was even two years ago when you know during the height of that craziness because but I agree with you and you know, I I’m real excited that you came on here I mean, this was a good conversation and and I’m happy to have you on anytime if you got something interest You want to share with my audience? Where can people find out more about you?

Truth Raider
I think the easiest way is just to go to either Truthraider.com I got a website just kind of shows the stuff I’m working on. Or just go to Twitter. At @TruthRaiderHQ is where I’m the most active. Thank you so much. I enjoyed this conversation immensely.

Rob McNealy
I appreciate it. Rob.

Episode Links

Audio Interview
Video Interview
Interview Transcript