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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

Joe Mcgill – CyChain on Crypto Risks

Joe McGill, Founder of CyChain, discusses crypto and blockchain threat intelligence, investigations and recovery, and operational security.

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

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Interview Transcript

Ashton Addison EventChain Transcript

Ashton Addison, CEO of EventChain.io

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

Rob McNealy
Hey, today we are talking to Ashton Addison of EventChain. How are you today?

Ashton Addison
I’m doing well Rob yourself.

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

Ashton Addison
We are in beautiful Vancouver, Canada.

Rob McNealy
Beautiful, beautiful area up there. I live in the mountains too. So it’s like I totally I don’t think I can ever go back to flat ground after living out west. And and people in the Midwest. Guys, you got to come out. It’s just so amazing out here. And even in Western Canada, it’s just very different than you know, the mid sections in the mid you know, the eastern parts of the country. So as to tell me a little bit about Tell me about yourself. What are you up to? How’d you get here?

Ashton Addison
Yeah, well, in terms of event chain and also the crypto coin show which is the show that I’m running, both revolving deeply around cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies. first got interested in the space through my father. Ironically enough, Most people’s fathers are not tech savvy, but might happen to be a tech founder as well. So we helped co found my media channel crypto coin show in 2014. When, you know before the Ethereum token craze and we wanted to help grow the industry, by making a magazine at first that switched more into a YouTube channel, and just highlighting news highlighting projects that are showcasing good use cases of blockchain technology and business. Ran that for a few years. My mainly focusing on interviews, you know, that sort of seems to be the sweet spot right now. So have about 500 videos on my channel. And then in 2017, we realized, hey, we should really make our own use case, because there’s a big problem in the ticketing industry, which is one of the industries that I’ve been working in, I’d run an event production company back in 2012. And I’ve been to show us and I’ve been ripped off by tickets. Not only just on this Secondary Market paying for tickets, but also buying tickets that were completely fake and getting ripped off and not being able to even go to the show. And we realized, hey, these tickets, if they’re on the blockchain could be, you know proven that their authenticity is real and that they’re scarce and that, you know, you’re not going to be ripped off when you go to a show. So we started event chain and in 2017 to create a self service event ticketing platform that puts the tickets on the blockchain cruiser authenticity. And that’s what we’ve been working on ever since. And it’s live in the market right now. People are able to create events that have enchained audio and our ticketing around the world. And it’s not only just paying with cryptocurrencies, we’re also paying with credit cards and PayPal, it’s we understand, be tough to find a room of even of crypto people that that all want to pay with cryptocurrency, nevermind a music festival. So we’ve designed it in a very user friendly way to try and bring awareness to crypto currencies and show people that you can use blockchain in a non financial industry to solve real problems.

Rob McNealy
Well, I think the important thing here is that you guys aren’t just accepting cryptocurrency you actually have a blockchain ticketing component built into your project.

Ashton Addison
You got it So, and we realized that with music festivals and sports arenas, you know, a music festival person, they’re an event person, they don’t necessarily need to know how the blockchain works and how transactions are verified and consensus mechanisms and technical stuff. They just want to know their tickets are real, their tickets are valid. They’re scarce, no one’s going to create counterfeit tickets, and there’s negative externalities of the event organizer are removed, and the blockchain is all on the back end, right. You don’t need to be a mechanic to be a good driver.

Rob McNealy
So is this like an ERC 20 project? Is this based on the theory and platform or did you develop your own platform or your own blockchain to support this?

Ashton Addison
Yeah, so We originally built on the Ethereum platform, just because it was very easy to do. And but as we continue to grow the platform, and we started ticketing larger music festivals, we realized that buying tickets to a festival or concert is sort of like an Ico. Everybody wants to buy tickets in the first second, and then it sells out. And then nobody buys tickets, they have this huge influx of transactions all in in a five minute span. And for a festival that has like 10,000 people, that is too many transactions to what is currently capable on the Ethereum network. So we didn’t build the full platform on top of the theorem protocol directly, although we did utilize that to store the tickets and transfer them to attendees. And because of that, once we realized that we were surpassing the scalability of aetherium, we actually pivoted through the gold chain blockchain, which actually is it’s a competitor to aetherium, but it’s actually so compatible that you can still Run a theory of node and just verify the transactions on the goshi network instead. And they could do you know, 13,000 transactions per second, with very, very similar infrastructure. So that’s what we’re currently doing.

Rob McNealy
So right now, with your system with Todd is a an event organizer, how do they verify when someone comes up to the front desk? Is it just is there a paper ticket involved at all with a hologram on it? Or is it just you show your iPhone or what have you with, you know, a QR code?

Ashton Addison
So, the ideology that we have for the system is that event organizers and artists know it’s their event so they can put as many restrictions or options as they want. Now, we don’t want to limit their capacity and what they want to do. So if they want to have paper tickets, and you know, there’s an older crowd or non technical crowd that just wants to print out their paper and come they have that ability. However, You can’t prove that that ticket hasn’t been printed out twice and resold. So in that case, you can use the system as a fully functional event ticketing system. But you’re not proving the authenticity of the tickets with paper tickets. If you do want to have those security measures, you can do digital only tickets on your phone. And we’re even coming up with extra security functions like smart qR dynamic QR codes that change and limits of when tickets become available. You know, for example, 24 hours before 48 hours before to limit scalpers. And then with those digital only tickets, because they’re scarce, because when you transfer them, it’s almost like digital money, right? It’s like like Bitcoin once you transfer it, you no longer have access to that ticket yourself. Whereas currently with PDF tickets, once you send it to somebody email, you still have a copy. How can you prove when you’re buying a ticket from somebody off of Craigslist or a secondary market that that person doesn’t still have the ticket after you buy it from them? Right. So

Rob McNealy
So that was I was talking about the chain of custody. So the question is, and I don’t know the economics of events and in especially sporting events and scalpers, but my understanding is some places that scalping is actually part of that business model ecosystem. So does this completely lock the scalper types out of the market? Or is that an optional kind of thing that the event organizer can allow? Like, for instance, Can people resell tickets once they have them early?

Ashton Addison
So again, goes back to the same ideology that the organizers if they want to have that they can allow that right. And currently, we’re just running a primary ticketing market. And if people have PDFs, they can do whatever they wish with them. But as we build out our unified secondary market, you have the ability for example, if you know Ed Sheeran wants to have no markup on his tickets, and they want to have face value only through the digital only tickets, you can put those pricing variables into the smart ticket. So as it goes to the secondary market, you cannot Mark it up. But if they want to have unlimited markup and scalpers or if the artist wants to have a kickback from that, and like say people can resell them for whatever they want, but at least the artists and the organizers are getting a portion of that, you can also program that into the tickets. So if they want to have scalping they can. And if they want to cut they can if they don’t want to have scalping the can, right. It’s all about providing the tools to allow them to do what they want with their own tickets.

Rob McNealy
So the secondary markets really interesting. So the question is, and just from a legal standpoint, does that start becoming a lot like a Securities Exchange at that point? I don’t know the legalities. There’s like Canada, but I’m wondering you know how that would work. I mean, the the SEC doesn’t look at BB Beanie Babies on eBay as a security. So the The question is, if these things aren’t sold as security, is there any kind of concern about that secondary market or auction or trading between ticket holders like that, legally speaking?

Ashton Addison
I don’t know for sure what I would say def, you know, I don’t believe so because how it works with StubHub right now is, you know, there’s they actually just they’re just selling to via gogo right now for $4 billion. And they trade millions of tickets every year. And they have, you can put whatever limits they want. And on Viagogo, you can do face value only if you want. And those are, you know, it’s just a paper ticket. It’s not a security, it doesn’t have any ownership of the event or that, you know, anything to do with that. It’s just an entitlement to go to that event. So I would say definitely, you know, we’d look into it, but I’m guessing not.

Rob McNealy
So how did you guys fund this?

Ashton Addison
Yeah, so we actually did a private equity round in Canada, we raised about $2 million Canadian and through through local investors that were very involved in the blockchain industry. And that allowed us to bootstrap the development of the application. And from there we started chargeable system sort of getting revenues and then just raising money. additional funds for growth, marketing and driving the sales team and trying to create a traditional business. You know, a lot of these blockchain companies, they are very blockchain focused. And we realized that with event organizers especially you need to be very business focused and cater towards their industry. And through for that, you know, have sales people that, you know, they don’t necessarily need to know about blockchain. It’s a selling feature. But there’s so many other functions needed to create a successful event that it’s a competitive advantage, but it’s definitely not the only thing that’s needed to create a successful event.

Rob McNealy
So are you looking to do an exit say in three to five years and for your investors? Hmm.

Ashton Addison
Definitely. In the works, you know, the ticketing industry right now is full of acquisitions. Event bright has made seven acquisitions in the last five years, including the Vancouver ticketing company. They haven’t done anything with blockchain yet. But Ticketmaster acquired a blockchain startup last year called upgraded and I feel like the other ticketing company They’re all they’re all sort of looking to acquire and grow their businesses through acquisitions. So that’s one route. And, of course, you know, the, when people invest in the company, we want to give them a return and give them an exit. So, definitely want to give back to our investors who, who believed in the project since the beginning.

Rob McNealy
So are there a specific niche you’re looking at? Are you going after sporting, you’re looking at music, you’re looking at conferences, where do you see yourselves fitting into the market?

Ashton Addison
Yeah, so right now we’ve been targeting the high growth industries. There’s, there’s multiple facets to that. First of all the industries which are prone to counterfeit ticketing, you know, music festivals, high price tickets, concerts in sports are often resold and and often people are counterfeit from that. So those industries we’ve been targeting as well as the sports industry and the tech industries where people want to use blockchain technology, they’re advocating for the use of it. If they can use it and showcase that it is an actual thing in a in a non financial industry, they’re willing to do that. So, yeah, we’ve been ticketing, music festivals eSports. But the system being a self serve system and allowing anybody to create events without even talking to us. We have every kind of event on there from, you know, art shows, fashion shows, business meetups, anything that can be posted on meetup. com can be posted on event chain. If you’re doing a free event, it’s completely free. Whereas on meetup, you actually have to pay as an organizer for for free events. And you don’t even get your attendees data. And on event chain, you can so we’ve opened it up to all those different types of events. And similar to event brights business model, there’s all of these different types of industries. But we’re focused our business development on the high growth industries, high price tickets, high capacity, prone to counterfeiting, and technical people. Wow.

Rob McNealy
So you kind of are competing with both meetup and event right then technically

Ashton Addison
Definitely, yeah, but meetups functionality sort of limited in terms of what you can gather, you know, and data is everything nowadays. And with event chain, we’ve built the system out. So you can ask custom questions and not just your traditional Now, what’s your company and title if you’re going to a conference, but you know, your dietary restrictions, your investing habits, whatever kind of questions you want to ask, you can ask that and then have we have the integrations to deliver those email addresses directly to your MailChimp, for example, or into your CRM, so you can target those attendees and help them come to your future events, or use them as a lead generation tool for whatever other business you’re running.

Rob McNealy
Wow. So do you have the ability to have multiple like one organization can do multiple recurring events in different locations under like one master account?

Ashton Addison
Totally. Yeah, you can create as many events as you want. You can also assign other people to be your checking people and they can have access to the attendee list and checking in but not have access to the sales reports and things like that. And we’re working on even more functionality to create, you know, promoter list and resellers that can help facilitate sales but have limited access to, to the back end of the master account for the events.

Rob McNealy
So when did you guys first launch into the market?

Ashton Addison
So we first launched the product, more of an MVP in about 12 months ago, so around Christmas time, and since then just piloting about 800 different events in about 28 countries. A lot of that was just, you know, organic growth of people that wanted to have been waiting for the system to launch and tech, you know, early tech adopters. You know, we’ve done everything from music festivals in Bermuda to events in Italy, in London to Hong Kong blockchain week and in Hong Kong, to events in Canada, you know, small, small networking events, so sort of a little bit of everything, and getting user feedback. And no, I was I was just reading A book they’re saying, with software as a service, you know, if you are if your system is like fully ready, and you and you’re completely competent with it when you launch, you’ve almost launched too late, right? You need to launch right away, get the feedback from your first customers. We’ve already had lots of repeat customers, you know, for example, anarcho Vegas conference, if you know Aaron, in Vegas, now they’re early advocates of the system. They thoroughly enjoyed using event chain for their 2019 conference that they put up the 2020 conference two days, two days after. So we’ve had great feedback so far. And we’re continuing to grow and target larger events.

Rob McNealy
So for instance, right now, you not only are based on blockchain for the security, anti fraud elements of this, but you also accept crypto currencies or some crypto currencies as payments. Say I wanted to set up an event through your system and accept crypto. Do you guys pay the people that are organizing and crypto Or do you just pay them a piece of the ticket? How does that the payment system work?

Ashton Addison
Yeah. So it goes back to our ideology that the organizers should be able to do what they wish in terms of accepting payments. So if they want to turn off credit cards, they do that if they use PayPal to do that. And if they want to accept just Bitcoin, they can do that if they want accept, you know, the top 50 coins, and they hope that it’s a cryptocurrency event, and people are going to have smaller coins or stable coins, they can accept that. Our system right now is set up on the flip side to just accept the top five currencies, Canadian American, Euro pound and Australian dollar. As we grow, we’re getting a lot of traction in Southeast Asia. So we’re looking at building in more payment processing and our own payment processing system so that people aren’t paying the merchants, you know, an extra 3% outside of the system, we can cut those costs for them, and possibly accepting more international currencies there. And then, generally, if you’re one of those five fiat currencies, We will Well, actually how it works right now is that because you are connecting to your PayPal or stripe directly, when somebody buys a ticket, you get the money right away. Right? So whereas with some systems, we have a payment gateway, if you do an event, you don’t get the money for the tickets until after the event or you know, each month and sometimes you need to pay artists or pay the venue and things like that before the event starts. So you know, where do you get that money from? So currently with invention, you get the money right away. And then we actually just bill for the ticketing fees afterwards in whichever those top five fiat currencies that they were using.

Rob McNealy
So someone bought a ticket with crypto though the event organizer right now would receive the crypto itself or would they.

Ashton Addison
They would receive the crypto directly into their wallet and the system because we’re not a money transmitter. We don’t have a system to like track. You know, settle that into cash for them. So if they pay with Bitcoin, they’re collecting Bitcoin, hopefully they hold on to it and the price goes up or maybe they want to manage their funds right away and and sell it. And in that case, you know, the fees are are just in American and it’s a very small percentage. So it’s just easier for us because we have to pay our expenses right away to keep it in fit.

Rob McNealy
So what, where do you see the biggest growth like geographically Canada, North America, Asia?

Ashton Addison
Yeah, um, well, with our system so far, you know, besides our marketing efforts have been targeting North America and Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia seems very progressive on the cryptocurrency, you know, legislation, adoption of it. There’s huge numbers of people there. So yeah, we’ve had events in Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Tokyo, Taiwan, Hong Kong. It seems to be growing very rapidly. And so that’s been pretty But also just throughout America and Canada as well, since we’re based in Canada, you can’t forget about the homeland here. And we want to make sure that everyone there is doing great events on event chain as well. So those have been the top two spots so far.

Rob McNealy
What are your goals are how many events do you want to do in 2020?

Ashton Addison
I would say we need to nail down a bunch more large size festivals that have you know, 10,000 plus attendees. If we can get a handful of those, and then some eSports arenas, we’re already ticketing some sports arenas that do smaller events. But the scale of the sports is growing so quickly right now that some of these events have 10s of thousands of people. And as well, we’re working on a streaming integration platform, so that if you have people that are watching the esports event from from their home, they can know the organizers have the ability to pay well that and sell a ticket to exclusive content, which can open it up to hundreds of thousands of people. There’s no capacity proceeding. So that’s another thing that we’re working on for 2020.

Rob McNealy
Wow, that’s really kind of cool. I’m, I’m really interested in what you’re doing. Do you guys have your own token?

Ashton Addison
We do have an EventChain token as well that we’ve created. Right now it can be used to pay for tickets. And we’re working on building an incentivization and rewards platform for that, where if you create events, you’re incentivized with the token. And if you share content, go to events, engage with the event organizers, after or during the event. You’ll be incentivized. So that’s something that’s supposed to be coming in in 2020 as well.

Rob McNealy
Is your token currently traded anywhere?

Ashton Addison
Yes, traded on a couple third party exchanges, some smaller exchanges like murca talks to live coin and decentralized exchanges as well.

Rob McNealy
So what’s the symbol

Ashton Addison
EVC. It’s on coin market cap and you can check it out there.

Rob McNealy
Very cool. Passion. Where can people find out more?

Ashton Addison
The easiest way is to go to event chain.io or go to go dot event chain.io, which is where all of our corporate information is. And we do have information on each category of events, everything from festivals, to nonprofits to, to eSports, or join our telegram t.me slash event chain. And our whole team is there to help support and answer any questions that you guys have. And, you know, feel free to create an event. Even if you’re just a local Bitcoin meetup organizer in your country, you can create events on event change.io for free for free events and you don’t even have to talk to us. But of course, come into the chat and we will be there for support. And you can accept cryptocurrencies, if you want to accept Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Ripple any kind of crypto, we’re one of the only systems that accept crypto and fiat all together in one package, and we would love to support people’s events moving forward.

Rob McNealy
Ashton, thank you so much. I’ve enjoyed this conversation a lot.

Ashton Addison
Thank you so much Rob.

Episode Links

Audio Interview
Video Interview
Interview Transcript

Dirk Lueth – Upland Game Transcript

Dirk Lueth, CoFounder of Upland.meNote: This transcript was automatically generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and therefore typos may be present.

Rob McNealy
Today I’m talking to Dirk Luth. He is with upland, which is this really interesting new blockchain property development game? virtual property development. And I just wanted to talk a little bit about what they’re doing. So welcome to the show. How are you today, Dirk?

Dirk Lueth
Yeah. Hi, Rob. Thanks for having me here today.

Dirk Lueth
I’m really excited to you know, speaking on your podcast.

Rob McNealy
Well, I appreciate you having me It says your Are you calling me today from Germany or from San Francisco?

Dirk Lueth
No, actually from San Francisco Bay area to be precise from from Mountain View, which is a little bit on the peninsula.

Rob McNealy
Wonderful. What part of but you are originally from Germany. What part of Germany are you from originally?

Dirk Lueth
I am. You know, I always lived in two cities in Germany was was Frankfurt in Hamburg. Lots of people know Frankfurt because everybody passes through the airport there but otherwise, it’s a beautiful city as well.

Rob McNealy
Well, that’s very cool. What brings you to the United what brought you to the United States?

Dirk Lueth
Well, you know, the thing is, I’m what you call them. Entrepreneurs started two companies in Germany. And back in 2008 2009. I said, Well, what’s the next thing I can do start another company. But in Europe, things are different, obviously, than in Silicon Valley. I’ve been in Silicon Valley before. And I think the real big ideas have developed in Silicon Valley and and not in not in Europe so much, at least at that time. And that drove me, you know, saying, you know, what, I’m going to take, you know, my pack my bags, take my family, you know, complete your own risk and move to Silicon Valley back in 2009.

Rob McNealy
You know, this is my own observations, because I spent, you know, a little bit of time in Europe myself, that Europeans don’t tend to be as entrepreneurially focused as I think Americans are. In fact, you know, sometimes I spend in different countries in Europe, actually entrepreneurs were kind of in many places, look down upon what’s been your experience with that culturally speaking?

Dirk Lueth
Yeah, actually, that is one of the reasons Actually I came here for, especially to, to the US and to, especially to Silicon Valley because that’s exactly right with that notion. I mean, we know taking Germany and Europe as a whole. Of course it has it has a history and in especially in Germany, we have a lot of people in what is called so called the middle stand, which is, you know, mid size, small medium enterprises, which is somehow the backbone of the German economy. But the reason I came to the US for me was because they’re more related to, let’s say, very much engineering, but the big things, there was a lack of, let’s say, vision, for for lots of people to really do something or to go vision is one part of it. But the other part is also the whole idea of taking more risk and that’s what is lacking currently to my mind is got better, but, but that’s what what is missing in obtaining risk as an entrepreneur, you don’t have that much and it’s all the whole society in Europe is a little bit more lean leans towards security, job security and so on. So you see that so for example to so one one example was, there was a survey in, you know, where they ask students, what do you want to become when you when you graduate from from school, and over 50% of the people said, actually, you know, we want to become some kind of a civil servant, you know, work in an administration because it’s job security and less, you know, becoming an entrepreneur.

Rob McNealy
Yeah, it’s interesting. I always thought that German culture has always been really, you know, interesting. I mean, I come from, I come from a German Polish background primarily, and so my father spoke German polish and English as a child. He was trilingual, because of my grandparents and great grandparents were some of them were off the, you know, they were immigrants from Europe. And it’s interesting. What I see that It’s just there’s like really big risk aversion with a lot of Europeans there. They’re just really, really, they’re very concrete. They they like things very spelled out. They like a lot of details. But you’re right. I think that, you know, the visionary piece. I think it is not. I don’t know, I don’t know if it’s, I don’t know, if it’s culturally pushed down, or if it’s just something about that is just they they focus on the concrete. You know, I always joke around if you want to look at some kind of product manual, right? Look at the German instructions in German and versus the English version, right? It’s about like, a 10th of the thickness. And I worked for when I was younger, I worked for several, you know, big corporations that had, you know, you know, places and outlets in Germany. And so, and it’s funny because we’d always I work with a lot of German engineers and Swiss engineers, and you would always have this discussion about Americans don’t read the manual, so don’t bother, build them on for them. Germans it was this joke that if you had a product that Germans would argue about a calm on page 34 that it shouldn’t have been in that one thing and they’d be going and looking over you know all these little detail I don’t know. It’s just kind of interesting but I always like to see background of what

Dirk Lueth
I can completely agree to that point. So if you look at the German culture right we had a famous German philosopher His name is Schopenhauer and he always said there was three steps to truth or three stages to true he said the first stage is and obviously you find it also somewhere maybe more towards the eastern in the US but it’s much more heavy you know, in Europe so the first step was always when you have an idea it’s really cool right everybody laughs at you haha, we never did something you know, like those Really? You know, that’s a stupid idea. And you know, I remember very well when you don’t 2005 six when I was really excited, I think most the time you know, it was a little bit earlier later. I think when Twitter came around right or 2007

Dirk Lueth
I said, Oh, what a great new way of

Dirk Lueth
you know transporting media or ideas to other people because of what I’m going to tweet about your idea of you know that I’m you know, what I’m, you know that I’m going to the restroom now or what is it? What is the story right? People were really laughing at it. And then when you become became more more popular, right people will starting to opposing it right? Well, you know, you never done these kinds of things over here in general rates. The second step Actually, no, no, no, we don’t do this, that that’s not good. And then the third eventually when something’s really successful, and that’s what Joe says, you know, now it’s become self evident yet always said, I always knew you know, you should have listened to me two years ago when I told you this is going to be a hit. These are the three steps they don’t mean a really cool you know, then opposing and then self evidence. That’s what what’s very much in the, in the theme that culture which is there and when I compared especially to the US what I found when I came over here, I think Americans are much more short term oriented much more, I’d say. China’s maybe not the right word. But, you know, they’d like to take toys and play around with it. And, you know, if they don’t like it, they they dispose it. Right. And Europeans are much more for the long term, I really think about Should I really use this to you know, sticking to this photographer and, and and continue working with it and then after a while, you know, then they say, okay, you know, maybe you do try to try to do and risk and maybe start playing with it. But that’s, that’s all summer we’re just different. I mean, you look at the entrepreneurs, in a lot of entrepreneurs successful entrepreneurs in in Europe and also in Germany. What I like so much in Silicon Valley on the us is that people are always giving back so they had maybe a successful exit and then they do it angel investments and help lots of entrepreneurs know to come off the ground what you obviously need when you start a new company. I saw a lot of my friend entrepreneurs in Germany, they some of them invested Two startups and I have a current my current startup was a good friend of mine investment at startup. But lots of people then went again to the security that I either invest into real estate, right kinda kinda interesting. That’s that’s where somehow the the mentality sits also, even with the entrepreneurs.

Rob McNealy
I think it’s, it’s always good to see the the cultural differences across the board, just because you can compare contrast and, and I think, when it comes to organizational building, when you’re building a team, there are certain attributes of different cultures you want on a team. I think, for instance, I always think back to my days when I was in Business School, right, is that you definitely want I like having Germans and that kind of German work ethic that detail oriented, I want that guy in charge of operations, because he’s detail oriented, I want him to be the project manager. You know, for instance, you know, in some of these are stereotypes of course, but you know, we always liked a You know what? Italians and French they tend to be a little more liberal with time and deadlines and things of that nature. They’re a little more indefinite, right? That’s just culturally how they are. If you spend time in those places, they’re they’re different, very different than Germany. And you might want to put those guys in charge of communications or sales, for instance. But the vision thing, but the yank in charge of that, you know, kinda like,

Dirk Lueth
no, absolutely. So we always say, you know, Germans, I mean, don’t don’t get me wrong. I think Germans is great in engineering. And, you know, that’s what their foundation is based in Poland. Right. But when it comes to sales and marketing, I think Americans are just better However, it’s changing, right? And blockchain is also very interesting new development, what I currently see probably touch a little bit later in this podcast, but I think it’s it’s really where I will say, hey, if you have a great engineering team, you No, leave it in Germany because they do really very, you know, very good quality work. But if it comes to sales and marketing try to adopt the American way of doing things. And I’m trying to identify user personas, target groups and so on. That’s what Americans, just two packs alongside.

Rob McNealy 
You know, what I found with blockchain and crypto over the last couple years that I’ve been kind of in this space, is that you are dealing with a very international market out of the gate, every I mean, it’s global, it’s just global in there and there’s not a lot of barriers that you’re having to deal with. So it’s like now you’re interfacing with all these different cultures. And given the the amount of the the Asian influence is tremendous, and blockchain right now, they’re, they’re a huge part of the part of the space and it’s interesting, you know, having to kind of interface with all those different pieces. 24 seven, you know, it’s been interesting, least, you know, also being inside a project and kind of having to deal with all the different personalities and communication styles and multilingual groups that’s like, wow, it’s been interesting. You know, because you know, kryptos International, its global from day one. So it’s been pretty interesting. So, tell me about what you’re doing. What, tell me about upland?

Dirk Lueth
Yeah. So upland is, is we said it also when you introduce myself, it’s basically it’s a virtual property game. So the idea is that you buy and sell and can trade virtual properties, which are real estate properties which are based on real world addresses. So when you live on 234, post street in the future, you will be able to buy that property. The way it works in the app is basically you use when you sign up and we will currently in close better but you know, soon will go open better also. But the idea is you will get a map application you zoom in, you can buy a property and once you bought it, you able to sell it at a later stage the way you were Actually and that’s something we do a little bit different than lots of others first of all you need now to buy epics which is our in game cryptocurrency. And you can buy those apics with either with credit card or be accepting also PayPal. So right now we not yet accepting crypto. And the reason why we doing this because we always said from day one we want to build a mass market applications and as we know, crypto or blockchain is a market of roughly what I heard roughly 50 million people worldwide but but gamers, two to 3 billion on the globe. So the idea is we really want to get everyone on board. And they don’t have they should not deal with complicated wallets or private key handling. This is still a huge barriers of entry. So we put a lot of thoughts into this whole onboarding process, how to make it simple and then how to purchase something. So that’s, that’s what our the mission of the company is that we really want to make this Game accessible for for for mass audiences.

Rob McNealy 13:04
So as the long term goal that the in game currency will be able to be traded in the real world on exchanges.

Dirk Lueth
Yes, that is the goal however, we still we want to have to comply with regulatory environment, especially in the US. So, maybe I’ll explain a little bit one more step how it’s going to work how So, you exchange apics, which is all up x, which is our in game currency, you buy that with with feared currency and then you purchase a property. So that’s then you own this property. Once you own this property, you will start earning additional apics will yield on on the on this on this property, which makes it interesting because then you can take those apics potentially and buy other properties for that. And we gamifying the whole approach. So the next step is then that you can start and complete a collection that means for example, collected Three bus in San Francisco once you collected three bars in San Francisco or three, three properties on mission streets are different different levels and different scarcity also on those collections, and you start earning actually accelerated apics on them, that means you get a one time boost, and then also on top, you will get recurrent, higher higher earning on those properties. What makes it now interesting is that you can go and sell those properties because they are all non fungible tokens. We’re talking blockchain here, you can own them. And you can go and sell them those properties on the marketplace again, so when you maybe have some properties you don’t need for collection and sell them you can sell them either for for apics you can trade them against another property and soon you will be able to sell them for free at so we will going to be the first one of the first allowing fear out also again, so that’s hopefully coming in the first quarter of next year.

Rob McNealy
So Other kind of gamification elements Do you plan to build into this kind of game?

Dirk Lueth
Yeah, so after the collections we are going to have

Dirk Lueth
so the the ideas everything is location based you will also get some kind of what we call a block explorer which is some kind of an avatar which roams the city right and this helps you to discover other property so when it comes to city you will be able to each time he touches the property you will be able to buy that property was the only way to buy properties going forward will only be through the Marketplace or through where you avatar or the block explorer has touched some of those those properties. Going forward. We will since it’s very much location based driven, we will add our location based features that means you can take your mobile phone and when you actually in the city, you will be able to find maybe something on the streets which could be a piece of a property which could be also which could also be apics, which we’re going to gamify in terms of of treasure hunts, so Let’s, that’s something we are planning on doing also in the first quarter of next year to introduce.

Rob McNealy
So I would love to talk about the long, long long term roadmap because I got all sorts of ideas of how that can be used for different things, as well as an entrepreneur, because I’m always trying to think of a different angle. But it’s interesting. I think, right off the bat, there’s going to be a lot of domain squatters trying to squat on certain types of, you know, properties like national parks, for instance, or monuments and things like that. Is that something that you anticipate? Or is that something that you think is something that will be a bad thing? Or what would be your take on that? Do you think that’s what people are going to be doing?

Dirk Lueth
So yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s what you’ve seen, what’s another other type of games that people are looking for those landmarks, and currently, you’re not able to buy yet landmarks in a blend. We did that on purpose because we foresee a different way to purchase those and it’s not probably not that only one person can buy it. We see rather see a group of people buying it together. So there’s some of these kind of features will be coming up soon. And and then of course, the ones who are first they will they can get it and they can do other things with it. But that is just the pure. It’s a parcel of the plot of the landmark but you asked you know what, what the vision is and where it’s all going. Because you can eventually see right now we gave me five, let’s say the distribution of all the land around the world. We’re starting on some Cisco then we’ll go branch out to other cities in the US. And eventually we go global also soon, not soon, but in the next year. So but once people own just the land, and when you think about Muslims, we are blockchains non fungible tokens, that means everything circles around to ownership. So our marketing messages also join the ownership revolution, which is something really new. Just imagine when you live somewhere in the city, like in London or somewhere in Asia, sometimes it’s not affordable for you to buy any property again. So what we need Industrial Revolution means for us is that your first time you know people can go and buy a property. And when you can look at the vision eventually once once we started with, you know, we have a good distribution, we will allow that people will start building on those properties, a rectangle kind of structures, right? They can represent something, what is there in the real world map, maybe there’s something else so you will, and then you can add company, the other layers use other technologies, just, you know, a tremendous reality, virtual reality, all these things we have in mind, which are a little bit more for the longer term roadmap, but eventually right now we’re distributing the land and eventually sometime next year will also start allowing people to build on top of land.

Rob McNealy
So the question I would have is, how is the price determined for a property right now? So it sounds like you guys as game developers, you guys own all the property right now? What would it cost for instance, and real fee to buy my house?

Dirk Lueth
So I don’t know exactly. Why you live? And you live in Salt Lake City, right? Yeah, because we correct Yeah. So. So right now we have San Francisco obviously, it’s what we want to do is always that somehow connected to real life, as we probably heard San Francisco is not the cheapest area to live in these days. So you can imagine that’s a little bit more expensive areas. Yeah, so I don’t know how big your parcel is, or your little plot of your house, but I assume you’re probably a house would probably cause something between five and $10. Right. That’s my assumption. And unless you live on a huge, huge acre and, and the because it depends always on the number of what we call square. So just to be quickly a little bit technically. So we divided the world into three meters by three meters, which is one square, and we call those up squares. So in order to represent a property better, and when you take, let’s say, your property, my death will consist of 100 up squares right? order to to show your your property on the on the map. So and each app square has an a certain price to it. So to your earlier question How did we come up with the pricing so we actually looked in San Francisco you know different neighborhoods and have different pricing you can look those prices app and other other platforms like Zillow you know the real life license really on Trulia and so on. Now, you so you can do that. So we what we basically said okay, we take you know, the cheapest property or the cheapest neighborhood in San Francisco, we took that and we said they you know, property should cost around two to $5. And then we extrapolated the cost for other properties. However, we had to do john some adjustments, but you have to have a mind this is only the way we are selling the properties right now. In the long run, or the midterm prices will be determined by the market and the market can be like the real life market. However, as we have those collections, that could be a reason People, you know, really keen to get certain properties in certain areas to complete the collection. So the market prices can but don’t have to deviate from from real market prices.

Rob McNealy
So, my undergrad major was geographic information systems and cartography. So I really like mapping, even though it’s been a while since I did anything with it. So what kind of underlying tech were you getting your maps from and all your Geo Data? Just kind of a nerdy question?

Dirk Lueth
Yeah, so it’s good question. So we’re currently working with Roboto. It’s called mapbox. So they basically themselves are based on Open Street maps. And but the biggest challenge is they do not have the property borders, right. They might have addresses but they don’t know exactly what the property borders are. And there we are working with another provider who has the passes all around the US to provide a called land grab. So that’s where we getting all of those, those those parcels. However, on the global scale, that’s going to be a little bit more tricky. First of all, one of the The reason is cost. So if you buy property borders, in some countries, in some cities, it’s very expensive. So but other cities, I think like Singapore, or Berlin, and Germany, they actually provide the data for free. So it’s always depends a little bit to where you are. But there’s also there’s going to be areas in the world. And as you can imagine, we’re going to offer the blend in the whole world. Some, some areas might not even have any property borders. So we currently running a project with the university where we take satellite images and start using machine learning and neural networks to understand how those property borders might in which which areas those property borders might be. And then we I would like to expert extrapolated, it’s going to be 100% accuracy. Probably not. But like in real life. It’s going to be but good good enough that people see okay, this is my property. That’s the property I want.

Rob McNealy
Yeah. I guess that’s, that’s gonna be a lot of work because, you know, everybody’s using different, you know, different geocoding systems and everything else. So, and a lot of places, especially in the third world, like in Africa where they don’t even have property, it’s tribal. And, and, you know, and I know there’s some projects working on that. So that’s what I’m thinking about, you know, just from a technological standpoint, that’s a pretty huge project trying to pull all that together like that. So do you envision long term any kind of like Second Life, you know, kind of interactivity where people can, you know, buy a property and then they can go and host events in that property? Is that something you guys are looking at? I mean, this is what comes to my mind with this game off the top my head.

Dirk Lueth
Absolutely right. As I said, right now we’re distributing the land but going forward, people will be able to build on top of the land. And then people always asking us, because we are blockchain and you know, we’re we’re strong believers, this whole idea of decentralization, no intermediaries, and so on. I mean, we really envision a world Where you know people interact between themselves where we don’t really play a role right so So to answer your question yet it will be some kind of Second Life we don’t know yet how exactly on details that is going to look like. But from from philosophy is really we want two people to do a decentralized transaction so let’s say you know, you know you want to sell digital arts now maybe you want to want to build a you know, virtual gallery or something and you know, somewhere in San Francisco or let’s Salt Lake City awesome. And then you maybe add digital art pieces into onto that property, and you’re and you’re selling those digital ads to other players, right? So we don’t want to be in the middle of that and we just want to be enabled that that somehow works and that that’s that’s what our task is but we will don’t want to be in the middle and say, you know, we we define, you know, how much fees you know, they have to pay and whatever. So this could be really work. The whole idea and the whole vision is of our plans. has to be really a parallel economy somehow at an open economy, which works on its own going forward.

Rob McNealy
So how are you guys funded? Is this a bootstrap project? Or do you get VC funding?

Dirk Lueth
So we’re currently building on the Eos blockchain and we are funded by USBC. So as you probably heard us at a quite a large Ico finished it last year, and then they gave back if if the numbers correct I think billion dollars or something to the whole VC community. And they distributed between different VCs around the world. And one is actually based in Frankfurt, Germany. It’s called Finn lab. And they funded us, you know, the original seed funding but also we also added a couple of angels into that, as I mentioned at one fret good friend of mine, he’s a successful entrepreneur in gaming, he invested to it. We have a we have somebody from the real estate space who really liked the project. So we’re kind of mixing some other Makes the other angels into into our investor.

Rob McNealy
So you said you guys were in closed beta right now when what is your rollout timeline look like between open beta and going fully live?

Dirk Lueth
Yeah. So as I said earlier that we want to target the mass market audience right now we only let a very small amount of people in but we have huge demand actually have people knocking on the door want to drain but of course, we are close better. And it’s called on purpose better was obviously we need to find out what people like what they don’t like. We have of course here and there. We have some backs. We have to get out. But we were planning on going open better somewhere around Christmas. It depends a little bit because what we will be launching right now everything is based on a mobile phone browser. But we are intending on launching iOS and Android apps. As soon as we have approval from the app stores, of course, then we can launch those apps. But we also going to introduce as a as a freemium model because right now when you start playing You know, the only way you can play is when you purchase something. But we also wanted to use this kind of freemium. Because there’s a special way and always called play to own business model. And that’s how we try to coin this notion in the blockchain world. And you will have access to roaming the roaming block explorer of your roaming little game piece, which helps you to discover more property so that’s all coming in the open better will be sometime around Christmas, maybe for Christmas, but maybe also early next year depends on actually third parties when as I said, when we get the approval.

Rob McNealy
Dirk, I’m excited to play it myself now. So where can people find out more?

Dirk Lueth
So go to www.upland.me. So that’s so it’s not.com it’s a upland.me. And there’s the there’s the where you can sign up for the waitlist and we letting everybody almost everyone in at the moment so maybe have to wait one two, maybe three days. But since we are very close to open better, we want to collect more feedback that moment.

Rob McNealy
Very good dirt. Thank you so much for coming on today.

Dirk Lueth
Yeah, I was a pleasure. Thank you very much.

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