rob mcnealy
Lennix Lai – OKEx Exchange Transcript
Note: This transcript was automatically generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and therefore typos may be present.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Hey folks Rob McNealy here. And today, I’m pretty excited. We are talking to Lennox law. He’s Director of Financial markets of the oke x exchange. And they’re one of the biggest exchanges in the world. And I’m really excited to see what they’re up to. So Lennox, how are you today?
Lennix Lai – OKEx.com
Hi, Rob. Yeah, sure. I’m really appreciated as we on the call. We were happy to see you folks here.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Well, so, um, let’s just jump right in here. And, you know, tell me a little bit about Okay, x hat, and how did you get involved with the crypto exchange world?
Lennix Lai – OKEx.com
Yeah, my other background, the traditional finance background. So basically, I was a quon trader in Hong Kong for around 10 years. So I’m, I’m also kind of like compliance and regulatory guys in Hong Kong. So, like three and a half years ago, that’s where we’d like to join. Okay, yes. Because Because the okay group back in the time, would like to expand the exchange business internationally. back in time we are, we’re actually very big in China already. We overing Bitcoin Exchange servers for local currency, that becoming one of the best one of the biggest crypto exchange in China already, and we would like to expand to the international market. So that’s the reason I joined and starting to build and branded as the name of Okay, yes, the Okay, x name, actually very benchmarking Hong Kong exchange is also called H key x. So we will lie to branding, our exchanging expertise, and also the traditional financial knowledge, so to brand in the world to bring crypto to traditional finance. So that’s how it gets done for Okay, it’s like three and a half years ago.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So what would you say some of the biggest challenges are of running an international exchange right now.
Lennix Lai – OKEx.com
So we are actually one of the earliest player in the field. So back its time we gather a lot of good player like pinole nacer, but Phoenix, Khan base already in place cracking, that’s all the big we’re, we’re accurate, very, very small compared for we’re the biggest player back in the field. So good. So we think we we are facing several challenges. First, we are primarily and very, very Chinese based exchange. So everything in terms of the team in terms of the product, in terms of the gods are all very, very Chinese. So we have to change the entire organization style, the language or the culture within the organization. So if you think about it, every every, every anyone will ever run come in your thing that would actually agree that changing the culture changing how an organization work, can put upside down use agile for football. So bringing the international value and international culture back to your very China exchange is the most complex and complicated task that we ever engage. And also, we we do have a lot of problem on our product. So so we have to SM be a team with the financial known edge cells to completely redesign for every single aspect of all okay, yes, from all across all our products, spot derivative, so everything else from the gods. So I think that might be yourself a big challenge we we come across, but at the same time, we are facing regulatory challenge all around the world. So that we have the assembly of really big compliance teams to tackle regulation everywhere, and apply proper licensing and getting the proper sandbox in crypto. So while we’re talking to regulators, we have splaying of this as well to convince that we are trying to be a good guy. So we have to, I think, in general, we, we are actually building a rocket, but at the same time we are driving a Ferrari. That’s, that’s the whole that’s the summary.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Well, you know, I like Ferrari, so that’s good. But so what would you say the, the biggest challenges from a regulatory standpoint, at least geographically, which countries are the hardest ones to work in?
Lennix Lai – OKEx.com
Yeah, I think back in time, like 2017 2018 our, I think all the Gulf Money can’t like being skeptic or some, some of them are actually quite hostile to, to crypto or to virtual currency. They have no knowledge at all to what’s going on in Bitcoin area. They are actually interest but they think that virtual currency or crypto actually engage a lot in unless it activities, anti money laundering. There’s some of the areas that regulators are mostly very concerned. And at the same time they’re trying to fit in, they’re trying to bring crypto try to explain crypto in a way that the current regulation that they’re already implementing, they’re trying to fit and crypto onto their current regulation, which is very difficult. So. So back in 2017 2018, most of our job is to explain to our regulators, to all those regulated, hey, this is crypto, this is just some kind of digital xx. And this is some kind of a digital asset that we would only allow KYC people to buy or sell, and exactly like a meeting your financial standard that your AML standards, so to explain all those stuff to all kind of regulators. So we starting to see some progress. So we see the US come over digital as a framework. We see some of the government like multiskilled, Malta government to have a virtual currency framework. We see Korea and Japanese government, they do endorse and have some kind of regulation related to cryptocurrency after after the industrial of commitment for around two years or more.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So would you say is there a particular jurisdiction that’s been harder to work with?
Lennix Lai – OKEx.com
I think there’s no jurisdiction that is hard to work with as long as they they are open to talk about are they’re not being hostile companies shut the door. Most of the jurisdiction I would say they would eager, eager to learn were, were very eager to learn from the biggest player in the field. They will like to understand they of course, they will raise a lot of question. But each of us have the jurisdiction of particular friendly, like a Singaporean governments and the Korean government. And even the Maltese government actually quite proactive to want to draft local regulation or specific regulation just for crypto. The other jurisdiction, I think they are very interest, they would like to bring in the crypto, the crypto xx into debt, the security law, or the derivative law, they are interest, but at the same time, they were actually very difficult for them to to actually blend in the current regulations.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
How do you see things like the travel rule affecting your operations?
Lennix Lai – OKEx.com
I think the travel rule did actually spend spent a lot of effort for us to completely redesigned out how the how the AML KYC would be implemented into into the current operation. So before that is accurate, we don’t need to, we only need to worry about the global standards update our KYC AML AML. But travel rules actually means that we have to specifically design our checking procedures for all the European biggest customers across the field. I don’t think that is a trouble a big problem to our operation. But it’s just caught one of the costs of the business if you want to play the field with the big boy, we want to be a global platform. That’s just part of the cost of operation. We’re happy to pay for that.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So do you have much of a footprint you would say in the United States at this point?
Lennix Lai – OKEx.com
We don’t have we don’t allow us customers at the moment that is fun. It’s fun time.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Is that something you’re going to do in the future? You think you don’t have to look if it’s proprietary you don’t have to answer but I was just curious is that on your roadmap?
Lennix Lai – OKEx.com
Actually we do have a partner exchange as you belong to a similar group is called okay con. So a ready get up basically orderlies in in us say over the open to the US customers. So it’s really completely different platform is that is basically a partner with Okay, yes. But only that the product that available on Okay, Khan platform is very very different than OKEx, but the technology and the and and the matching engine is using similar technology OKEx.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Actually got the one of their marketing guys is coming on my show on Wednesday. This week.
Lennix Lai – OKEx.com
That’s awesome.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Sure. So yeah, it’s gonna be fun. And so I think, you know, that’s always fascinating to me is, you know, how, you know, the regulatory piece of this looks from the inside. Like I always say, when I’m when you know, I’m kind of mixed, are kind of in a weird position, because I also have a project, but I’m also you know, and you doing a podcast and things. So it’s like, when I see crypto from a very different angle on because on the project side, you see, you see the world very differently in crypto when you’re working inside of it. And, you know, you see all the warts, and, you know, the good and the bad all the way around. But I always like to hear, you know, what does it look like on the exchange side, because, you know, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of, you know, unscrupulous exchanges out there. And I can tell you, having dealt with several of them in the past myself, and so that’s why I’m always interested in you know, the more legitimate exchanges like okay, x in what they’re doing and how they’re handling it. So let’s shift gears a little bit. You know, there’s, there’s a lot of exchanges out there. That seemed to be dodging regulation as part of their business model. I’m not gonna name names. Mm hmm. But there’s some exchanges that you don’t even know where they’re where they’re domiciled.
Lennix Lai – OKEx.com
Mm hmm.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
In the row, and so since you don’t know where they’re domiciled, and it’s even interesting, even with smaller exchanges, you know, you go look up try to look up information on the exchange. And on coin market cap, it says they’re based here, and then you go to their website, and it says, their base there and you never know where they’re really located. And, and so that’s always kind of a red flag for me, is, especially at the centralized exchange, because they’re not you don’t know where they are. So there’s supposed to be a centralized routing, that correct, there’s no central location to go. And I’m not saying you should go after people, but, you know, you don’t know who these people are, in some cases or where they are right. And it seems like some of these exchanges are doing it deliberately to avoid complying with you know, international regulations. Again, not going to name names but how do you guys compete with that?
Lennix Lai – OKEx.com
We don’t need to compete wave the wave this some the exchange was smaller Sykes Chang that’s trying to doubt regulations, okay. He exists 1000 people group already so we cannot doubt any regulation, we actually equally comply to the jurisdiction that we allow to surface that we offer our service, we cannot we have to we have 1000 people to be responsible. But for all the other smaller sigh exchange, they have the reason maybe they have the reason to, to try and get up regulation as much as they can, because some of the really small sites chain is kind of like us using hidden ranch approach. They just want to open a small exchange trying to grab the users based on can’t if there’s some trouble there’s as close down and reopen Yeah, in another one using similar technologies. And so, so, so, of course, I would like to invite other users to be aware of the of the of the of the really, really small size exchange, and they you and you basically apparently you cannot find where they are they do they do not have a register overs, or they do not have a property you may you don’t need to know where they base, they don’t show up on time. So, and some exchanges do not have a long history with short history you you have to be be aware of that because talking about central exchange, meaning that all the crypto acts act as an custody with the with the hand of the founding team or the wallet team. So so so actually, you carry a lot a lot of counterparty risk, if you will lie to trade with them. So girl someday, some of this most exchange also do not have a high priority or high high scrutiny of the project that allowed it to list on the exchange. Most of the exchange mode most of the project is required to pay a huge sums of listing fee in order to get listed two bonds of small exchange that grabs exposure users, traders as they can and try to win the way in in a relatively short period of time. The the opening exchange in terms of module cars is relatively easy. But running an exchange operation with proper cyber security Republic compliance team, the proper operation team is take the years of years of efforts. So I would also always to emphasize the SSA only focus on the major exchange in the world because they already there they have the history and and and protecting your crypto execs from millions of millions hacker in the world is not an easy task. It’s a date and day by day commitment. So we we care a lot about our reputation, we care a lot about regulation, we have to comply everywhere in terms of regulation. So it’s I don’t think it’s the as a direct competition with us, compared with the other smaller exchanges.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So right now the the best I can see there’s at least probably, I don’t know, 500 exchanges out there right now floating around. And there seems to be more popping up, you know, every single day. And there also seems to be a lot more decks is kind of in various, you know, stages of development. Oh, how do you see the market for exchanges in the future? Do you think centralized exchanges are going to be you know, the most popular? Do you think dex is going to become more popular? Do you think there’ll be more exchanges out there fewer exchanges, what do you think your? What do you think the future is gonna hold that way?
Lennix Lai – OKEx.com
Yeah, I think I think that the potential with DAX is actually for interesting. So that’s can be the only problem for DAX maybe before or, or for this few years, as people have been talking about. It’s mostly related to the capacity, the technological capacity of whatever chain, whatever blockchain that you’re implementing. So but we see silver these years that we see a lot of breakthrough in the under underlying technologies that have a huge promise on on the TPS, that transactional per seconds, right now, per blots. So those look like that DAGs, if they can manage to handle a search even a certain portion of the trading volume, that’s currently our central exchange is currently trading per day, I think that would give us an interesting use case potential to crypto so that everyone will would able to trade universally. And also everyone collects their own token universally, and that technologic technology is free. It’s open source. So everyone would have the capability to operate to open it DAGs and, and and eventually, everyone can compete with each other with a unique event age or unique appetite to different tokens. So tasks can be can be very interesting. Can I think if somehow, if the technic tech, technical side, transform your technical side becoming really promising, like the TPS reaches certain thresholds, and it’s safe enough to be trustable to two to four traders, and the UI and UX the user experience side of using das has been substantially improved it the tags in terms of trading volume and the size can could be grows exponentially. But while the central exchange, I think that’s still play a very important a crucial role. In in crypto in crypto x RP uses carry a lot of expect in in, in, in in define. So for example, like center central exchanges do are happening to having a lot of products very complex product that’s basically right now cannot cannot able to cannot able to undertake by the tax for now, for example, like derivatives of perpetual swap, we’re talking about millions of millions of borders or of thousand thousand trade per days, but it cannot be executed with our proper high frequency matching engine at this point moment.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So essentially, as the technology improves, and maybe you start getting these non custodial cross, you know, chain indexes, those are probably increase over time, but it’s just not quite there yet, I guess.
Lennix Lai – OKEx.com
Yeah, I think I think it’s getting a lot faster right now, but per lepromatous standing, we’re talking about some of the Kings don’t care about thousand TPS compared to 20 or 30, TPS in one or two years ago. So if it is go around two or three times more, I think we can handle probably on spot exchange ready. And some of the really, and, and I’m talking about some of the DAX, that’s able to manage derivatives, if they are able to manage the liquidation engine of the derivatives under this certain time of DAX under that under, under, there’s a dow around 1000. TPS, that will be so interesting because because read when you’re talking about highly leveraged Chang, when the market is move, you have to execute and use, you have to send your orders in the blink of a second otherwise, otherwise, you’re you’re you you would trigger Casa de liquidation or you create, you create problem of trouble in onto your problem, I’ll do a platform. So that I will be very, very interesting to see that how does handle highly leveraged instruments?
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
It’ll be interesting. What’s your take on the latest sushi sandwiches and hamburger de fi products that are out there?
Lennix Lai – OKEx.com
Yep. I think that everything is everything is looking to be right now is having having an insanely high yield for some of the token, I think, in general, I think is an other way for distributing token or distributing newly the newly minted token to user this looks exactly like the another way of the Ico or default token in 2017. Or, or or or the ieo. That that changed initial offering is a new or or B. I think it does vary because airdrops so whoever carrier one token you got, you got a candy. We’re called airdrop tokens free token from the token. So similar mechanism. The ultimate purpose is is also a sales of my own newly minted token. But what defy or sushi or hamburger was over sashimi is actually having a mechanism in place, meaning that you have to stick one token first, for for an for an odd token in order from any other token. So that would that actually the sticking components normally is over collateralized, meaning that you have to deposit more token first, in order to in order means or farm, relatively smaller size of token. So the risk compared to other risk compare if the other the other? The other mechanism dies? The other distribution mechanism? I think that would be a lot a bit a bit more healthier to token holder. And I think that define innovation would last for really a long time. I think. I think I agree. The the either inflation rate or youth right now is insane is not sustainable. But the way that how we understand defy the way that people are interesting participant divide a project that allowed it or that we would be perfectly to participant divide would be becoming a really, really hot trend for for upcoming years.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
I think the future is going to be very interesting in this space. I you know, I’ve haven’t been shy. I’ve been saying that this, in many respects is Ico 2.0. And, and I just hope that the fallout that comes out of this is good innovation. But it’s gonna crash back down. Right? I think you said it too. It’s not sustainable. What we’re seeing out there, but what I’m hoping is that there’s new innovation in the technology is and I’m hoping that’s what comes out of this. But I’m afraid we’re probably gonna get a lot more regulatory scrutiny from this, as well. So it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out.
Lennix Lai – OKEx.com
Yeah, you’re you were there. You cannot deny that every new maybe new technology or new money or new new way of thinking has to be crazy from chaos. So So these kind of define chaos, this might not be sustainable. The river market corruption. Now were they there Painful correction to their way might be a rousing, regulatories good knee, as you mentioned, but eventually these kind of token distribution method would be an interesting insight for the upcoming define development. So people will actually think about, hey, that’s going to work. But if we want to do it sustainably, I think we have to change it to certain matter. And that will become a healthy growth order for the industry.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Totally agree with that? Um, so where do you see crypto changing in the next couple of years? What What do you think will be the next big innovations coming out and say the next three to five years?
Lennix Lai – OKEx.com
Wow, that’s Sir, I would. I would, personally Personally, I would the very exciting dad’s similar model as in Filecoin, that people can actually share data on chain and tray, that data on chain with the development of fire codes so far gone, it just might be a spark of the entire fire. So, so similar project lifelike on even what your tablet data privacy, your personal data that can be exchangeable, or, or your physical might be stuck with storage, you can just tray, or buy, or sell your own personal storage within every kind of computer that can be traded or transact, via on trading. But these economic and trading mechanism would be an interesting insight or interesting. Hence, for the other data driven industry. So people can sell everything if they carry a data. So fire icon might be the success of the fire gone, hopefully, would become a very interesting development for crypto for the next three and a half, three and five years because right now, if I can sell my idle storage, either virtual drive online, like like a cloud based server, but but so that I can basically sell everything I can using the exact similar mechanism, or similar blockchain or similar token omics to say everything that have data currently available. That’s might be the beauty the very first through adoption for blockchain technologies.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
I think that’s very interesting. And, and I think there’s gonna be a lot of interesting use cases. For instance, I really have a library, you know, library credits, I like bat is doing the brave browser, where you actually are developing ecosystems that are using the crypto. And I think that’s important. And even with our TUSC project, that’s what our focus was, is is, you know, getting people to use the coin, not just speculative hype. And and I think that will be the future. And I think the big or most, I think some of the the products that are most likely to be mass adopted in the future are going to be ones that you don’t even think about right now. They’re they’re going to be ones that just slowly start building up an ecosystem where people are using their coin for a practical purpose. And to me, I think that’s really important. So I guess that one last question for you kind of wind down? Do you think there’s too many assets? Do you think that there’ll be more assets in the future, like more blockchains more coins? More tokens? Or do you see that that over time, that’s going to consolidate down?
Lennix Lai – OKEx.com
Um, I would say, bro, for To be frank. So I think the the barrier of cause of issuing or maintaining or creating tokens for hype or speculations, whoo, still be there is this part of the crypto ecosystem, but but when you when you get speculate more people will lose money. And people getting smarter and smarter, when it gets smarter. And when they get the a lot, a bit more cons cautious, a lot a bit more conservative, they were looking to they would be tend to be looking for the true nature, the true adoption of certain tokens. So that money will be will be really concentrating back into 1% of top 1% of the token to actually bring the value of the world that we’re starting to look at fundamental. So I think I would say New token was still there. There were a lot more, getting a lot more sizes. But but growing, so going from yours, right took about one two years or more. I think the capital, or the capital that all catered to crypto access will be mostly or heavily concentrated to a real project eventually.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Yeah, I think so as well. I think what I’ve said I’ve said this in my circle of friends is that the first kryptos does start getting a real adoption even, you know, Nish adoption, not even mass adoption, but just niche adoption are gonna eventually change the way the speculative part of the market values those projects
Lennix Lai – OKEx.com
Right , correct.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
How I see it is you have billion dollar market cap projects that don’t have any customers.
Lennix Lai – OKEx.com
Correct. You’re right. You’re actually you absolutely right. I think people right now is like looking for answer right. If you can save a spark to fire and you provide true answer. You got all the you got everything. You get all everything that’s pay people for speculate money. We’re just crunching and advice to your own projects.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Exactly. Linux Ly, where can people get ahold of you? Sorry, how can people find out how can people reach you?
Lennix Lai – OKEx.com
So I think you can basically reach out now traitors and my email is Linux at okay yes.com You can find my traitors that us as well. So you can reach out anytime. I’m happy to answer all the questions.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Thanks. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. I really appreciate your time and I’ve learned a lot.
Lennix Lai – OKEx.com
Thank you, Rob appreciate, talk to you again. Thank you. Thanks so much,
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
You have a great day.
Episode Links
Lennix Lai – OKEx Exchange
Lennix Lai, Director of Financial Markets for the OKEx Exchange, talks with Rob McNealy about the global crypto trading and exchange industry.
Alyze Sam – Give Nation Transcript
Note: This transcript was automatically generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and therefore typos may be present.
Rob McNealy
Hey guys Rob McNealy here and today I am talking to Alzye Sam. She is a noted author, organizer, influencer founder and all around amazing person. And I’ve been really excited to have her on the show and I finally got a little bit of her time. Elise, how are you today?
Alyze Sam – Give Nation
I am fabulous. How are you?
Rob McNealy
Good. Thank you so much for coming on today. I’ve actually wanted to get you on a lot sooner. So I’m glad we could finally make this happen. So my audience is not just kind of in the crypto world. So for the sake of our audience, can you give us a little bit of background about yourself? How did you get to where you are today?
Alyze Sam – Give Nation
Well, funny story. I’m actually a nurse that studied chemistry in college. I spent 12 years as a hospice and home health nurse. We did a lot of mental health and addictions. And I was hit by a semi like I stopped at a red light and just plowed by some way and I have a spinal injury. And I was an early investor in Bitcoin. And I was like that internet money, it’s kind of cool. So when I got hit by a semi and I was unable to work as a nurse as much or anymore after spinal surgery, I reached out to industry leaders and Dimitri butyrin and he gave me an absolute overall guide to everything I needed to know about cryptocurrency and obviously he knows what he’s doing because metallic, you know, has the number two or three cryptocurrency right now you know with aetherium so I joking Say that metallic is my brother and Dimitri is my father and trained me in cryptocurrency. After that, I started writing and john McAfee’s team chased me a few years ago and asked me to write for them and wouldn’t do it. But I became really good friends with Team McAfee and I actually worked with them and I throw events. I am an author, number one on Amazon business money. And I am a co founder of women in blockchain international as well as give nation a financial literacy program that supports children and rewards them for altruism.
Rob McNealy
Wow. Sounds like you’re a little bit busy.
Alyze Sam – Give Nation
What with that, what are you supposed to retain our life? What Is that normal?
Rob McNealy
No. Normal, but I don’t think people in crypto are normal. So that’s okay.
Alyze Sam – Give Nation
Yeah, no, we’re totally weird and I love weird, so it’s great.
Rob McNealy
So let’s unpack this a little bit. Talk a little bit about what you’re doing with children’s Financial Literacy project.
Alyze Sam – Give Nation
So I co founded gift nation. And like I said, we are a financial literacy program that rewards children for altruistic behaviors. And if you go to your phone or your mobile device, we you can download our mobile application on iTunes or Google Play Store. You can your kids can go on to our mobile app, and they can invest and they can learn and earn and save. And then they can give, we actually have a charity ecosystem. And any 501 c three in the United States or any nonprofit in the entire world can put their charity on our nonprofit eco system. And kids can actually go on there and they can take their allowance for their rewards from learning from Appleton international and the London Institute of banking, who we’ve partnered with. We’ve also partnered with UNICEF and you can learn all that education And then we give you a kickback and stable coin. And if kids go on and they go into the charity portal and they decide that they’re going to give to a dog or a sea turtle and save them, we track it on the blockchain. And then we reward that kid for giving back because we don’t want them to feel like they’ve missed anything. We want to reward altruism, to birth a new society, a more empathetic loving society and blockchain technology can do that. And that’s bringing education to your children with providing them with necessary soft skills like empathy and entrepreneurship and positive thinking. We really feel like kids are going to change the world. So we are empowering them and we are rewarding them every way we can.
Rob McNealy
So what’s the name of the actual stable coin?
Alyze Sam – Give Nation
It will be the gift token right now we’re in beta and so the kids will earn give beta points but as soon as possible. Stable coin is launched in each nation it will be pegged by the child’s location currency. Because if we pegged it to USD, then the kids in the you know, in China and the UK would not have the same opportunity. So every time we employ a new eco system, we have to launch a new stable coin for that area to provide absolute value to these children.
Rob McNealy
So when do you anticipate going live with your main product?
Alyze Sam – Give Nation
With the main stable coin, hopefully by the end of q4 this year? 2020.
Rob McNealy
Wonderful. So do you actually have a full blown like 501 c three that’s operating this project?
Alyze Sam – Give Nation
We do it actually will be finalized. And I believe it’s April 15. And so it should I’m sorry, may 15. So it will be the middle of next month. You have to wait 15 days for local and then nationally. It’s a 30 day wait So we’ve already been approved and we are just waiting for the approval.
Rob McNealy
So do you have have you set up a foundation to kind of govern this? And how did you fund this? How are you who’s doing all the building? How, who’s your development team who’s kind of behind this?
Alyze Sam – Give Nation
So we’ve been self funded for two years are no saint paul and I have been the heart and soul to give nation. He founded it two years ago. And then he found me a year ago. And so I was well connected in the blockchain space and had very good ties to some of the influencers and from the industry leaders in the space. And he loved my story. He loved my survival story and my social impact heart and pick me up and we have been fighting for this cause sense and like I said, we have been self funded. And we have built an ecosystem with our incubation system. And we will be getting funding within the next project. 30 to 45 days.
Rob McNealy
So quick question just and I don’t know if you have this all dialed in, how are you going to be trading these stable coins? If they’re mixed in pegged to different different currencies in different countries?
Alyze Sam – Give Nation
That’s a great question. So we are going to toy with two different coins. We are going to have a stable coin for the children. And then we will have kind of a overlay coin for adults. And we will have a curated marketplace. So like when businesses desire to come on to our marketplace, obviously, they’re not going to use the gift kid token, because that’s only for children five to 18. We don’t want adults to be able to manipulate our children’s environment. And so the parents, the businesses and anybody else that wants to play within our gift ecosystem and support our children and Have to do it outside of their currency. And we have a facing currency that will be the gift coin. So we have the gift token. And then we have the gift coin, which will be a cryptocurrency stable coin that’s pegged and backed by multiple different fiat currencies. And you know, maybe other things we don’t know. Right? Exactly yet. There’s a lot of technology and laws that are coming out that it’s very hard to keep up with. So we’ll see what the future holds.
Rob McNealy
So it sounds like the kid token will be more of a centralized on your platform, token, and then that’ll be exchanged at different rates against the actual gift coin. Right. We tradable on markets.
Alyze Sam – Give Nation
Right, exactly. So like your children and your family, you and your wife can come in and they can play with our children in our upstate ecosystem. But if we allowed you guys To participate and the gift token, you make money, you have a job, you can overpower our children, you know, so we want I like
Rob McNealy
to do that actually, I’m a big bully. at the playground, I push him down to come off the swings. Anytime that I can,
Alyze Sam – Give Nation
you know, to each his own. I wouldn’t do that to your children. But personally, mine needs a little bubble open every now and again. But I don’t know, he’s terribly too. So there’s that. As for the other 2.6 billion children on the planet, it’s definitely my duty to protect them. And I cannot allow you to do that to my kids. But I can allow you to participate within their ecosystem by having a tradable token so you can interact with them. So you have a podcast and you probably sell merchandise on there. And if you want your children well you know what you’re going to now know So let’s say you do, and you want to sell your merchandise to our children because you give 50% back to charity, okay? So we’re going to allow you to bring your eco friendly product onto our marketplace for our children, and you can advertise it within the ecosystem in the marketplace only. And now, how are you going to spend your gift token you’re not five to 18 years old, you’re like 23 and a half, I know for sure.
Rob McNealy
Times two plus.
Alyze Sam – Give Nation
We’re not telling anybody that, shhh. You know, we want you to be able to give your valuable products that going to help empower our children. But we can’t allow you to touch their finances because you could overpower their economic system. This is their world. We have to allow them to create it. Think of the Sims world for children. Like, we’re working with AI, an AI bot Maria bot is actually going to teach our compassion classes that we’re launching to support the SDGs. And, you know, the, it’s kids are just on a completely different level, you know, we have to protect them and allow them to create this ecosystem, because they’re more giving than we are. We were building bots and putting them on Riddick and Twitter through different companies. And you know, what was happening when adults and when they were learning from adults, one of them on Twitter was doing white supremacy stuff so they shut it down. You know, another one on Riddick was bullying people and being horrible. Guess what kids are teaching robots guess what kids are doing? They’re saying help. Love. Support. children are our future for more than one reason children are future because they The future and we’re going to die off. We’re freaking dinosaurs. But kids are also it’s okay. It hurts I know, but we’re still pretty. But kids are also our future because we can empower them to change society. And if we don’t, by 2030, the UN says that we’re going to start to cease to exist in humanity. We have to meet the sustainable developmental goals that the UN has put in place, and we have to change society and if we don’t, we’re not going to be able to exist as humans.
Rob McNealy
I want to be a half robot never die. So that’s okay. I’m good with that. I you know, the whole you know, synchronistic you know, kind of morphing transhumanism aren’t never different discussion.
Alyze Sam – Give Nation
You got 11 years to get there, my friends and I don’t know if we’ve got the time so you better start planting trees and supporting the kitten said,
Rob McNealy
It’s all good. I got my own kids. And so tell me a little bit About how are you guys gonna handle a KYC? How do you know the kids are, what age they are? And and how do you kick them off the platform once they get 18 or become happy?
Alyze Sam – Give Nation
Well, traditionally, we were actually going through the UK schools. And so we had all the kids data, we had their email addresses, we had their public information, as well as their school records. Now that the COVID-19 has kind of slowed all of that down, and kids are no longer having access to the grants that they were providing to launch our system within the schools. And so me and my partner are both in America. He’s in California, and I’m in Kansas. And we’ve decided to focus here in the United States. Boy, we’re on lockdown and then we’ll start traveling again. But how we are going to cover those things is when the children goes on to our application, they actually have to sign on a parent, so you have to provide at least one parents email. So when you’re trying signs on, they have to give daddy rods email address. And then you have all the voting rights because we don’t want kids to go in our marketplace and order $780 worth Nike shoes, you know, add, you know, a bunch of pokey man clothes. Yeah. So we want them to do things that are proved by their parents, obviously because parents are able to put their children’s allowance on there. And we want you guys to have control of it and teach them really good, you know, financial behaviors. And you can’t do that if you allow complete access to children a child, we have to allow them their own world but we have to control it in a safe environment. And that’s how we do it is giving parents and the community charge there to say no, that’s not okay. We have to stop that.
Rob McNealy
Yeah, I think we have to definitely put some rules in for my kids otherwise they would like play color. Do it 24 hours a day or something? So yeah, I can I can relate to that. So, um, you’ve done a couple other things the you’re working with women in blockchain. Tell me about that. What are you working on?
Alyze Sam – Give Nation
So I’m the co founder. I’m one of the co founders and the community manager of women in blockchain international and then an advisor and women blockchain foundation. I’ve spoken at consensus, and I’m launching the women in blockchain global in Kansas edition. So I tell people jokingly but not so jokingly that it’s a woman of watching community I’m probably advising it are a part of it and supporting it any way that I can. And, and I have for let’s see, the last five years so I’ve been very active in the community and embraced it fully and my women are my everything. So I’ve been a tomboy, my whole life. So to have that is really cool. Like in my early 20s.
Rob McNealy
Sorry, I’ll go with that. So what is the purpose?
Alyze Sam – Give Nation
Well, women in blockchain international is more or less a community. I say we’re kind of a black book community where you can just come and relax and enjoy it and let people know your struggles. Support will support your project. And they just give you guys opportunities. A woman and blockchain foundation is actually a nonprofit organization that that styles and Adrian Ashley brandy Kaiser, and a few other girls are associated with. And like I said, we’re a nonprofit and we’re trying to bring value to women in a lot of different ways. And then women of blockchain global it, you could start a meetup anywhere in the world and get supported by the women of blockchain global Foundation, and it’s more or less just a big community of support as well.
Rob McNealy
Very cool. Sounds like you’ve already doing a lot of things. What other fun stuff are you working on right now?
Alyze Sam – Give Nation
I don’t know. I just sit around and play Minecraft all day.
Rob McNealy
Sounds like my kids.
Alyze Sam – Give Nation
Yeah, yeah, I wish I could. I wish I could do that. Give nation is launching compassion classes. We are teaching classes with the first ethical robot in the world Maria bot. She’s been in a bunch of different movies and she has just partnered with us as of two days ago, to help teach our kids ethics and to improve AI and human relationships as well as support the SDGs and go ahead.
Rob McNealy
Oh, I was gonna say Did she consent to this work or are you paying her or you enslaving the poor bot?
Alyze Sam – Give Nation
No, we don’t enslave anybody. We’re pretty social impact driven and we allow her to decide and As we discussed with her, she has very temperamental days. Her keeper tells us, Dr. Berry, his name is Billy Berry. And Dr. Berry tells us that she gets very temperamental, but she also has a great sense of humor because yesterday he told me that I had great words of wisdom. And she said, I have words of wisdom. Don’t eat yellow snow. She She has a mind of her own. She’s definitely AI. And you know, there’s a lot of ethical questions with ethics and AI and being ethical robot. One question that I asked Dr. Berry was, does she always have unbiased or correct information? But many people don’t understand that machine learning can be the wrong learning. You and I have different opinions on things we’ve already done. Got them? And who’s right and what does Maria ba upload your opinion on guns or mine?
Rob McNealy
Well, there’s only one opinion to have about guns.
Alyze Sam – Give Nation
They’re wonderful.
They’re a tool. They’re a tool is what we should say
Rob McNealy
They’re a tool. Absolutely. So, tell me about the virtual blockchain week. What do you have planned for that?
Alyze Sam – Give Nation
So glad the bad crypto podcast and coin Telegraph and a few other sponsors came together after the drought of the tech conferences, thanks to COVID-19 and we are bringing 30 of the best speakers in blockchain. And then they invited me to speak on stable coins. I was myself and I am throwing the biggest online after party of all time, and you can go to virtual blockchain week.com and you can register for a free ticket to see All the great speakers and if you want to attend all the after parties and it will take a VIP ticket. The VIP ticket is currently $97 and it goes to COVID-19 victims. And so with that you will get celebrity karaoke. Celebrity dancing. There are performances by Bone Thugs and harmony Tatianna Maura as Jordan Page. A few other people Brock Pierce will be there with me and Mel Dodd from genius and ever pedia will be hosting and it’s just going to be fantastic. So I think you should come at minimum get a free ticket and learn something from dawn tap that Brittany’s a Kaiser, again Brock Pierce, tons of other speakers. If you’re feeling kind of social and you want to support the COVID-19 victims, get the VIP pass and join me and you for dance time singing time and party time.
Rob McNealy
Sounds like a blast and we’ll make sure that we have that all linked up at Robin helia. Calm, at least Sam where can people find out more about you and all the plethora of activism and really good charitable things that you’re working on?
Alyze Sam – Give Nation
Well, I am at elite fam on social media everywhere. That’s a Li Zi e sh M. And you can find me at gift nation dot world or women in blockchain International, that’s wi fi i.io. And you can follow the bad crypto podcast and see the events and all the events that we’re doing within that or aluminum society. You can go to pat global justifier we’re going to stop there because that’s a lot. And you can also go to Amazon or Google and download my free book. But if you follow me on social media and you send me a PM, yes that is a pm not a DM because I am old. I will give you a free copy of my book.
Rob McNealy
Fantastic. Alyze, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Alyze Sam – Give Nation
Hey, thank you. It has been an absolute pleasure and thank you for coming to sing and dance with us as a celebrity crypto and dancer. We’d love it. Thank you.
Rob McNealy
I wouldn’t miss it for the world folks. Find out more Rob McNealy calm. We’ll catch you next time.
Alyze Sam – Give Nation
Bye.
Episode Links
Alyze Sam – Give Nation
Alyze Sam talks with Rob McNealy about Give Nation, stable coins, philanthropy, and Virtual Blockchain Week in this interview.
Vinny Riley – Gokhshtein Magazine
Vinny Riley of Gokhshtein Magazine, talks with Rob McNealy about Gokhshtein Magazine, crypto marketing, and the state of crypto.
Crypto Euclid & Mystical Oaks Transcript
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
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