← The Wolf Of All Streets
The Wolf Of All Streets
Pay Attention! Is Bitcoin & Crypto’s Biggest Turning Point About To Happen? | Mark Yusko
00:43:46
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- [00:01]
A
It's time to start paying attention once again as the crypto, regulatory and legislative environment starts to heat up. Are we actually going to see the Clarity Act? And today we have the House Financial Services Committee meeting on tokenization of assets. I think it's fair to say that the technology is being adopted, but you have to wonder if it's also being co opted. I'm going to talk about that today with one of my favorite guests. Mark, you go. Let's go.
- [00:29]
B
Let's do. Let's do.
- [00:43]
A
What is up everybody? Good morning and welcome to the mountain region of Afghanistan where we're doing our show live today. I didn't know I'd have mountains behind me until it happened. They sometimes like to surprise me, but it's great. Feels, feels cozy. Mark, how are you? Are you in the mountains?
- [01:02]
B
You know I am not in the mountains. Although I was supposed to be heading to the mountains on Saturday but worst snowpack in America ever. So it's all gone and so we had to cancel. So we're just heading to San Francisco to hang out with my son and daughter in law which will be fun, but no mountains.
- [01:23]
A
Wants to go skiing. Yeah, I've heard that. I mean we. Yeah, winter skiing was, I mean Christmas skiing was ruined. It didn't happen. Spring break skiing was awful. Everywhere. It didn't happen. I think I blamed Trump.
- [01:35]
B
But I love the background. I love the new setup. It's amazing.
- [01:41]
A
So really quickly before we get into the news, I have some news and I'm feeling pretty good about this new setup now because I'm launching a new show with Yahoo Finance. I don't know if you saw this.
- [01:51]
B
Ah, but Bravo.
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A
Every day at noon. We're gonna start in two or three weeks, hopefully every day at noon. The Daily Wolf. It's gonna be a solo show. So like my Fridays where I just rant and rave about the top three stories of the day. Totally off the cuff. Yahoo making a big push into crypto. They're launching a Yahoo hub and this is gonna be the flagship show of that new push. So really excited people keep asking. It has nothing to do with my current channels. It's additive, not subtractive. So we're going to be doing everything we're doing.
- [02:17]
B
You know the only person who loses in that tra and not that she loses, but is your better 90% right? Because that's less time for her. But. No, I'm just kidding.
- [02:27]
A
It is. But it's noon. That's the thing is we're just going to plow through it, you know, do the whole morning, and then by 1pm we're in the mountains.
- [02:34]
B
There you go.
- [02:36]
A
Yeah. So listen, I want to talk about all things kind of tokenization, Clarity act right now. So this, you know, we have today the House Financial Services Committee. We'll host a hearing on tokenization in the future of capital markets. Yay. Right. I think. And we. We have a lot of news that there's been a settlement on stablecoin yield in the Clarity Act. A settlement means banks win, we get nothing. And it's like the. It's as big of gaslighting to me that this is a crypto bill as the Inflation Reduction act was gaslighting about.
- [03:06]
B
Well, but that's. That's the thing, Scott. Whatever the bill is called, it's the exact opposite.
- [03:12]
A
Yeah.
- [03:12]
B
Whether it was the Genius act, the Inflation Reduction act, the Patriot act, it's the exact opposite. And this has nothing to do with clarity. This has everything to do with regulatory capture, opaqueness, about. I mean, and look, I shouldn't. I shouldn't like, out her, so to speak, but, you know, Senator Lummis, I thought was on our team, and, and she actually acted like she was on our team for a very long time, and now suddenly she's this great supporter of this horrible bill, which means somebody got to her. Somebody.
- [03:51]
A
I mean, she tweeted a yield sign yesterday, and people took it as or like two days ago, and it was like, yay, yield. And then you see the news and it's like, no yield.
- [04:00]
B
No, it's. Look, it's. It's so crazy, but it's not unusual. And it's. It's the way it always has been is incumbents use regulation that they pay for. I love the fact that, you know, in. In, you know, your mountainous background, they call bribes what they are. Bribery. Right. Corruption In America, we call it lobbying, and we celebrate lobbyists, and we. We think it's great. No, it's. It's bribery and corruption and. And it's no different than, you know, you've heard me tell the story, the red flag law. Everybody's like, what are you talking about? Well, you've all heard red flag, right? Red flags ever, you know?
- [04:44]
A
Yeah.
- [04:44]
B
Well, it got passed when the automobile came to New York City, and the horse and buggy folks said, well, that's bad for us, so let's lobby. Let's pay the local administrators to pass a rule that would say if you had an automobile, you had to hire a human with a red flag to walk in front of you now. Have you ever seen that? Like, no, I haven't. And so it eventually goes away, and then they fight you phase. We're still in it. We're probably going to be in it for at least a couple more years. And my last thing on this, the aphorism is be careful what you ask for. You might get it. We all say we want regulatory clarity. Okay, no, we don't want regulatory clarity. What we want is actual regulations that help technology adoption, not regulatory capture.
- [05:40]
A
Yeah, it blows my mind. And now I see the coping takes where they say, we just need to get this done now and then we can change the bill later in our favor. As if they can't change the bill to make it worse. How many times we win in the future after it's passed and it looks bad that we're going to get some sort of favorable change. By the way, the government's about to probably become a bit more blue. That is not the direction that the crypto industry needs if they want more favorable legislation.
- [06:11]
B
And it's, and it's so interesting because I think there are a lot of smart people in our industry. I really do. I, I just don't understand why in things like this we, we just collectively get dumb. I mean, it's, it's just dumb to think that either party is on our side. They're, they're not. Right? They just want our votes. And all the things that were promised to us have not come to pass.
- [06:46]
A
And so how much bitcoin the United States government holds? Remember that?
- [06:51]
B
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
- [06:52]
A
An audit that was coming in a month. We're going to figure it out.
- [06:55]
B
Oh, look. Well, the craziest one on that again to piss off the army is the XRP nonsense, right? Where XRP went big blue and their candidate didn't get elected, and they're just like, okay, so shows up at Mar a Lago begging for some attention, and Trump's like, yeah, you're dead to me. You gave money to her. And he's like, well, I'll give more money to you. And he's like, oh, my friend. And now everywhere you look like xrp, well, you know, we're going to include that in the strategic stockpile. No, that just means whatever you seize, you're not going to sell, which is like 11 XRP. So I, I just, I, I, I struggle with why we think that we could achieve anything that we want when people like, you know, our buddy John Deaton gets obliterated by a woman who is the antithesis of all the people she supposedly represents, it just, it's just, it's, it's a corrupt system and, and you know, we have to do. We gotta opt out is the way you gotta do it.
- [08:07]
A
Yeah, listen, I'm of two minds of it because you can't get anything done unless you play the game. So I certainly understand why crypto companies have come together, created a lobby. There was a time in the last administration when it felt like the industry might get crushed. So they were basically forced into that position. Crypto industry didn't have a huge lobby and was not particularly political until they were kind of backed into a corner. And I actually even understand why they sort of backed both sides to some degree. Because you wanted to make sure that you had skin in the game with the winner.
- [08:39]
B
Yep.
- [08:40]
A
And I guess you can totally expect that they knew that whoever won, they could just push harder to that side and do particularly well. But like, we don't even know how much xrp, Cardano, Ethereum, Solana or Bitcoin the United States government even holds. We don't even know what that strategic stockpile is because we can't even get an audit on it.
- [08:56]
B
No, hey, we've been trying to audit Fort Knox since 1940 something, so why should this be any different?
- [09:03]
A
Yeah, the Clarity act, man. You know, I was gaslighted into a slight excitement there for a long time. I thought that it would pass. I don't know if you probably didn't, but I had a conversation with Chris Giancarlo recently and he basically just poo pooed all over the Genius Act. We just basically gave a CBDC to private companies and to the government. All of our fears about the cbdc, we doubled by not only giving the government full transparency into your transactions, but also private companies. And I'm not, I'm just saying that, you know, Scott.
- [09:38]
B
And only two private companies, both of which have to agree, do literally make a deal with the devil to only back their stable coins with US Treasuries. And oh, by the way, one of them happens to be partially owned by the Secretary of Commerce, which also happens to have ties with very. How should we say this? I'll just say shady banking institutions down in the Bahamas, which is where FTX was. And so it all go. And, and the, the worst part is again, blue and red. There's no, there is no blue red. There's, there's only purple or colorless or whatever. It's just in and out. You're in power or you're out of power. And when you're out, you want to be in. When you're in, you want to stay in. And so they all do the same things. And they've all been doing the shady stuff in the Bahamas with Deltec for decades, probably centuries. And, and it's just, it's just wrong and it's bad. And, and now we have this technology and people are saying, but, but Yuzco, this, this technology was created by those bad people. It's created by, you know, government agencies. That's certainly possible, you know, but the technology, like, like the Internet. The Internet was created by the intelligence agencies. Yes, it was Department of Defense, sure. But the Internet today, yes, it's, it's utilized as a surveillance tool and a monitoring tool, but there are good parts of the Internet that they lost control of because of the way it works. And the same thing with Bitcoin. And anyway, I digress.
- [11:27]
A
Well, speaking of those two stablecoin issuers, we have some news on them. And this one man, the Tether Truthers are in shambles. Tether signs Big four firm to complete first full audit. I don't know where the tether isn't backed by anything people are right now, but I would imagine cowering in a corner, wondering where their next engagement's gonna be.
- [11:48]
B
Well, yes and no. I mean, yes, they are, they are, they are a little nervous. But remember how the big, it's big four now because it used to be big eight and then turns out a bunch of them were corrupt. Remember how it works, right? You can pay extra to have the numbers work your way, right? You can be Enron and you can have a big, you know, at the time, big six auditor, and you just pay three or four times more and you get the number. It's like the old joke about, you know, you're interviewing the accountant. The first guy comes in, what's 2 plus 2? 4. All right, nevermind. The second guy comes in, what's 2 plus 2'? 4. Okay, you're out. Third guy comes in, what's 2plus 2? What number do you want it to be? You are hired. And that's kind of what this is, is. Yeah. Just because it's a big four firm doesn't mean they can't be bought and paid for. And people say, mark, that's slander.
- [12:47]
A
So I wonder, yeah, I wonder if this is like a historical audit or a current audit because I don't think anybody, and I love Tether, but I don't think anybody has any doubt that Tether is currently fully backed.
- [12:58]
B
Right.
- [12:59]
A
I think but you know, 10 years ago, what were they backed by? Maybe, you know.
- [13:05]
B
So look, Tether is an instrument of the government plan to maintain the petrodollar standard, right? I mean, we were on our way out, the dollar was sinking. And look, the Chinese, I think, are still going to win, right? The Chinese have now stated they want the renminbi not to be a world reserve currency, but to be the world reserve currency. Now they say, oh, but you can't do that because not convertible, it's going to be converted. They bought all the gold. Now Tether bought a bunch of gold too, which is logical because if you want to have a real currency, you have to back it by something and not have an empty Fort Knox. So I get why we went down. And Giancarlo's thing about the Genius act, it's all going toward a CBDC that ultimately like say a private company would control so that you can still sanction. Like what did Tether do the other day? Not the other day, the other, the other week when there were some Iranian. Iranian, before the conflict even started, there were some Iranian funds and they just walked in and seized them. That's the antithesis of everything we are fighting to build. And it makes me sad that that's. Again, be careful what you ask for. You might get it. That's, that's what we got.
- [14:33]
A
I guess in, in my view, if we want a silver lining this thing, if the Clarity act is such a train wreck and the Genius act potentially also was a train wreck, you have to imagine that defi adoption is going to skyrocket when people realize it because the yields still are out there in crypto. Not going to happen on the centralized platform.
- [14:51]
B
It will skyrocket. The problem is still the on ramp, off ramp, you know, challenges and the, you know, like you could say, I don't want to live under authoritarian rule. I don't want to be taxed, you know, unfairly. So I'm going to relocate, okay? But then what happens? They still come after you. Unless you go to the certain jurisdiction where they have a treaty and there's some payola. But everywhere you look there's this issue of, hey, if I. You put all my money in defi, but I go to pay for something like a piece of property or, you know, a large purchase or even a small purchase. I gotta somehow get back to Fiat, whether it's dollar, the yen, the euro, but he's still gotta come back to Fiat. And yes, I do believe in the future we will have a fiatless world like the biology kind of nation, stateless world. I believe in it, but it's not
- [16:06]
A
tomorrow that's from dead hands. Right. It's not like any of these entities, as we can see, that's even a whole other step. And nobody's giving up easily. We're seeing even what it just takes to banks to get on board with legislation. By the way, I'm old enough to remember when senators debated legislation and not industries. It's incredible to me right now that we headlines are like banking industry does not agree with legislation. Crypto industry. Or that Brian Armstrong, that big bald, beautiful badass, can like literally block a bill. Like, since when does Coinbase vote?
- [16:41]
B
I'm with you, baby. And since when in. Since when when you threaten to vote even though you can't vote. When you threaten, you get labeled by mainstream media. Wall Street Journal as, you know, public enemy number one. I'm like, really? I mean, come on. I mean, yeah, he's a badass, but there are some bigger public enemies out there.
- [17:06]
A
Oh yeah. I'm just saying it's like that somehow he sends one tweet and all of a sudden apparently he stopped an entire legislation. I just don't know how an industry stops legislation that it's like we're saying all the quiet parts out loud about where the influence is coming from that it's not supposed to be. And this is what happened to Circle stock yesterday, by the way on this news, that likely stablecoins would not be getting yield over a 20% down day. I don't think that has anything to do with people actually adopting Circle or using stablecoins.
- [17:39]
B
I think if you looked at the actual data, I don't know if it was yesterday or the day before or even the day before that, but we set a new record for USDC transactions.
- [17:53]
A
Usdt, I think.
- [17:54]
B
Yeah, I mean it was, it was an unbelievable number. And, and look, once you use a stablecoin, I would say, you know, once you use it on a Sunday morning in your pajamas, you're like, oh my God, this is so much better than cash. I mean I'm, I'm trying to send a wire again, old school old, a wire to a Cayman based fund. Right. Hedge funds have, have Cayman funds. And first of all they said, well, I need the Swift code. I'm like, oh my God, like, like literally you need, you need the facts like machine code. Okay, I'll go ask where they, where they wrote down on a piece of paper the Swift code. Okay, fine. Okay. How long is it going to take oh, two days. Two days. Like, are you going to walk it to the Caymans? Like, take a boat? I mean, two days. It's. It's insane. And then, of course, they charge me a gazillion dollars on. On a percentage basis. You know, it's not a lot of money in the. But, but, but it's just all so wrong. And. Okay, I made. I don't know if I told you the story on that, but I'll tell you a funny story about Swift, how bad it is and how antiquated it is. So we had an experience with one of our investors. They got hacked. And the hacker, literally, this is an amazing program, was somehow in their email. And every time they got an email that said, hey, we're making a distribution of one of your investments, it would send new wire instructions to a bank actually, believe it or not, in Kazakhstan. And so, you know, we get this email from the sender's email. We're like, okay, fine. So it routes through their bank in Australia. And so we call the bank in Australia when we figured out that the hack and. Or he figured out it was a hack because he didn't get the money and called the bank in Australia and said, well, could you help us track, you know, where it went? You know, what bank in Kazakhstan say, we lost the Swift message. Like, what do you mean? He said, well, we printed out the fax and we put it on this desk and the cleaning people threw it away. I'm like, you're lying. I mean, that's like. There's no backup of that fax code. There's no.
- [20:27]
A
I mean, to be fair, Mark, Swift transactions apparently have to go through the Straits of Hormuz. Ah, it's just closed.
- [20:36]
B
Yeah, it's just closed. It's just closed. And, you know, I know that's inconvenient for you, but. And then the worst part of it is because I'm sending money to the Caymans, I gotta pay tax to the European banker's family that I shall not name because then I get struck down. But I gotta pay tax because the bank of International Settlements set up a deal 400 years ago that says they have to get paid when money crosses borders, which again, if I send my money using usdc, I don't. I don't pay that tax there.
- [21:10]
A
And it's cheap and it's fast, and it's settled.
- [21:12]
B
And it's settled and it's permanent, and it's truth. And this is the part. And this, this is why I'm here, right I mean, I'm, I'm old. I'm, I'm not a techie. I'm, I'm the, I don't wear black T shirts. I'm, I'm not the guy who's supposed to be here. But the whole idea of getting away from trust, where I have to trust the accountants and the auditors and the actual bank, that they actually not only have my money, which I know they don't, because I know how fractional their banking works, but that they actually have the accurate record of my money and that an auditor isn't in cahoots with them to change it so that I don't have that money, which is no longer my money, it's their money. And that it can go on this permanent immutable ledger and I own it. Like I have digital property rights to that asset. That is a mind blowing phenomenon. And once, once you see it, you cannot unsee it, you cannot stop fighting for it, which is what, you know, collectively we're all doing. It is a beautiful thing. And it's an example, you know, like fire, like electricity, like, like basic innovations that change humanity. And Mark, that's, that's, that's, you know, you're prone to hyperbole. I know, but come on, that's hyper, that's hyperbolic. No, it's not. It. This is a humanity changing technology that is going to be at the base layer of everything, but it doesn't mean the incumbents aren't going to fight it. And that's.
- [22:54]
A
Yeah, I mean, I love this headline right here. I look at it and I'm like bullish, right? BNY Mellon CEO Robin Vince says large banks will lead crypto's next growth phase by linking digital assets to traditional finance. And I'm thinking, this is what we were cheering for. This is great. But then the other side of me says, bad.
- [23:15]
B
No, that sounds great. And it was well scripted by, you know, the writer. But no, that is Evil Corp. Right? And you don't have to talk about Mr. Robot the series. And Evil Corp is JP Morgan. It could easily be bank of New York Mellon, but it is JP Morgan. And Evil Coin is JP Morgan Coin. And pushing crypto into the banking system and just making banking Rails work on crypto technology is not what we signed up for because those are not permissionless networks. Those are permissioned networks. That is basically a better, faster swift, which I'm not really in favor of. And again, I'm not a person that wants to blow up fractional reserve banking. I know there are some that do, but I don't. I actually think there's benefit to lending money and that kind of stuff. But I think the idea that the banks that have been taxing us, I won't say stealing from us because we do get something for it, but they've been taxing us $7 trillion a year for a very long time. I think it's time to move on to a better, faster, cheaper system.
- [24:37]
A
I mean even Brian's here saying Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong says major banks are integrating stable coins for faster payments, tokenizing assets and offering crypto trading to clients. I think that's all true. I guess this all comes back to a. There was no way that Bitcoin becomes a global reserve asset or that crypto reaches true mainstream adoption without going through Wall street and government. Right, I understand that part. It's just a very dangerous passing to get through there without it being entirely co opted. I'm not talking about.
- [25:04]
B
No, as you said, it's the straightforward muse. It's narrow and we can't invest in this.
- [25:10]
A
Like how do I invest in BNY Melon being the like next great adoption wave? How do I invest in that? I buy Circle stock maybe, I don't know.
- [25:22]
B
It's not any token. Yes, you would buy Circle stock except Circle stock can be manipulated by headlines
- [25:31]
A
that and also I mean stablecoins I, you have to worry about into the future especially, especially publicly traded. And this is, you know, maybe we'll see others but like yields are going to come down. Like if is it isn't buying a stock in a stable coin effectively just buying a bond? It's like interest rate exposure. I mean it's like, you know, because most of their income obviously comes.
- [25:53]
B
There is a growth component because you can grow your transaction volume, right? That's, that's different than just having a base layer of transaction volume and a yield. You can, you can turn it into a growth company. But, but there is a, there is a, a you know, parabolic kind of slowing of growth of anything. And once you get to the ultimate end, the fees are going to continue to shrink and shrink and shrink and they spread. It's kind of like lending, right? The first person who wants to lend says I need to be paid 15%. And then the next person says well I'll do it for 14. And the next person says well I'll do it for 13. And finally you get down to like the lowest cost of capital, which is usually a German pension fund. They're like well I'll do It for two. Like. Well, two doesn't compensate. Compensate you for the risk. Well, it doesn't matter. I just, I need two to beat my actual assumed rate. So. Great. And so spreads compress and that's normal. So then what do people do? Well, then they lever those spreads to get back to the spread that people need to move off the couch. And then we get subprime blow up or now private credit blow up. And private credit is not as leveraged as subprime, but we'll see. Actually the real problem is those banks still have massive losses from all those bonds that they were stuffed during ZURP at 0 that now are worth much less at 5% and yields rising every day. So I don't know, I, I usually think, I always think markets do a better job setting rates than politicians. Crazy, crazy thought, I know.
- [27:45]
A
Do you have to go now by the way?
- [27:46]
B
No, I can hang out with you.
- [27:48]
A
All right, cool. I never know if people got to run at 9:30 because I don't do my diligence before the show and actually ask.
- [27:55]
B
Look, I'm super easy. One of the nice things about being a venture capitalist is it isn't like being an investment banker or a trader where market opens and hours go. And I guess investment banking is not the same either, but it's not like trading or asset management, you know. And part of it too is most of the people I talk to, they're still sleeping because it's in California. Some of them are getting up early because they're, they're doing the 5am thing, which I just don't.
- [28:28]
A
They're just getting up early to get in line at TSA PreCheck for their 3:00pm flight.
- [28:33]
B
Yeah. Yeah. No kidding. Yeah.
- [28:36]
A
I was in Houston on Sunday passing through and we got super lucky. We got on the little train and the guy told us, yeah, they had sent us. We landed in E, we had to, you know, clear customs. Then the line in E, when we checked, rechecked our bags was 5,000 people. I have no idea. And they were like, but do you have pre check? And we said yes. They said go to C. We have pre check at C. So they sent us to C. We got a little train. Luckily a guy was there, he's like, I just came from C. There's a four hour line. But they're sending me to A, and there's a five minute line for precheck. So we went A and we actually got through clear and precheck in five minutes and then had to go back to D for Our next flight, but we made it. And then apparently they completely hours later closed all pre checks.
- [29:20]
B
Really?
- [29:21]
A
Yeah, it's that bad. So we got super lucky. Flights were on time and we made it. But yeah, it's really, really ugly out there. So don't go fly anywhere, I guess maybe.
- [29:30]
B
Yeah. So I'm flying on Saturday but thankfully it is Raleigh Durham, which is, you know, not, not soup but, but it will be bad. You know, Raleigh's normally I say the worst airport in America because we have this weird woman who was like with TSA in D.C. and she just has these weird rules where there has to be certain distance between people. I mean it's, it's bad. So we're very slow, but. All right, thank you. I'll go earlier.
- [29:55]
A
My wife, maybe I'll be fine by Saturday. Maybe they'll reopen that part of the government or something.
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B
Oh yeah, that's good.
- [30:02]
A
Let me ask you this like since we have a couple of minutes as a vc obviously who's focused in this space? What's actually interesting to you right now?
- [30:12]
B
I mean certainly tokenization. You know, we, we were early investors in figure and, and I love Mike Cagney and everything he's doing and it seems like every day he's making an announcement with some new way to, to create tokenized assets, to trade tokenized assets, to list tokenized assets, to use them as collateral. Now it's a long adoption cycle but, but I, I think, you know, and, and, and look there are people on both sides of Securitize. I guess there's. I don't know, I don't know the whole story but there are definitely some lovers and some less enthusiastic people. But, but you know, Securitize seems to be making headlines every week as well. So I think, look, having an asset like a digital property, right is just better on chain than online or old school Paper like DTCC should not exist, right? There should not be physical pieces of paper sitting in file drawers in Dallas, Texas that needs to go away. So that is a big deal. Stablecoins and stablecoin payment Rails. So we've been doing a lot actually in Latin America in payment Rails and payment systems. And that has been really. And the amount of money that moves cross border because of like silly rules. Like you know, if you make the things in China, send it to Mexico, assemble it there and then truck it across, it's not made in China. Okay, fine, whatever. But that creates a whole bunch of businesses right on the border that need to send money across the border. And turns out stablecoins are just a lot easier. And that is a massive business. Or, you know, the remittances for, you know, contract workers on cruise lines. Right, that all go back to the Philippines. Right. I learned this a couple years ago that the vast majority of that industry is Brazilian and Philippine. Philip Filipino. So there are big businesses being built on that. You know, I, I'm still actually quite bullish on Coinbase. We are early, early investors and we have sold most of what we, we own at this point. But I, I'm becoming increasingly bullish again on, on what's, what's going on there and how. I think, you know, when I think about my original vision was someone was going to build the big four of the digital age, right? J.P. morgan, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, throw Wells Fargo in there. So Big five, someone was going to
- [33:07]
A
build that Robin Hood.
- [33:09]
B
They do, yeah. And so, you know, I, I think there are the beginnings and I really thought it was going to be the lenders, the digital lenders, but then they got shut down by the incumbents through, you know, many, many things that happened. And maybe you could say there was a conspiracy with FTX to sink them all. Maybe you could say that, but I didn't say it. Well, I've said it, but, but now I think it's maybe Coinbase. I thought Kraken maybe, but there's something weird with this delay with their ip. So maybe it's not Kraken, I don't know. But they have been building. I like Yoni Editoro, but I just don't know that. And Robinhood are interesting in that they've kind of created virtual Las Vegases and Etoro is a little different. The gamification of Robinhood to me is bad. Like one button, 100 times leverage and options, that's gambling. What Yoni's done with the copy trading is actually quite extraordinary because there's talent in the world of trade. I'm not that I'm a horrible trader, but he's got some very talented people on the platform and with one button I can copy them. That's very interesting from a lot of perspectives. So I like that. But I'll tell you who I think back to. Mike Cagney. He founded Sofi, and Sofi, I think, could be one of these in the sense that I think they're the closest to building the American Express of this generation. And American Express, I mean, if you look at the stock, it's been amazing, but it was the thing for a very long time. I mean Visa, MasterCard, great business is fine. But American Express was different. It was a club, it was a segment of population. If you had it, you were in. Right. It's like being an early Facebook invitee. So Sofi's kind of done that. And that network effect, that community value is real. Like chime. Probably similar tech, but they don't have the same panophobic.
- [35:43]
A
I've never even heard of chime. If that shows you what chime is
- [35:48]
B
times a great business. $10 billion company. Or at least it was 10 billion. It's probably not 10 billion anymore but. But it. I check it out. But it was. And I mean it's. It's an amazing business for. Anyway, I'll figure it out. But. But I think so far is there. So that's, that's a long rambling answer to. I do think financial services is going to exist. It has existed right. Since the Knights Templar. And, and I'm not making and like oh, there goes you sco down the Illuminati thing. No, it was literally the Knights Templar with the red crosses, the Portuguese monks, they invented this in the 1100s. I mean they figured out things like fractional reserve banking and using gold as your base for monetary transactions. And they did some other stuff too that wasn't as nice but. But that set the course for financial services. And the Medici's in the 1200s created modern banking as we know it. And I said that's at a good 849. Whatever year run that's over, I think. And the new era of banking I think revolves around DeFi and CEFI because I still think you need CEFI first centralized forms of eventually what will be DeFi. Because TradFi, they're just not ready for DeFi. Yeah, there are people that need someone to trust or someone to yell at, which that is. I don't want negative. I have one negative. And everyone has the same thing about Coinbase, right? So again, investor, I have an account for family harmony reasons and I have this account. And for some reason, not for some reason because I didn't put push the right button. I didn't set up auto draft of my invoices for my custody account, my cold storage account.
- [37:59]
A
You and me both, buddy. And you can't find out how to pay these damn things no matter how you try. You can't go buy and sell anything. And then all of a sudden you have to do customer service like you haven't paid your invoice. I'm like, how do you pay your Invoice.
- [38:12]
B
Yeah, show me. And. And then you. But there's no customer service. Yeah, yeah. There's no human that I can get to. And this is almost as bad. So in lockdown, my son and I started playing Pokemon Go, and I became, let's say, addicted to Pokemon Go. And my Pokemon Go account got frozen and literally got. It wouldn't work. And so I started another one. So my original one was. Got Bitcoin, and so I started. Got bitcoin too. So now my better account is got Bitcoin 2. And long story short, I was so pissed off about it, I set. I'm a Twitter shame the CEO, and I Twitter shame the CPC. And I said, look, for 17 months, I haven't been able to play this account. What is going on? I need to talk to a human, because there's no humans that you can get to at Niantic. And she actually came back to me, so I give her credit. She actually came back to me and said, all right, call this number. You will get a human. I got a human. They fixed it like that because it was just a glitch in the.
- [39:18]
A
Yeah, it's literally like one person had to push a button, but it took a year and a half. I mean, but,
- [39:25]
B
yeah, that was crazy.
- [39:27]
A
Anyway, yeah, I. I mean, yeah, to. To. I. I had the same experience. I don't know if it's because you forgot to push a button or whether you did or did not, but. Yeah, it's really hard to pay your money.
- [39:38]
B
No, it's. It's crazy. And. And I want to pay them. Right. And I, I. Okay, one other little glitch. I don't know if you had this experience, so I'm like, well, okay, I should be able to pay them with usdc, right? So I wanted to transfer USDC from my regular Coinbase account to my prime account. I copy the address from there from their link from, you know, inside, and I paste it in, and I. And I double check it, and I read all the numbers and I go, it says we've detected a potential scam. I'm like, that's your address. I mean, I'm. I'm sending it from you to you. I'm not sending it outside. I'm not sending. How could that be a scam? And they wouldn't process. I'm like, okay, so I had a
- [40:31]
A
thing with, like, USDC or USD payment and was trying to switch from one to the other, and it was a whole process. Yeah, it's not easy.
- [40:38]
B
And look. And I. And I know these are problems that will get solved, but I'm like, come on, guys, if. If I'm your client and you've already done all the stuff, right? You've already taken my photograph. That's the other thing. How many times do I have to hold up my damn face with my face?
- [40:56]
A
Proof of life.
- [40:57]
B
Yeah, proof of life. Like, I'm the same. Anyway, so it's. And the fact that I'm happy. As I'm doing this, my wife's yelling at me going, if you can't figure this out, how the fuck. And she doesn't mean that. I'm so smart. She's like, look, you actually spent time in this. If you can't do it, there's no way. My mom's going to do it, my brother's. No way.
- [41:22]
A
We're getting closer, but we're not ready for prime time yet. It's clear that's non specific to any one company.
- [41:30]
B
That's not a bitch session about Coinbase. I love Coinbase. I'm bullish. Coinbase. I just. Come on, guys, give me. Give me some humans that I can talk to. Not agent. Not agents. And don't hide the buttons. Like, let me. Let me just push the button to transfer you the money, then you'll get paid.
- [41:49]
A
Yeah, I mean, I just want to pay you.
- [41:51]
B
Actually, Scott, I even tried this. I even tried sending an email. Of course it wouldn't accept the email because it was to the automated. Whatever.
- [41:58]
A
Reply, don't reply to it. Don't reply.
- [42:00]
B
I'm like, just take the money. I give you permission to just take the money. Like, because, I mean, I don't know. I don't know how to. And it's not even a lot of money. I mean, it's a few hundred dollars.
- [42:14]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting that you had the same. Same experience. It's a bit frustrating, but otherwise incredible product. Well, now I'm gonna let you go. It's 9:45 and you have a flight Saturday, so you got to go get in line.
- [42:24]
B
Yeah, I gotta go get in line. All right. Hey, thanks for having me. Thanks. Thanks for everything you do. Thanks for being the leader out there and thanks for being the. The wolf that we all howl with.
- [42:35]
A
So thank you, sir. I deeply appreciate it and I'll have you back very, very soon. Thank you, everybody. I will see you tomorrow.
- [42:42]
B
All right, be good. Let's do. That's dope.