← The Wolf Of All Streets
The Wolf Of All Streets
Exclusive: @ogerkver Speaks Out – Fighting For His Freedom
01:09:42
Exclusive: @ogerkver Speaks Out – Fighting For His Freedom
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- [00:00]
Scott
Can you hear me, man?
- [00:01]
Roger Ver
I can hear you.
- [00:02]
Mario
Can you hear me, sir?
- [00:03]
Scott
I can. To be fair, we haven't heard Mario's voice. I, I heard you saying you should be close. We haven't heard Mario's voice on this show in at least three months. You're here like once every two or three weeks.
- [00:15]
Mario
It's what happens when you, it's what happens when you, you know, when you, when you're rubbing shoulders with the big people and like when Elon's retweeting your tweets and that's what happens.
- [00:24]
Scott
It's, you know, it's like you forget about the little people, you know?
- [00:28]
Mario
Yeah. Scott, promise me, no matter how big you get, promise me you're not going to for music.
- [00:33]
Scott
Yeah, I, I, I, I think we're gonna have to worry about that in reverse. You probably, if you make the same promise, then I, then I will as well. I think we actually have Roger here with us already, which is, which is great.
- [00:48]
Mario
So I think just before we start with Roger, we are waiting for everyone to, we are waiting for people to, to, to get on. Maybe worth, maybe just discussing this deep seeking thing in the markets. What like scaring the markets? Knocking Nvidia for a 6. What are your thoughts?
- [01:05]
Scott
I mean, I think that justifiable that it would spook markets depending on how it shakes out and more information that we, we get about it. I mean, obviously it sort of exposes a potential overvaluation of US largest tech stocks. But I mean, if you zoom out and think about this, it's exceptionally good for humanity. Right? I mean, it's exactly right. I mean, we're all fans of, you know, Jeff Booth, who I interview all the time in his book the the Price of Tomorrow. And you know, the technology is a naturally deflationary force in a perfect world. It should bring, you know, prices down and should free more time for people to do, you know, the things they're passionate about and to be entrepreneurs. So like, if AI becomes exponentially cheaper and, and more efficient and frees up more, you know, time for humans to innovate, I think that's generally a massive net positive.
- [02:01]
Mario
So yeah, I have a couple of other thoughts. Number one is I think that the US's approach of bullying their competitors by cutting off supplies of chips and other things, I think it's a good strategy short term. But I think what you do is you create a desperate enemy. And you know, when people are desperate, they do crazy things and they, the best innovations come when people are desperate. I think when people advance, I always say, give all of our competitors all of our ip. And the reason why I do that is because the more of our IP they have, the less of the. The less of. Of I. The less IP they're being forced to develop. Right. And so they become lazy and complacent because they start to rely on us for their ip. Meanwhile, we're thinking and they're not thinking. Right. And so it's the same thing with like, the us. The US is putting people in, in like, like it. It put China in a. In a position where China had no point, no, no option but to go and innovate without fancy gpus, potentially, if. If, you know, if, if they didn't actually use the gpus. Yeah. And I think that that's like, I think it's. It's probably a good lesson for people to learn is like, don't force your competitor, don't make your competitor desperate unless you have to.
- [03:13]
Scott
Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, that's kind of been the musk view on things. Right? I mean, go ahead. Cheers. All of our technology, do something better. And, you know, so I think it's going to be. It's going to be really, really interesting to see how it shakes down. I just. It's interesting that it came out, you know, the big news sort of came out on the weekend. I find it's interesting in, in context of how poorly the Chinese economy is doing, obviously, and they're obviously suffering from potential deflation. And then in context of everything that's happening with TikTok. Right. Just because there's sort of this negative, probably justifiable view on Chinese technology, given. I understand obviously, that deep, deep seat can be run locally and open source, so it's different. But I just find it sort of interesting that we're banning TikTok because it's, quote, unquote, Chinese spyware, but at the same time, you know, Americans are rushing to download this Chat GPT competitor that's going to obviously interact with people in a much more, I would say, intimate way than a TikTok would. I mean, think about the things that you type into searches on Google or Chat GPT. Just a really interesting time.
- [04:23]
Mario
Yeah. All right, let's get into. Let's get into the discussion. I think Roger's with us. For those of you who haven't been following the. The Roger, the Roger Bear story, Roger has been one of the. I think he's the earliest investor in the Bitcoin ecosystem. He's certainly one of the early early, early OGs in the space. He was campaigning for bitcoin when, when no one else really knew about it. He was one of the, the first people to buy bitcoin in bulk, so to speak, or to build, build up a big scatter stash of bitcoin. He's been a friend of mine and, you know, I've been, you know, a lot of my journey. I've bumped into Roger many, many, many times and I've always had amazing conversations with him. I do know that, you know, some people may hold grudges against him because he, you know, he, he encouraged or he, he was part of the block size wars which eventually led for that bitcoin fork into the BCH and bitcoin fork, which was, which happened I think in 2017 or 20, somewhere around there. And now Roger is in a bit of a predicament. Roger, maybe you can give us, give us a little bit more clarity as to where you're at.
- [05:35]
Roger Ver
So where I'm at, I'm in Spain is the easy answer. The more complicated answer is that I'm in Spain awaiting extradition to the United States on 100% completely false fake, made up tax charges in the US that bear no basis in reality whatsoever. And it's really, really frustrating. But I think this is, was a part of the Biden administration, but now that we have a new administration that's friendly towards crypto, I'm very optimistic that all this is going to be coming to an end very, very shortly here. But I need everybody's help to point out the injustice of the situation.
- [06:09]
Mario
So let's actually just do a little bit of a history lesson for those people who don't know. So this would not be your first time in jail. You did sometime previously in jail just give us like a rough rundown of what happened the last time.
- [06:24]
Roger Ver
So, yeah, perfect timing. Just about an hour ago, we released a documentary on exactly what happened the last time around. And I ran for political office as a libertarian around the year 2000. And when I was doing that, I debated the Republican and Democratic candidates and they got mad about a lot of the things I said about the ATF and FBI. And I wound up being the only person ever in the entire history of the world to be prosecuted for selling this firecracker called the Pest Control Report 2000. Even though I was telling them without a license I was guilty of the law as written. But they didn't prosecute the company I was buying them from who had no license. They didn't prosecute the Manufacturer who had no license. They didn't prosecute anybody else who was involved with these, and nobody had a license. And so, literally, I became the only person ever to be prosecuted for those. I signed a plea agreement. I did 10 months in federal prison and three years of probation. And I'm skimming over it, but those people terrorized me the whole time, and the probation department harassing me and harassing my business. And basically, they. They drove me to flee from America because they. They had a target on my back and they were coming after me. And, like, I never would have dreamed of leaving America if they hadn't been treating me that way and just made me afraid to, you know, be home in. In California, where I grew up, you know, my friends and family, because these, you know, petty bureaucrats just kept targeting me and harassing me and then, you know, threatening to send me to jail. So I. I want Roger just.
- [07:47]
Mario
I mean, I think. I think. I know you want to get through it, but I think it's a context of what these people were harassing you for. Like, the, The. The random nature of the stuff that these guys were harassing you for. Just maybe let's give one or two examples, because I understand why. Why you tapped out and you. You renounced your American citizenship. But for a lot of people, that's like, they don't understand why someone would possibly do that. I think also you probably saw that Elon tweeted this week and he said there's going to be no. No help for Roger because Roger denounced his citizenship and, you know, membership comes with its benefits. Maybe just, like, tell people, like, how bad this. I want to use the word harassment, but harassment might be the wrong word, how bad it got before you eventually made a big decision to renounce your American citizenship.
- [08:35]
Roger Ver
So I just. One. One example of the. The pettiness there, too, was after I got out of prison and I'm on probation. The first a couple of weeks, I was living at my friend's house, a Korean American guy. And in Asian culture, it's a very, very big deal. Like, no shoes worn in the house. And these probation officers come over to my friend's house and they want to inspect where I'm living. And my friend says, okay. And they're like. He says, you can come in and see, but please take your shoes off. They're like, no, we're not going to take our shoes off. We're going to come in and like, they walked all over the inside of his house with the shoes. I know he was mad about it. And then, I don't know, maybe a year later, I bought my own home. And these same people showed up there to search that. And I told them, you can come in my house, but take your shoes off. And I had this, you know, beautiful, you know, light beige carpet and, and they said, no, no, we're going to come in our house and we're gonna, in your house. And they said, we're wear our shoes. I said, you can come in, but you're going to take your shoes off, otherwise you're not coming in. And they looked me right in the eye. And his name was Jose Martinez. I still remember very clearly. He said, I'm going to come in your house with my shoes on or you're going to go back to jail. And it's just this, you know, crazy pettiness. And they just did it over and over with every last little thing. And it was just, you know, three years of torment by those people. Harassed me every step of the way with my business and my personal life and this and that, and just, they made it a living hell for me to, to, to deal with any of it. And so like that, literally the day I was allowed to flee, I, I, I left and been, you know, and then, even, even though I left him.
- [10:04]
Mario
Harassing me and so you left. And when you left, just walk us through the process of actually leaving. So you announced your U.S. citizenship?
- [10:13]
Roger Ver
Yeah, so I looked into it at the time and then I left. You know, I'd had a Japanese girlfriend before, so I figured, okay, I'll go give Japan a try. If I'd had a Brazilian girlfriend, I would have wound up in Brazil, or a German girlfriend would have been. Germany was just kind of totally by chance. But when bitcoin came along, I knew, oh my God, this is going to change everything. And I knew that they were going to target me even more because of that. And so I knew it was just simply too dangerous to be an American citizen because the, you know, these agencies are just targeting anybody that's going to promote this sort of powerful, world changing technology for the benefit of everybody. And so it was just too frightening for me to, you know, be another target of theirs. So the safest thing that I thought of that I could possibly do at that point was to renounce my citizenship just because it seemed like the safe, smart, prudent thing to do. And it turned out I was right. Because here we are more than a decade after I renounced my U.S. citizenship because I was scared of them. They're coming after Me and proving that I was right. I should have been afraid of them. They're attacking me again, wanting to put me in jail until the day I die, because they claim that the right amount of taxes weren't paid. But, like, the reality is I.
- [11:26]
Mario
Don'T.
- [11:27]
Roger Ver
Pay whatever I owe. Tell me what I owe, I'll pay.
- [11:29]
Mario
When you. When you left the United States, the process of leaving the United States is deemed to be a capital gains event. Right. It's a tax event, which means that on the day that you leave, you pretty much have to value your assets, you have to pay capital gains tax, and then you're pretty. Then those assets are pretty much out of the United States. Right?
- [11:46]
Roger Ver
Yeah. Although I don't want to dive too big in. Deep into the details.
- [11:50]
Gary
My.
- [11:50]
Roger Ver
My lawyer would be happy to come on at some point, but we're saving all those cards, like, for a little bit later. But, yeah, if you head on over to freerogernow.org, the motion to dismiss is right up there at the top of the page with all the exact details, so you can see the exact evidence there. And the short version is that I am 100% completely innocent of everything they're accusing me of. And again, my stance the entire time has been, if they think I owe some more money in tax, tell me what I owe and I will gladly pay it. But they have never come up with a number that they say that I actually owe, to the point where my lawyers literally had to file a Freedom of Information act request telling the irs, tell us what you think Roger owes, and they still haven't come up with the number that they think I owe. Because the fact of the matter is, is that we paid what I owed. And if there's something different, they can't calculate it either because the whole thing's so confusing.
- [12:36]
Mario
So what's the case now that you were in Spain and you got arrested in Spain, right?
- [12:42]
Roger Ver
Yeah. And in fact, like, with no exaggeration at all, like, even while I'm on this Twitter spaces with you guys, there might be a knock at the door taking me back to Spanish prison today. The lawyer said there's about a 10% chance that it'll happen today, and as each day goes by, that number goes up. So, like, I, you know, any day now could be my final day of freedom here in Spain, and then they'll ship me off to the US and who knows what they'll do to me there. If the new Trump administration doesn't see this for the lawfare that it is against, you know, I'm a proud American. I born and raised, you know, clearly my English is American. English, the culture, you know, is a long standing. All of that is American through and through. And I don't think, you know, what, what passport I have changes my culture one bit.
- [13:28]
Mario
Well, let's, we'll debate that, we'll debate that in a sec. But I mean, so you were, you were in Spain. You were in Spain and you, you all of a sudden got arrested and the reason why you got arrested is because the United States wanted their, their tax.
- [13:42]
Scott
Basically.
- [13:42]
Mario
Basically they said that you under declared and you didn't pay enough tax. Is that correct?
- [13:45]
Roger Ver
I suppose you could summarize it that way. Yeah.
- [13:47]
Mario
So, okay. And so what's happened since then? You've had multiple hearings, you've had an extradition hearing. Just walk us through what, what's happened since.
- [13:57]
Roger Ver
Sure. So I, I was in, spent almost an entire month in jail in Barcelona. In a jail where I speak, I don't speak the language right. Like my, I had two and a half years of junior high school Spanish. My Spanish is not that great. And so I'm in a prison where I don't even speak the language. And because I'm a pretty clean cut, well spoken guy, the only other, you know, there was one, two other Americans when I arrived, they thought that I was some sort of spy. And then a bunch of the other inmates thought I must be some sort of American spy in the prison because I'm, you know, not covered in tattoos and don't look like the, you know, normal prisoner type. And so I did just under a month in the prison in Spain before I finally got bail in Spain. Completely against the US's wishes. They wanted to keep me in jail the entire time, claiming that I'm a flight risk, whereas the reality is I'm not a flight risk at all. I want to face this whole thing head on. And the entire time again, I've been telling them, whatever I owe, show me and I will pay it. It's that simple. Like, I'm not trying to hide anything. I have plenty of money. I just want to live my life and I just want these people to leave me alone and in the lawfare against me. I've had enough of this harassment from bureaucrats in my life. I'm just doing my best to make the world a better place. It's been almost stuck in Spain and.
- [15:04]
Mario
You had an extradition hearing. You had extradition hearing last week.
- [15:07]
Roger Ver
Yeah, and I'm waiting for the ruling. You Know, maybe today, even today, I don't know exactly when they'll issue it, but the, they had a 15 judge panel to decide whether or not they'll extradite me to the US Last Friday, and then, you know, probably this week or next week they'll issue that, that ruling.
- [15:23]
Mario
And how was, what was your feeling based on? I mean, you were in the courtroom, you saw the faces on the judges, like, what is your feeling based on the argument?
- [15:31]
Roger Ver
Unfortunately, I wasn't there. There's no actual in person thing. It's all just written arguments. And so I think I have a real good shot at the Spain seeing this for the lawfare and political persecution from the Biden administration that it is. And so I kind of almost wonder if maybe the judges are going to wait a while to see what the new administration does. But the short answer is I don't know. But it's a horrible, horrible way to live life where every day, I don't know if this is the day the police are going to knock on my door and say, okay, you're going back to prison here in Spain and we're going to ship you to the US Eventually. Like, it is not an easy way to plan or plan anything or live anything or get any, any sort of anything done in life. It's really a frustrating situation.
- [16:12]
Mario
And why do you think they're talking to you?
- [16:15]
Roger Ver
I think because I'm such an effective advocate for the use of cryptocurrency as money around the world and, and personal freedom and economic freedom and the, the literally the ideals that America was founded on.
- [16:26]
Mario
But I mean, there's lots of other people that have, that have been fighting as much and they're not getting targeted as much.
- [16:34]
Roger Ver
I don't know if that's the case. I think I had maybe a little bit of a bigger platform. But look at John McAfee. He literally died in the exact same prison that I was in. Or look at, you know, Roman from Tornado. Cash was literally just writing software code. They gave people more privacy with their cryptocurrency. Looking to toss that guy in jail too. Look at Ian Freeman, who ran Bitcoin ATM machines, like allowing people to buy and sell bitcoin. They've tossed him in jail.
- [16:56]
Mario
Just.
- [16:57]
Roger Ver
I guess I'm just lucky enough to have had like a louder social media presence and platform where I can make a bit more noise about it than a lot of these other people. A lot of other people just go silently into the night and as they get their lives destroyed by this sort of Lawfare for speaking out in favor of what's right.
- [17:12]
Scott
And so do you mind if I. Yeah, sorry, Roger, to interrupt, but do you think that the differentiator there obviously is the, you know, denouncing the citizenship? Do you think that obviously is the thing that's making you the larger target? I would say that seems like a glaring possibility.
- [17:26]
Roger Ver
I don't think that, that, that is like, to be honest, because a lot of my other friends who stayed in America also have gone to jail or had all sorts of problems. If you look on Twitter today, Jesse Powell posted an incredibly nice, you know, wonderful thing about me. But look at his business in Kraken. They've just been harassed non stop by the Biden administration. And I think that's coming to an end. Or just all of you guys listening to this, you're all in crypto. How many of your American friends were talking about, oh, if Kamala wins, I think I'm going to leave the US Right. So many of us. And now that Trump won, hooray for President Trump. Because now, finally, crypto people can feel safer in America now. But I was just afraid earlier than everybody else was afraid because I was into crypto earlier than everybody else. And so I think that's the only difference. I would feel much, much safer today under the Trump presidency than I would under the Harris presidency or. I'm sorry. Or whoever else. Right. Like, it's just, I think I was ahead of the curve of being aware of the danger. And that's, that's the only difference.
- [18:27]
Mario
So, I mean, Roger, technically not actually an American anymore. Like, why do you think that, that Trump should help you? Like, you know, you're not an American, you're not part of the, you're not a paying member, if you want to call it that, of the club. Why do you think that Trump should care or want to help you?
- [18:46]
Roger Ver
Why? I think that they're not a paying member of the club argument cuts two ways. If I'm not a paying member of the club, then why are they asking me to pay? Right? They want me to pay, but I don't get any of the benefits. But to answer the other question more directly, like, America is like, you know, it says truth and justice for all. It doesn't say truth and justice for just some people. Right? So like, truth and justice for all. I am not getting justice in this case at all. It is 100% like political lawfare against me. And if I'm 100% innocent of what the IRS is accusing me of and anybody can go on there again@freerogernow.org and click on that motion to dismiss. It is clear to anybody who reads it that I am completely innocent. So if you believe in justice, you should believe in having all the charges against me dropped or, or, you know, or a preemptive pardon or whatever else, because prosecuting me for stuff that I didn't do is not fair and it needs to come to an end. If you believe in, you know, the American ideals of a truth and justice and for all, I mean, I agree.
- [19:44]
Mario
With you, but you're not American. So, like, it's, it's like to apply ideals to someone, American ideals to someone who's not American. Like, I'm trying to, I'm trying to reconcile the logic.
- [19:54]
Roger Ver
So what does truth and justice for all mean to you? It doesn't say truth and justice only for American citizens. Truth and justice for all. I'm certainly part of all. And I'll, I'll be an American in Hartford forever, clearly.
- [20:08]
Mario
And what would you, like, like, what would you want? Like what, what, what, what if, if you had to ask Trump or one of his advisors or one of his associates or someone for, like, you know, for an action he should, he's certainly not just going to drop the case, you know, like, he would need.
- [20:26]
Roger Ver
I think you're wrong about that. I, I think that there's a very, very good chance they're going to drop the case this week or issue a preemptive pardon this week because anybody that looks at the facts can see I'm 100% innocent. So if someone's 100% innocent, the case should be dropped. It's that simple.
- [20:40]
Mario
Okay, Scott, any questions there?
- [20:44]
Scott
A ton, but there's a panelist and I think they can go ahead if they have their hands up and feel free to ask.
- [20:52]
Alex
I don't really have a question for Roger, but I just want to say with Scottishama to an old friend. And I wanted to pay a bit of a tribute to your, You, Roger, and explain to those who don't know you from the earlier years. You know, I had a dinner with Eric V. After Satoshi roundtable number nine, and I remember chatting about Roger and about how he's misunderstood and, and a lot of things like that. And my question to Eric was, you know, you, who knew him really, really well and are very close friends, would you agree that pre Michael Sailor Roger was the biggest sales rep of the entire bitcoin ecosystem? And Eric looked at me with a little bit of a giggle and he said, did you say sales rep. Roger was the entire sales division. And that came from the mouth of, I think, one of the most inspiring characters and personalities in crypto of Eric Bouris. I sure got into crypto thanks to Andreas Antonopoulos and Eric Vuris in his first debate against Rod. But Robert Schiff on gold versus bitcoin, they had three debates. But then what really made me fall in love with bitcoin was Roger's contribution in Japan, Tokyo, where he got the nickname of bitcoin Jesus. And he was literally organizing bitcoin meetups on a weekly basis. And this was back in 2016, 2017, and then 2018 kind of slowed down a little bit. But yeah, it's more to pay homage to, to a man that I think who's done a lot of good in the space. And I hope that everyone out there will support him.
- [22:20]
Roger Ver
Thank you for that, Alex.
- [22:22]
Mario
Simon. Your hand up, sir.
- [22:25]
Simon
Hey, yeah, I'd like to say, look, in. In the early days, Roger and myself invested in many of the. The same companies.
- [22:34]
Mario
Full disclosure, you're an investor.
- [22:38]
Simon
Yeah, full disclosure. But, you know, I think. And Roger and I sat on the opposite end of the debate in Japan where we were discussing bitcoin and bitcoin cash and went through that whole journey. We sit on the complete opposite sides of the camp, but I hope that people, especially the bitcoin community, can appreciate that you got to separate your opinions about bitcoin and the journey we all shared, shared together in the block size debate and all that type of stuff from justice, what it means to be a bitcoiner. Bitcoiner. You know, bitcoin is freedom money. And, you know, this was a 2014 event when it was very unclear the guidance around any type of tax. There's, you know, clearly a background that led to the change in citizenship. And so I just hope that people can separate the personalities, opinions, the journey that we've all been through in bitcoin, from justice and what is wrong and right. And clearly, to me, this is something that does represent what bitcoin is. Freedom. And I cannot for the life of me understand why Roger ver should under any circumstances spend the rest of his life in prison. And I hope that people will come together to agree to that as well.
- [24:13]
Mario
Roger, when you talk about spending the rest of your life in prison, just walk me through the, the. The logistics here. So, like, just walk me through what happens, like why it would be the rest of your life. How did they get to 109 years?
- [24:28]
Roger Ver
Yeah, well, I'm actually today's my birthday. I'm 46 years. Excuse me. 40. 46 years old today. Yeah. Thank you. Let me grab a little bit of water and I'll let you talk for a second. Sorry.
- [24:42]
Mario
Quite a crazy story, guys, huh?
- [24:45]
Simon
Yeah, no, it, it really is. And again, like, I just really hope that people can separate their, you know, our opinions from what's, from what's wrong and right here. And, and that clearly Roger is a high value target for anybody that was around in the early days and is sat on massive, massive amounts of gains in order to fear them, to ensure that they sort out what happened from way back in the day. And that would be a likely strategy here. And I think there's many, many people that are in that situation when they had no idea what, what they should be doing back then. And I think this is clearly, you know, a way of trying to use Roger as a mechanism for bringing in a bunch of money and a bunch of people and try and make example. And that's exactly what happened with Ross. You know, Ross did what he did. He served his time. He was told that he needs to go to prison for the rest of his life. But it was determined that, look, 10 years is enough. And it was clearly a function of the time when they were trying to make an example in order to try and, you know, send a message out there. And I think that's what, that has happened quite a few times in Bitcoin's history. And we all had to get behind that.
- [26:13]
Roger Ver
Thank you, Simon. And to answer the actual question there too, like, I've turned 46 today. They want to give me 109 years. Like I'm. Maybe we'll figure out some super extreme life extension technology here pretty quickly. But with normal technology that we have today, I'm not likely to live to be what does that work out to? 155 years old, that seems unlikely. And one of the lawyers that I had involved previously said, oh, don't worry, you're not actually going to do 109 years. It'll probably be, if you were to be found guilty at trial, it would be 20 or 25 years, which is still a very, very long time. Right. If I did in 25 years. Years, and I'm 46, you know, am I going to live to be 71 while in prison for 25 years? Getting to be right on the edge there. So, yeah, not a good one.
- [26:59]
Mario
Doesn't sound good.
- [27:01]
Roger Ver
No.
- [27:03]
Scott
Roger, what I don't quite understand is the point you made before that you offered to effectively Just pay and move on. Why wouldn't they accept that? Like, why is this a case for extradition and for you to spend the rest of your life in jail if you're willing to pay the money plus interest to resolve it?
- [27:25]
Mario
Well, I guess it's because it wasn't paid in time, and I guess that that's maybe a criminal offense.
- [27:29]
Roger Ver
No, no, no, no, no, no. Everything was paid on time, and everything was paid properly. I think the real reason for all this is that it's not a tax case, it's a political case, and it needs to come to an end now that there's new administration in power that actually cares about fair.
- [27:45]
Gary
Can I speak up for a moment?
- [27:47]
Mario
Yeah, sure.
- [27:49]
Gary
So I met Roger at Nomad Capitalist in Malaysia quite a bit of time ago. Amazing guy, obviously, long history. Everybody that's on the panel knows that about Roger's origin story. But also a really good friend is Robert Barnes from Barnes Law. He was a defendant or the. The chief counsel for Kyle Rittenhouse and others. He's made comments just a few hours ago with Viva Frey, specifically, like someone had said earlier about, like, your citizenship, should that determine whether you should have a pardon or not? Some of the response to what Elon Musk had said, as well as commentary about the constitutionality of an exit tax. So, like, there is a pinned tweet that I put up there, which is basically just referencing the rumble content that Viva Frey and Robert Barnes went through. And, you know, I've reached out to them, Robert, directly, to try and get in contact directly with Roger as well, to try and support the case.
- [28:49]
Roger Ver
Thank you for that, Gary. Actually, I talked to the lawyers about it. Like, I paid all the exit tax that I owed, but apparently there's some real strong legal arguments that the exit tax itself is unconstitutionally illegal. Although my understanding is that I have to, like, take it all the way to trial and lose before I can challenge on those grounds as well. And so we'll see if they want to do that with me. But I'm not going to lose anyhow because I paid everything that the current interpretation of the losses I owe.
- [29:19]
Scott
Scott, I just find it incredibly interesting that they wouldn't just take the money if they're asking if that's where the sticking point is for the United States government. What would be the process if you do get extradited? What happens? Where do they take you? Do you go into holding? Is there another trial here? Or is it effectively, you know, once they've decided you're here, that you're in trouble. Can you get to the United States and be absolved?
- [29:49]
Roger Ver
Yeah. The short answer is I don't know how all of it works because I've never been through this before. But again, I want to emphasize, like, the IRS never once has set a number that they think that I owe. In fact, we literally filed a Freedom of Information act request requesting the IRS to say, how much do you think that I owe? And they've been delaying and delaying and delaying even replying to that because I don't think they can calculate the exact number because at the time I renounced, there were literally zero guidance from the irs. There was absolutely no guidance whatsoever from the IRS as to how to pay taxes on bitcoin. So not only was I the first investor in the world to start investing in the bitcoin ecosystem, I was one of the very first people in the entire world trying to pay taxes on bitcoin. And so like, everybody knows philosophically that I'm not a fan of taxes, but I did my absolute best to comply with the letter of the law because I didn't want to be in the exact situation they put me in today. And it's really frustrating. I'm sorry if I sound a little bit bitter or hostile. It's just.
- [30:46]
Scott
I don't think you do, actually. I would think that you would be.
- [30:53]
Roger Ver
Really frustrated with this whole situation on all of this.
- [30:56]
Scott
So, yeah, I want to make sense to me, that's. Go ahead.
- [31:00]
Gary
Let me make a quick comment. Again, responding to the citizenship issue. Recently there was a lot of social media posts that Brazil didn't like and there's a lot that UK didn't like about certain citizens outside of their jurisdiction. And still there's been this threat of imprisonment if entering the country and things like that. So certain citizens decide not to enter those jurisdictions just because of their posts, regardless of their citizenship. And it's very similar in some ways, in my opinion, simply because rules of one jurisdiction, now you can say, well, I left from Brazil, I went through the green card process, I became a citizen, I swore in as an American, and years later, some post on social media somehow is under the jurisdiction of Brazil or UK or any other kind of country. So when it goes to a freedom of and trying to comply with laws that are in some ways oscillating and changing depending on politics, that's really part of the issue. It's not only about tax exit or libertarian values and going to a jurisdiction where you're treated the best or at least better and less persecution. It really is important to have the narrative of Bitcoin not just be the price, not just the threshold of 100,000 or a million or wherever it hits in the future. It is about the idea behind Bitcoin, which is freedom of transaction, freedom of speech.
- [32:24]
Scott
Rogers, I'm, I'm digging into this, I guess, just trying to understand the brass tax. And I know that you're not exactly aware of what it would look like as well, but if you are not extradited, if Spain decides to keep you there, what does that process look like? Is it just you're always waiting for that to potentially change and in fear of coming back to the United States or the United States finding another way to bring you back in? Or could you theoretically just, you know, remain outside the United States, living in Spain with this case hanging over your head in the U.S. yeah, if Spain.
- [33:00]
Roger Ver
Were to decide not to extradite me, that the, the case is just, you know, political affair from the last administration, I would have basically won at that point. Like, that would. That would be the end of it. So.
- [33:12]
Scott
But you said that that hearing has been had. You're just waiting for an answer on that.
- [33:17]
Roger Ver
Yeah. And, you know, maybe that answer, it'll come today. It's 5pm so we're getting towards the end of today. So maybe if not today, tomorrow, like it's going to come any day now. And if it's positive, great. If not, then unfortunately I'll be back in a Spanish prison on the way to the US but if you believe in truth and justice, I invite you head on over there to freerogernow.org look at the motion to dismiss. All the information is in there. Anybody that takes the time to read it. And if you don't want to read it all, toss it into, you know, chat GDP and ask for a summary or, or Google LM and ask it to make a podcast out of it for you. Like, it'll come to the same conclusion. Like, I'm completely innocent of what they're accusing me of, and this is just, you know, politically motivated nonsense from the last administration who hated crypto. I look at how much the last administration hated crypto. All of us here, you know, we're all into crypto. We know the Biden administration hated everything about crypto. And so now that's, you know, there's a new administration, there's a new sheriff in town, it's time to, to end the, the warfare against all the people that are involved in crypto. And so I think it would send a really Powerful message to. To everybody that if they drop these fake charges against me, it'll send the message that America's safe for crypto entrepreneurs again.
- [34:28]
Mario
Roger, what do you think the probability of going to jail is?
- [34:32]
Roger Ver
Well, I already went for a month. I think the possible.
- [34:36]
Mario
No, I mean. I mean for life.
- [34:38]
Roger Ver
I think in the possibility of being found guilty at trial and going to jail is probably low, but going that far will take multiple years of my life and millions and millions or maybe tens of millions of dollars to do that. It's not something that I. I would rather be building the tools that enable financial freedom through cryptocurrency for everybody rather than dealing with lawyers every day. This is just. Life is short, right? I'm 46 years old today. I want my life back. I've been dealing. Dealing with this already for far too long. Stuck in Spain for almost a year and, you know, dealing with the audit that was before this for, I don't know, six or seven years. And again, my stance the entire time was, whatever I owe, I will pay it. Just do the math and figure it out. If you think that my previous accountants were wrong, show us where we're wrong, and I will pay the difference. And to this day, the IRS has never been able to do that because we did it to the best of our ability. And even in hindsight, it looks like we did it right.
- [35:30]
Scott
So they're basically asking for roughly $50 million. Correct. And so at no point in this entire process, did, before charging you effectively, did they say, this is your liability, pay it? Because it seems like there would be that. A gap there where they would say, you know, this is what we've come to in the audit. Pay the money.
- [35:50]
Roger Ver
The short answer is no. The short answer is no. And in fact, when. When the indictment came, we were stunned about any of the. The 2017 stuff at all. Because I renounced in 2014. Right.
- [36:01]
PG
I.
- [36:02]
Roger Ver
My. I was no longer a US citizen in 2014, but they're claiming that I somehow owe a bunch of tax for 2017 bitcoins that I already paid tax on. Like, the whole thing is. And my tax accountants told me in writing, right? Like, you're not a U.S. citizen, you're not a U.S. resident. It's not taxable. Go and take a look at that motion to dismiss. It's all. It's all there. And the whole.
- [36:22]
Scott
There's no. Is there no culpability for your accountants? They. I mean, I do understand how this works, but they come after you directly. Do they not go after the accounting firm that had a, you know, fiduciary duty to handle this for you or the lawyers that you were using. None of that. Because unless it would seem like, unless they could prove that you were literally telling them to, you know, cheat, that it would actually be on them who prepared all these documents and told you what you owed.
- [36:49]
Roger Ver
Yeah. I'm not a lawyer or an accountant, but my understanding is that there's this thing called reliance on counsel. And that's when you hire a lawyer or you hire an accountant or hire a professional, you rely on their professional advice. And if you follow their advice and you gave them all the information, there can be no criminal intent whatsoever. So, like, and there is none in this case, I gave my accountants and lawyers all the information. I followed their advice. And even in hindsight, their advice looks correct and just plain looks like the IRS is lying. And, you know, I'm just sick of it and just want it to all come to an end.
- [37:21]
Scott
Right. Often in these crypto cases or cases in general, you see like, mention of emails or WhatsApp messages that, you know, they, they utilize for, with finance, for, for example, you're effectively saying there's none of that. There's no evidence that you told them, hey, you know, let's do this in the cheapest way possible, or that, you know, we're going to put these tokens, these bitcoins into these companies, you know, for when I leave. Do they have anything like that? I mean, it's just if you go.
- [37:51]
Roger Ver
And read the emails over on the motion to dismiss there, you'll see that I literally told my accountants that I am 100% sure I am a target of IRS. I am 100% sure I'm going to be audited. We have to do everything perfectly. So there is no room for them to give me a hard time about any of this. So I literally instructed them to do everything perfectly. And I instructed them that multiple times over multiple years. So there's, there's. I just wanted to be left alone. And yet, you know, here's the political affairs continuing, but I think it's about to come to an end under the new Trump, Donald Trump administration and presidency. Because if anybody knows what it's like to be a victim of, of Lawfair, it's President Trump.
- [38:31]
Scott
Rand, do you have any more thoughts and questions? I. It's just seems like such an.
- [38:35]
Mario
I mean, I mean, yeah, I mean, Roger, what, what can people listening do? What do you want people to do? I know, I'm trying to get as much awareness for this as possible. Like what do you want people to do?
- [38:47]
Roger Ver
What's, what's the best. Thank you. I, I think it's probably the best thing you can do is head on over to free rogernow.org all the details are there, including a form where you can, you know, sign the petition and you can even sign like an open letter to, to have all the charges dropped against me. Because it's so clear if you spend the time and look into it, I'm 100 innocent of what's, what I'm being accused of. And, but what would, how would that help?
- [39:11]
Mario
Like if, if we all signed the petition and we got 100,000 signature signatures in the petition, how does that help?
- [39:16]
Roger Ver
I think it just shows that the, there's public awareness of my situation. But again, I'm not the only one. But what I intend to do is when I get all this behind me, I want to help the other people out there. I want to help the Ian Freeman's and the Roman Storms and the Samurai wallet guys. And there's just so many people out there that have been the victim of lawfare from the previous administration that was so hostile to crypto. We need to send the message to the world that America is safe for crypto under the new Donald Trump administration and they're not going to be terrorized like we were under the Biden administration administration. And I want to be able to help with that night, but I need your help to be able to help with that. So I, I think so.
- [39:51]
Mario
Last question on my side. You've got a daughter, right?
- [39:55]
Roger Ver
No.
- [39:57]
Mario
No. You don't have kids. Roger.
- [40:06]
Roger Ver
I would like to not talk about any personal life, anything, please. So.
- [40:10]
Scott
Okay.
- [40:10]
PG
I was just.
- [40:11]
Roger Ver
Okay.
- [40:11]
Mario
I just want to know if she's aware or he's aware if there were kids. Okay.
- [40:14]
Scott
But.
- [40:15]
Mario
No. Okay, I understand. All right, cool. I think, Scott, I think that's, that's a wrap for that.
- [40:19]
Scott
Yeah, I, I just, you know, I think everybody should take the time to go look into this. You know, regardless, I think of your thoughts, I think it's very important to understand what Roger's saying here and, and what this could mean for himself and obviously for others. And you know, as you kind of talked about, I know that there's been controversy or polarization in the past, but this seems like one of those obvious times when everybody should rally behind, you know, Roger as a human being, but also as an early advocate and one of the first to really push us forward. I think it's fair to say that Everyone can agree that none of us would be where we are right now. Bitcoin wouldn't be where it is without his early efforts and continued efforts. So I think it's just very, very important that we do what we can to look deeper into this and to help Roger. And sorry that you're in that situation.
- [41:14]
Roger Ver
Thank you guys all very much for your help. And again, I'm not the only one. I'm just one of the people with a louder voice. But hopefully the new Trump administration can see exactly the crazy lawfare that was going on from the Biden administration and put it into it as quickly as possible.
- [41:31]
Scott
Thank you, Roger. I know you have other important things to do. Everybody just give us the website one more time before we let you go, please.
- [41:38]
Roger Ver
Yep, that's free. Rogernow.org and actually there's a new 20 minute documentary that just got released today that I think people will find very compelling as well. So thank you all so much for the time today as well.
- [41:49]
Scott
And that documentary is on your X account as well. Right. So everybody can give you a follow and check it out there.
- [41:55]
Roger Ver
Exactly. Thank you all very, very much.
- [41:57]
Scott
Thanks, Roger. Thanks, Roger. We'll keep chatting here for a couple minutes. Let Roger go. You know, I would love the. Alex, Simon, Gary, you guys are up here. Just kind of your final thoughts after talking to Roger here. I mean, Simon, you obviously mentioned you were. Go ahead. Yep, go ahead.
- [42:16]
Gary
Yeah, I don't think of cryptocurrency, any form of cryptocurrency, as a stock market. I don't think of it as a real estate market. I don't think about anything other than the libertarian values that I think it was launched for. So obviously Roger has history and the origin story of the most popular cryptocurrency, which is bitcoin. But like, this affects everything in the industry and there's a lot of issues that have been talked about on different panels, whether it's the tornado cash or, you know, what's. What's gray and undeclared as far as regulation, as this industry chooses to thrive, both because of market forces as well as the political forces now supporting it through the Trump campaign. So anything that can help Roger, I think, helps the industry across the board.
- [43:08]
Scott
Alex.
- [43:09]
Alex
Yeah, and I would love to share some more stories for Sorry, I'd love to share more stories based on what Simon said and I said back in the Tokyo days, which, by the way, I saw that debate with you, Simon and Roger, which was very, very interesting when you were doing a lot of work with regards to bank to the Future. But, you know, for everyone who sees him or portrays him as a villain, because you came in maybe later, maybe 2018, and you saw like Roger arguing with the bitcoin Bitcoin foundation, creating bitcoin cash because he wasn't happy with the block size. Once again, the origins are really, really important because he was so vocal about bitcoin and he was literally, he gave out I don't know how many hundreds and hundreds of bitcoins during the meetups Back in the day when bitcoin was maybe at a 3 or $400, had a 300, $400 price tag. And he did the coolest things to educate people on how to make them truly understand bitcoin. He would simply get people to line up. He would make three to five queues, so maybe have like 10 people per queue. And what he would do is he would give 5 bitcoin in almost every single meetup once a week. You know, we're talking about this across, you know, the entire year and was very, very active between 2016 to 2018. And what he would do is simply is say, imagine you have your phone and you're the first in line across these 10 people. He would say, I'm going to send you one bitcoin. I want you to keep 0.1 bitcoin and send 0.9 bitcoin to the next person in the queue. And then next person in the queue keep 0.1 bitcoin and send 0.8 bitcoin. And his whole point was literally he was timing it with his, with his watch, I believe it didn't even have it on his smartphone or maybe on his smartphone, but he would time it. And then once both, you know, all the queues finished, you know, as a game, you would say, who can send it the fastest? Who can scan each QR code as fast as you can? Then he would just ask them, now, how long would these transactions take you with a bank if you're using Swift? And what are the chances of them being censored? And he would obviously challenge the broken. Not the broken. I'd say the legacy financial system. And that really converted so many people, like so, so many people. And I have more of a funny one more anecdote for you all listening out here. And this is more of a funny one. And I know there was, you know, back then because they called him bitcoin. Jesus. You know, Roger is a pretty good looking man. He's a jiu jitsu, you know, he's Quite strong. He's alpha. So obviously you guys can imagine there were some women who were interested in Roger, to say the least. And there's something in Japan called Go Go Cons. Go Cons is essentially like a group dating mechanism where girls and guys go out for dinner, have drinks and food, and they're all single and they're trying to meet, you know, and make their boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever. And there was speed dating. Speed dating?
- [46:12]
Scott
Yeah.
- [46:12]
Alex
It's like. It's like speed dating, but it's like a group setting it up together. Right. Speed dating is more like you pay an organization and you swap tables.
- [46:20]
Scott
Right, Yeah, I got it. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt your important story.
- [46:24]
Alex
No worries. But it's a little bit like speed dating, but it's really, really Japanese, called gokon. And long story short, Scott. Well, this is how much he truly loved bitcoin and was such a huge fan. He had this really, really attractive girl sitting next to him and she was so sweet. She was literally serving him and stuff like that. She was trying her best to get his interest, which she had no interest. And he. One of the first lines he had to, when he started talking to her was, by the way, have you ever heard of bitcoin? And I swear, guys, for at least I would say, 25 to 30 minutes, all he was doing is talking about how bitcoin, how awesome bitcoin was, how important it is for financial freedom. He got her to download a Samurai wallet back then. And that's about it. That's all I want to share with you guys so that, you know, for those who maybe see him, you know, potentially as a super villain, because there was that friction with bitcoin cash and bitcoin core, or the real bitcoin as we. We claim it, prior to that, he did so many good things for the industry and for our communities.
- [47:34]
Simon
Yeah. So I guess I'll just add is, look, I. In. In 2013, I lived in the UK and I was. I became a director of the UK Digital Currency Association. And it was just a bunch of us. And one of our first things we did was sat on the table with HMRC to try and get clarification on the tax treatment of bitcoin. And we were sat around the table with all the tax authorities and all the bitcoin community at the time. And the answer they gave us was, well, it kind of depends if you're. If you're using it as currency, it may be treated as a currency. If you're mining it Then maybe that's income and it might be treated as income. And if you're holding it and then it may be treated as property and you may be a capital gains, but, you know, you kind of let us know what you think it is and then we'll, you know, and then you pay it. But if you get it wrong, then lawyer up was kind of the outcome of it. And I left the UK not because I wanted to leave my country, I just wanted to innovate in Bitcoin. And therefore the only safe place to do that turned out to be Hong Kong at the time. So I know when I remember very clearly, the industry made a really best effort to try and figure this stuff out. And the advice was awful. The guidance was completely unclear, and the reality is because none of the tax authorities knew how to treat it and didn't know what to do. And so because this was a 2014 case, I just remember very, very clearly what the industry was like at that time. And the fact that I had to leave the country, that I had no desire to leave, simply because it was impossible to innovate back in those days without risking getting something wrong. And so that's what the industry was like. And again, I just want to kind of repeat what I said previously. I've been on the opposite side with Roger on the whole bitcoin, Bitcoin cash debate. But it's very important to separate that ideology from what is actually happening here. And so it would be a massive, massive injustice for Roger to spend the rest of his life in prison for really being an advocate for bitcoin in the early days and really actually demonstrating to all of us in the end that there was really no way to fork or copy Bitcoin. And bitcoin become what it is today because of that friction and because of that block war debate and all of the challenges that we went through then. So I just want to say it's. I think most people are going to find it very hard to separate those two things, but I think you need to look deep within yourself and kind of think what. What is wrong, what is right, and make your decision from there.
- [50:51]
Scott
Yeah, listen, I think we're not necessarily lawyers and accountants on stage, and it's listening. You know, I don't think any of us understand deeply the. The nuance of the case. I'm getting tons of messages from lawyers in the background saying that there are emails from him very clearly to his lawyers, you know, saying, move these coins here, move these coins there. What are the implications? And kind of forcing them against their advice to, I won't say hide, but move coins around in a way that could have theoretically been, you know, more. You guys get the idea, right? So there may be something here. The question is, would that possibly justify 110 or whatever he said, years in prison, especially if he's willing to pay? Right. So I think that maybe with all these cases, the truth is blurred and lies somewhere in between. I don't think anyone in the world thinks that someone should go to jail for over 100 years for evading taxes that they're willing to pay. But, you know, maybe there is certainly something here that's not as clear cut as our conversation had, that that should be answered for in a smaller, you know, manner. It's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. I mean, I think right now he seems like he has his hopes hinging on Spain, you know, and them not extraditing him. And if he doesn't have to come back and face that music, then there. There won't be an issue. But it's a really interesting and nuanced case. But we're gonna. We're gonna move on from the end of Got PG up here. And pg, I know you didn't expect to necessarily come on to talk about Poly Trade, which we've had planned for a long time. We do this pretty frequently on the day that Roger Ver was going to be here. But we're. We're definitely still thrilled to have you, man. Hey, can you just give us a test?
- [52:43]
PG
You can hear me? Hi, guys.
- [52:45]
Scott
Perfect. Awesome. Great. Yeah, we. We hear you. Great. So listen, obviously we want to talk a bit about Polytrade, of which you are the CEO and founder, I believe. So can you just tell us, give us the TLDR on what it is and why it matters? You guys are obviously one of the larger projects in the space with one of the larger narratives, which is real world assets everybody's been hearing about and being a marketplace for that. So very exciting timing for you to be building what you are. Yeah.
- [53:15]
PG
Thanks, Scott, and thanks again for inviting me here. I think it's important to understand how RWAs are shaping up. And we have been in this space for four years. And it's really interesting how one small action by BlackRock a few months back triggered the whole RWA space into the frenzy. We believe that that was just one event which triggered RWAs and we are going to see a lot of such events coming our way. Now, coming back to Polytrade. I started Polytrade in 2021, coming from Web2 background doing trade finance, realized that there was so much tokenization happening in the market, but there was no distribution whatsoever. Everybody was tokenizing, everybody was trying to sell to retail institutions, but there was literally no common marketplace or aggregated marketplace where people can come and buy and sell. Think of it like an opensea. You know, there was this NFT time when Nobody knew these NFTs and OpenSea came and suddenly the whole paradigm of NFTs changed. Exactly same as going through with RWS. Today, I can talk about more than 50 asset classes which are being tokenized by people, but literally there is no sale happening. There is no one common place where somebody can go and identify what are various tokenized assets. Polytrade has exactly stepped into the position where we are today listing more than 7,000 assets across 50 protocols, diversified across 11 chains. Our idea is very simple, that if, if we want to target retail, the retail should find a common place where they can buy and sell these tokenized assets. And we are still far from there, Scott. You know, there's still a lot of dominance from institutions, but we are seeing retail slowly and, you know, steadily coming in. So Polytrade is, you know, 2025. Polytrade is exactly where we want it to be. But yeah, that's, that's the TLDR on Polytrade. We are, we are in the business for four years. Brilliant team. We are based out of Dubai. Perfect place for us to, you know, bloom. Regulators are supporting. Everything is great here. So, yeah, happy to answer any questions around that.
- [55:26]
Scott
Well, I mean, you're arguably the largest RWA aggregator. I mean, is that the best way to describe it? And I would, yeah, I would say.
- [55:34]
PG
That there's no, there's no one place.
- [55:39]
Scott
So what kind of assets largely. Yeah, when you're, when you say an aggregator, what are the mechanics of that and, you know, what kind of assets are we talking about here?
- [55:49]
PG
So largely the market is, you know, currently centered around real estate, credit, private credit, as well as treasury bills. You must be knowing Ondo. Ondo is classic example where, you know, tokenized treasury bills have been gaining a lot of momentum. Then lastly, we have private credit markets, Centrifuge, Goldfinch, Maple, which were the OGs in this space. And now more innovative ideas such as green energy, climate. You can see a lot of commodities being tokenized. Now you have gold, silver, brilliant players like Paxos, which are actually quite big now. They are tokenizing gold and silver. We are seeing collectibles. Pokemon cards have Been, you know, since probably longest of the times. You know, tokenized Pokemon cards. Now we have tokenized watches. Now we have tokenized green EV vehicles. We are tokenizing, you know, solar power. We are tokenizing Bitcoin mining, we are tokenizing, you know, the AI driven these, you know, HBUs. And so, so much is happening in this space that we believe that the way to organization is growing. There will be a lot more asset classes which we use in our daily lives will be available on, on web3 on blockchain.
- [57:12]
Scott
That makes perfect sense. Thank you for sort of explaining that. I mean it seems like we're just at the very, very, very beginning of what can happen with, with this market. And I do generally believe that this is going to be one of the biggest narratives of this cycle and moving forward. I mean, what do you think about the level of adoption that we've seen so far in RWA space and where it's headed? Because we obviously had this kind of huge awareness moment I think in 2024 and now I think we're starting to see it actually bubble fundamentally and build.
- [57:49]
PG
So you know Scott, I would answer it in this way that you know, last, last one, one and a half year we have been so much focusing on supply side and typically, you know, probably that's the right approach making it an E commerce kind of business. You need to focus on supply side. Today we have as you again said, aggregated, largest aggregated marketplace. Today we have these 7,000 plus assets on our marketplace. Now 2025 we are just focusing on one thing that is distribution. And I would love to talk about exactly what we are focusing on when we talk about distribution today. AI is literally something which is not a fancy thing. It's as good as a requirement today. And the way AI is expanding, I mean whole cities talking about deep seq and whatnot, we are building a very streamlined AI agent network for distributing each asset class out in the market. So you will be seeing a lot of agents in coming days which will be selling specific RWAs with category, industry focus, geography focus, which will give you complete tldr exactly how these assets are tokenized, what are beneath them, how to redeem them, how are they valued, what are the nuances in Web two do you know a whole nine yards around it. And, and I think that is one of the biggest problems of RW adoption because people do not understand how what they are buying. See, if I tell you that there is an apartment in, in Dubai which is being tokenized by some protocol. Naturally if you're Sitting in some other country, you would have a million doubts about it. You know, who, who is holding that apartment on my behalf, who is the custodian there, who is going to collect the rent, who is going, who is going to sell it, who is going to pay the property taxes, blah blah blah. You know, if there is a repair, maintenance, all those things are currently being missing from the ecosystem and that's what exactly we are focusing on in 2025. Bringing a lot of transparency, bringing a lot of data on chain and making these tokenized assets actually understandable. So education is currently being missing from the retail space and that is the large problem today with our AI network, with our AI agents, we will be actually talking about specific pointers about each asset, each category so that users are more aware. And then, you know, slowly and slowly we hope that adoption will kick in. But that's our target for 2025. Scott?
- [60:15]
Scott
Yeah, I'm reading more deeply kind of as we go and listening to you. Did I see that you're working with MasterCard and some other huge name institutions like that?
- [60:27]
PG
I'm sorry I lost you for a bit in the last. But yes, I was saying that I.
- [60:33]
Scott
See you're working with MasterCard and some other large institutions. How did that happen and what does that look like?
- [60:39]
PG
So RWAs, you know, are, you know, always institution focus will be there. We were part of the start path, you know. So MasterCard runs this cohort in every year where they pick up around seven startups from crypto AI space who are doing some great things. We were lucky to be part of that Cohort. Last year MasterCard chose us. So we were winner of that cohort. We came out as a winner and we were the only startup today where MasterCard has actually built a DAP for their play store where Polytrade will be used by banks and institutional partners of MasterCard to tokenize any assets and list them on the marketplace. So that project has been done with MasterCard. Now we are actually almost monthly basis go to various partner banks of MasterCard and display our product to them. Tell them exactly how tokenization works, how fractionalization works, how can they actually tokenize their banking assets and bring them to retail use. And there are so many things which we are working with MasterCard on that side. So there is always an institutional game which is going on that Visa, MasterCard, both are quite actively participating here. They want to get share of the market in which they already hold in fiat world. They want to get the same capture in crypto as well. So Necessarily, they have to be ahead in the game. And I'm glad that we are so closely working with MasterCard on that. So MasterCard is completely targeting institutional side of play here.
- [62:10]
Scott
Okay, so another question, obviously you have this huge institutional play. What plans you guys have to make this more accessible to retail or usable for the average person? When does rw, RWA become to, you know, everybody who is participating in crypto and not just on the institution?
- [62:27]
PG
Yeah, I mean, you know, we can't, we are the ones who are waiting for it most. And as I said, you know, adoption is something which will happen only when a retail understands what they are buying. Unfortunately. Fortunately, you know, Web3 is still very speculative in nature. You know, they want to buy and sell assets like cryptocurrencies which are, which are probably promising them 100x returns. But at the same time, you know, the volatility is insane there. RWAs are not like that. If you're tokenizing a house, if you're tokenizing a corporate debt, if you're tokenizing a bond, you know, you don't see that kind of volatility. But then again, you, me, personally, almost everybody of us would be participating in buying fixed income bonds or stock markets or commodities or, you know, currencies in Web two world. All that is slowly creeping in Web three. And as, and as more infrastructure is getting built around it, you know, the more I would say oracles are getting built so that the price gets matched with actual stock price. So today if you want to buy a Tesla stock on chain, you probably will not buy because you don't know the information behind it. Who is the custodian? Where is this Tesla stock being? Hold on my behalf. What if I want to redeem it tomorrow? What is the process? Is the price exactly matching the price on the stock market? All those issues still exist in RWA space. And as we speak there are players who are continuously solving it. And our job will remain clearly to become the master distributor of these products. So we are distributing these products across, across the network. We are going web two, we are going web three, we are using AI network, we are going social media channels, Telegram, WhatsApp everywhere. Our agents will be present and talk about and distribute these tokenized assets. So retail is still yet to come, Scott, no doubt about that. But we are trying our best and hopefully 2025 will give us some numbers there.
- [64:22]
Scott
Right. And I know we're kind of running out of time, I want to be respectful of that. But there's also the trade token. Right? So that Seems like a more retail sided play, I would imagine. Right, so how does that play into the ecosystem trade?
- [64:34]
PG
You know, typically any defi protocol, if you look at the, you know, the underlying, the, the token, it captures the value in the protocol. Today, whatever capital we have raised so far, you know, it's all attributed to basically through token holders and whatever profits we are making. We have already done three buybacks of our profits which have gone back to the community in form of trade buyback. So we continue to do that in future as we make more and more revenues, all our profits will be used to kind of purchase the trade token. Other plans are such that we incentivize more and more users to use trade as a currency on the marketplace to get more discounts. We will be building insurance pools with people sticking trade so that they can give, you know, they can secure the product underneath whatever. You know, they're buying real estate or they're buying, you know, any sort of asset, they can secure it using trade pools. So yes, trade will continue to grow its utility as we, as we see more retail demand.
- [65:38]
Scott
Okay, so finally maybe you can share a success story or milestone that showcases what you guys are doing or what impact you guys have made just to kind of, you know, bring it full circle and explain how it's actually, you know, helping in the real.
- [65:55]
PG
I think, I think, you know, success stories, I would say my favorite story is still MasterCard in this whole play because the way, the way we have worked with them for last two years is great. But I would still like to focus on one thing, that last year more than 90 protocols across globe have partnered with us and they all understand that, you know, it's, it's the distribution business is something much bigger than an individual manufacturer. If you see how Amazon is Amazon today because it is accumulating all the assets at one place. All our 90 plus partners understand this. One of the biggest success stories I could tell you is that when we are looking at these high yielding products like Bitcoin Mining or GPUs doing this whole sort of AI work, I think these 30, 40, 50% APR opportunities, which do not exist today in the crypto world, will be big, mind blowing opportunities for people in the coming days. So I think the innovativeness around identifying these assets, making sure that we can onboard them, making sure that we are able to tokenize and fractionalize them and then there is a buying and selling market, global market. I think these are some key features which I'm really proud of and we look forward that each of these Modules will keep growing from here.
- [67:20]
Scott
So we got a wrap. Obviously, we're way over time here, but where can everybody check you out? You know, final thoughts. Where can they follow you participate? How can.
- [67:30]
PG
Thank you so much. So, yes, everybody can find us on. On Twitter. You can, you can know exactly what's happening with the company. What are our vision? We are about to release our roadmap for first quarter. So yes, you can look out all these things on our polite handle, which polited underscore fun. And you can join us, telegram handles. And please check out our marketplace because that's where the actual game is happening. So it's at app market. Polytrade app. My bad. So you can go to our app and check out what are the tokenized assets, how you can buy and sell them, which currencies can you use to do that. Once you buy it, you can actually wrap it and sell it again on the marketplace. So check out these features, be part of our leaderboard. You know, get. Get benefits in future and yeah, that's. That's more like it. Thank you so much, Scott, again for having me here. And talk about Polytrade.
- [68:29]
Scott
Awesome. Pg. Really appreciate you taking the time. I really do think that RWA is going to finally explode in this cycle. So I appreciate that you've been at for four years already.
- [68:40]
PG
Thank you so much.
- [68:41]
Scott
Absolutely incredible. So everybody, I encourage you to check them out. Yeah. And also if any of you missed it or want to go back to the beginning, it really was an incredible conversation with Roger Veer today. And I encourage you all to go check out now I can't remember. Free. Free Roger. What the. The website was there. We'll. We'll share it. I. My brain's not fully functioning today. And keep up with everything that's happening for him. Like I said, I. I don't really know the nuance of the case or tax law and there could obviously be something there. But I think it's also important that we recognize how powerful a voice and force Roger was to bring us to where we are with bitcoin and crypto. We really would not be here without him. And that maybe 110 years for tax issues is a bit excessive. And maybe there's something that we can do to help. Thank you, everybody. Really appreciate it. We'll be back with a more normal show tomorrow, of course. Thank you, everyone. See you tomorrow. Bye.