← The Wolf Of All Streets
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Transcript173 lines
- [00:00]
A
And so I. It was. I. I can't remember those payments. I would do something and they would just send it to, you know, your trust wallet address. But I had. Didn't. Had no thing of words. You know, I didn't have the words. I still was just open in my. My phone.
- [00:15]
B
I could still get them from. But you can. If you're in the wallet, you can go get your seed phrase.
- [00:20]
A
But that's if you're it. But I didn't know that at the time. So months later, I don't know, I. I got a new phone, phones. So everything was logged out. I couldn't find it for a year and a half.
- [00:34]
B
You found it.
- [00:35]
A
No idea where it was at until one day I was in my files in my phone, like the folder files. And all of a sudden I'm like, what? And I see a picture of him. Like, I go into it, I input the words. I had 120 and sitting in there. That's dope.
- [01:13]
B
Once he's recording, it might be. How much do you weigh?
- [01:16]
A
About 250.
- [01:17]
B
Thank you. Take him.
- [01:20]
A
I mean, it wouldn't. That wouldn't be my. You know.
- [01:25]
B
What do you find out? Like 160. 100 and 170. Yeah. How's that work? Like, what's the process?
- [01:31]
A
Because obviously, well, for me, I'm like, I'm in a little different spot than most people. You know, I've kind of been there, and at this moment, it's kind of like, do I want to still continue to do this? And so I kind of have my pick of when I'm. I'm ready to come back, because I am. Everybody, we're all indispensable. You know, the company can get rid of you when they want, but if they still see value in you, then I'm kind of in that spot to where they still see value in me. And I have to decide if I really want to chase that again. Because you don't want to hang around here if you don't want to be a champion. No one really likes getting beat up, even though the paycheck is not.
- [02:11]
B
Looked like Mike Tyson liked getting beat up.
- [02:14]
A
Paycheck. Like I said, paycheck wasn't bad.
- [02:16]
B
I'm saying he was eating his gloves so he wouldn't punch him in the face. Yeah.
- [02:20]
A
But, yeah, thanks for having me, man.
- [02:22]
B
That makes sense, though. Do you think that everybody in your industry, all the fighters go through that phase where they kind of question whether it's worth it? Because, I mean, it's not. I can't even imagine how difficult it is.
- [02:34]
A
Absolutely. I think they are. We all do that, and I think you're in it. It's rare to just, you know, skate by. This is kind of not that type of sport where you skate by, because at some point, you're going to run into someone who is on a path to try to be great, and you don't want to catch those guys if you're just that guy who's just trying to scrape by, because those guys could definitely ruin your day. And in that quest, it's like you have to decide if I do I want to chase the greatness, do I want to do everything possible to get there, or do I want to, you know. And this is not the right kind of sport to you know, kind of just, yeah, let me skate by and try to just win the next one. Win the next one.
- [03:17]
B
Might end up dead.
- [03:18]
A
Yeah. Something bad might happen. Yeah.
- [03:21]
B
When you're in those in between phases, like now, kind of deciding what you want to do, do you have to stay in shape, ready for next week? Or is it really, like, you make the decision and then, okay, I'll get it together for the next few months.
- [03:36]
A
That's a good question. I ran into a lot of fighters, and a lot of them don't. Once they get to a certain level where the fighters get to a certain level and they feel like, oh, I know enough, all right, I have a fight now. Now let me go into a training camp where. Which is 6 weeks, 8 weeks, 10 weeks, and in between. Which there is time in between, they really not doing anything. But I've never been that type of guy. Once I got in, I was all in. This has been my life now for. I mean, combat sports has been my life now since I was 13 years old and I'm about to be 38.
- [04:09]
B
I still got 10 years on you, though.
- [04:11]
A
Yeah. Look good. Yeah.
- [04:13]
B
That's the beauty of not having a real job.
- [04:17]
A
We all dream of that one day.
- [04:18]
B
Keeps you young. How'd you get into it at 13? I mean, that's a extremely young age and kind of means you grew up with the sport because it's not like UFC was huge 25 years ago. Right. That's basically was when it was really in its infancy.
- [04:31]
A
Yeah, I didn't really know about it. You know, I was a wrestler. I wrestled in high school, wrestled in college, and it was in college where I watched my first UFC event. Crazy enough, me and Jon Jones were at the same. We went to a house party in college, and we were at the same place where we watched the fights. And I think that was also maybe his first introduction to seeing MMA in ufc. And I was always like, ah, I'm not gonna do that. Really? Yeah. Cause it was. I mean, it's scary looking at, like.
- [05:09]
B
These guys are kicking each other. Cage. Yeah.
- [05:11]
A
Guys are kicking each other. Throwing elbow. I don't know if I want to do that, but, you know, natural progression. We just wanted to continue to compete. And when wrestling, we're kind of hitting.
- [05:23]
B
That ceiling for wrestling, wrestlers don't get knocked out.
- [05:26]
A
That's not true. That.
- [05:30]
B
Yeah, but you know what I'm saying, it's not the striking isn't there. It's a whole nother level of.
- [05:35]
A
Yeah, I mean, as a wrestler, you have the. If you're a high level wrestler, you have the ability to control the real estate of a fight. And so if you're getting hit too much, you can take him down. Or if you have a guy that clearly wants to take you down, you could stop them and keep the fight on your feet. So wrestlers essentially control the real estate of a fight, but nowadays the sport is changing. So, hey, you got guys now that come in and just beat up wrestlers.
- [06:02]
B
Yeah, I'm sure.
- [06:03]
A
Yeah.
- [06:04]
B
But how do you keep up with that? You know, if you're gonna come back and there's, you know, guys who have new techniques, new styles that you maybe haven't even seen before. How do you prep for that?
- [06:16]
A
Like, well, like I said, it's. I'm not one of those guys who, oh, I have a fight now. Let me train, get ready. You know, I'm always still in the gym. I'm always, you know, I'm always observing. I see what's going on, I see the new stuff. Even though I might not be able to do the new stuff, I still see some of the crazy things that these guys are doing now. So I'm aware of. And so it's just, you know, it's. I'm in that phase where it's like, of your life where you're thinking, okay, what's next? Because this is gonna stop one day. And when this stops, what are you gonna get into next? What are we gonna. What are we gonna look at? What are we gonna do? And there's a lot of new things popping up here and there, Here and there. And so also as a man and as a businessman and an investor, you always want to make sure that you know what the next avenue is and what the next phase of life is. Going to be.
- [07:11]
B
Let's talk about that, because I've met so many athletes who have no clue and then either get hurt or something happens, and they're in their 20s, and they have nothing to fall back on, no ideas as to what to do next. As you said, you're an investor and a businessman. So what are you building for the future?
- [07:29]
A
Well, we're trying to build a couple of different things. I own my own mixed martial arts promotion in Nigeria. Well, in Africa, it's called African Knockout Ako. But mainly we started in Nigeria right now. We have fighters from, I think, over 16 different African countries right now. So we're growing that. And right now, with the premier fight promotion, mixed martial arts promotion in Africa. And so we want to grow that as big as possible to get these fighters and notoriety, or just these men and young men and women, the notoriety to be able to ascend into the UFC or somewhere else that they can really change their lives and their. Their families lives. Yeah, I'm building that. And also investing. I've dabbled into, you know, real estate, of course, cryptocurrency. We've, you know, we've stuck our toes in, we took our toes out, we put a whole foot in there. We almost got cut off, and we. So, yeah, it's a life, I guess. It's a. It's here to stay now. So I think it's a lifelong journey of understanding that. That place, man.
- [08:42]
B
I got into crypto in, like, 2016. We were talking about it a little bit before I came as a trader. I didn't care about any of it. I was just trying to make money. Right. Hit that first bear market after making all this money, which was easy. I thought I was a genius. But really just good timing. And then I had to, like, back into caring about it because I was losing so much money that I was, like, had to cope. Like, why am I here? And I actually kind of really fell deep down the bitcoin rabbit hole and everything and stuck with it. But it's funny, even when you talk, we're talking about thinking about whether you want to fight again. I can't tell you how many times everybody I've talked to in crypto is like, maybe this isn't for me anymore. And it goes up and it's all good, and you ride the wave. It's kind of similar, right? I mean, we're not getting our asses whipped.
- [09:25]
A
Yeah. I mean, only financially is that roller coaster.
- [09:28]
B
But you're in it. You've done crypto, so tell me about. I want to hear your. I want to hear that roller coaster.
- [09:33]
A
Yeah, it's. It's been a roller coaster there. You know, it's funny, I saw this meme not too long ago of this guy. He looked. He looked. I don't want to say homeless, but he looked like he was on. On the. On the street. And he's sitting there and I don't think. Did I. I think I should showed you this. So he's sitting there and. And there's the garage like this. There's a door behind him. He's sitting right by the door. He's just on the street and he has, like, a bag of chips next to him and a little can soda. The door is kind of cracked a little bit to where you can only just slide your hand in and out. I think the guy was trying to grab his soda and it accidentally rolled in there, but then rolled. That comes out a 2 liter. And the guy looks at it. He's, like, excited. And then he takes some money out of his pocket. He had like, maybe a dollar. He puts it in there and like a hundred. Like, the guy gives him $100k, then he puts his chips in there, and then a bigger bag of chips comes in. Then he just empties out his pockets, everything that he has, and he slid it all in there, and the door closes. And it was just like. This is truly the definition of crypto right here. And that's. That's kind of. I don't want to say all the way, but that's kind of been my journey with crypto. I got in, I want to say, 2017.
- [11:08]
B
You were right there.
- [11:09]
A
So it was. I remember getting a call from my brother that he goes, hey, there's this new thing. It's crypto. Hey, open up an account. Coinbase. Open up an account right now. Hey, look at this thing. And it was the three major ones. Bitcoin, ethereum, and litecoin. And he goes, look, right now, this was just at 2,500 yesterday, yo. Definitely put some money in. And I just got into the ufc. I'm a year and a half into the company now. I'm fighting small checks, right? But I'm making a living. I can survive. I'm like, okay, let's. Let's try this. All right? Threw 500 in there because that 500 was steep for me. Threw that in there. And the next day, I think it was at 20 something. 2,800. Next day, like, at 3,200. I'm like, let me Slide my chips in there, man. So I put another 500 in. The next day, it goes to, like, 4800.
- [12:19]
B
I remember that, man.
- [12:20]
A
I'm like, oh, my God. Free money. This is easy. And I think I ended up putting in another two grand. Keep in mind, I'm fighting once every six months. I win the fight, you make 20 grand. I just put three. That's before taxes. That's before the 20% team management fee. So I just put three grand in there, and I watch it get up to, like, maybe eight, nine grand or something like that. I'm like, all right. So at this point, I'm checking it every day. I'm like, oh, I'm making free money. Free money. Free money. Refresh, refresh, refresh.
- [12:59]
B
Yeah.
- [12:59]
A
And then I'm like, all right, I did a good thing, smart guy. I'm an investor now. And I just left it. I think I went somewhere for the weekend, and I come back and it's. Because at that point, it was the talk of the town.
- [13:17]
B
Yeah. That's when I was starting to actually become mainstream.
- [13:21]
A
Yeah. And, I mean, everyone's talking about bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and then, of course, you hear the other side of it all. The government can't regulate it. So, yeah, this is a new wave. It's a new currency. Everyone's getting rid of dollars and all of this. I bought into that a little bit because I'm purchasing this with actual money, with my actual dollars, even though I have to. You have to convert. If you want to pull money out, you have to somehow convert it. But for me, I'm like, this is the new wave. This is what's going to happen. And so I'm just. You know, I come back from the weekend and everyone's talking about it because now we're going downwards. And I'm like, oh, I'm still up. There's nothing. I'm still up. So I tried to ride it out another week. Now that three grand that I put in has turned into $1,200. I was sick. I was upset. I was like, no, get out.
- [14:19]
B
Get out.
- [14:19]
A
Get out before I lose it all. So I started selling.
- [14:22]
B
That had to be the bottom because you always.
- [14:24]
A
Yeah. And I started. I thought it was the bottom, so I just sold. And I was like, I lost money. I lost where? Like, maybe almost 1600, almost 1800. I'm like, all right, you know what? I learned my lesson. You're not an investor. Don't do it again. So I get out. But this is still the wave. Everyone's still talking about this thing to the point where I'll be in somewhere with business guys, and they're talking about this, oh, this is gonna be. This is crazy. And real guys that really are watching the markets, the stock markets, and they're talking about this new thing. Oh, it's gonna die out. It's gonna be this, it's gonna be that. And so I knew it was something big, but I just didn't know how big. You know, at this point now I'm starting to make a little bit of money in my career a couple years later, and people are telling me, like, you know, you look, you'll have friends that actually are in the markets and they'll tell you, yeah, the time to buy is when it's low. Yeah, this is going to be the thing of the future. And they said, oh, you should invest in it a little bit. You know, they tell you what is like a certain percentage that you should invest?
- [15:37]
B
Yeah. A lot of people say 1%, 3%, 5% of your net worth in bitcoin. Yeah.
- [15:41]
A
So I'm like, you know what? I'm making a little bit of money now. That $1600 loss wasn't that bad. Well, it was bad at the time.
- [15:50]
B
Right.
- [15:50]
A
But at this point, I'm making a little bit of money now. So you know what? Let's do this. So I signed up to where it'll be automatic draft, 500 every month. Just go in there. So I'm like, all right, let's do that. And I forgot about it. And I think it was maybe 10 months. And then I looked, and the price, because the prices were steady for a while, the price kind of started to swing back up. And we all know how volatile it is, because it'll be a dollar go up a dollar one day, and then the next day it's maybe, you know, 80 to the point where it starts taking a second spike. And now I'm like, I knew it would be back. I knew it even though I didn't know it. And it shot up again. And then I threw more money in there. I didn't learn my lesson the first time. I kept throwing more money in. I threw more money in, and then it went back down.
- [16:50]
B
And this was specifically in bitcoin.
- [16:52]
A
In bitcoin, actually. So at that time, litecoin didn't really move a lot.
- [16:58]
B
Yeah.
- [17:00]
A
And so I threw some money in litecoin, but I think I had maybe like 20 litecoins. And that was way back when it was cheaper But I just. I was like, oh, that doesn't move. I just. I don't even worry about that. I worried about bitcoin, because that was the big, big guy. And then you started to learn a lot about Ethereum and all the different blockchains that are connected to that. That specific blockchain. And so I'm like, okay, Ethereum is gonna move, but it's not moving like bitcoin. And so threw a little bit into that, and I rode the bitcoin wave for a little while, and then I got hit again, and I didn't. But this time I didn't sell. I said, okay, it is what it is. I don't necessarily need this money right now, so I'm just going to ride it out. And I wrote it out for a couple of years while it just kind of stayed normal. And we're back now. I mean, Trump gets into office, and right away we start. But the crazy thing, the one thing that I left out in there was during that process of it just those couple of years of it just being a steady price, I. I started to take payments in. In crypto.
- [18:19]
B
I was going to say, I saw that you, like, once got a fan award, and it was like, 20 grand.
- [18:23]
A
Yes. So that. Yes. So at that point, I'm like, award 20 grand. And I would have to do an appearance somewhere, or I'm like, will you guys pay me in crypto? Because I don't really need that money right now. I don't need that cash. So, yeah, let's go ahead and throw it in there. And so I just throw it in and throw it in and throw it in. And I didn't really pay too much attention to it because at this point, I didn't need it. And then it starts. We get a new president, new government, and then it just. And I looked and I was just.
- [18:56]
B
Like, thank God you stuck with it.
- [19:01]
A
Yes.
- [19:02]
B
You know what I hate, though, is the calculation in your mind of what you could have had if you had just done nothing in the first place. I tell this story all the time, but my wife. So when I got into crypto in, like, 2016, 17, Dogecoin was a thing. But that was before it became Elon Musk mainstream everywhere. And it was just a meme. You traded, like, and it would just do a 15x, come all the way back down, do a 15x. So we trade. You know, I had a couple thousand bucks back then. You throw in two grand, sell it when it was 12, come back down, buy two grand, sell it when it Was 12. But you never. You had to trade it against bitcoin. There wasn't even a dollar value. It was so low, you know what I mean? And one day, so I sold it and whatever. And then when it went up like a penny, I was like, it's never going higher than that. That's a dream. And then Elon Musk got a hold of it. It went to like 75 cents. Right. And my wife was like, do me a favor, go back and do the calculation. If you had just like, never sold any of the dogecoin, you had bought 2,000 bucks at the time. It was like 40 million. I made like 15, 20 grand, 25 grand on it. And to be fair, like, I never had like a deep belief in dogecoin like I do in bitcoin or anything. But it does teach you the lesson that if you just have the conviction and you stick with it the whole time and just didn't look at it, I mean, you did the best when you didn't look at it. Yeah, I have a friend who always tells me, he's like, the best performing accounts in the world are the dead people at Vanguard or Fidelity or one of them. He's like, they die and nobody takes over their account and nobody realizes and it just goes up and they're not messing with it. And so it's the best performing accounts literally in the market.
- [20:36]
A
It makes sense. The thing, though is I wasn't knowledge, especially in the crypto space. I wasn't knowledgeable enough about the other coins. So I knew there was something attached to Ethereum. Everything can go away. I mean, nothing.
- [20:49]
B
The stock market proves that on a daily basis too, by the way.
- [20:53]
A
Yeah, but so with Ethereum, there was a function for it. Things were tied to that. So that necessarily is not likely to just go away overnight. And then Bitcoin, with the way it surged, it came out, and it's the leading coin out there. There to where it's like, okay, that's going to be here for a while. And of course, we know that we're in the digital age to where things are kind of transitioning into that this was something that was going to really be potential currency, because right now it is a currency that's around the world. It's just one currency. And so it is something that's very strong and powerful and it's going to be here for a while.
- [21:42]
B
The level of legitimacy that it's gotten over the past few years for someone like me, who was the crazy person screaming at everybody that this could become a legitimate thing. It's almost, like, surreal. It's almost unbelievable. You have president talking about it, a strategic bitcoin reserve. You have ETFs. Like Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, the biggest asset manager in the world, trillions of dollars, is literally saying it could become the global reserve currency if the dollar keeps inflating. It's just like, I don't know if this clicked. I don't know what that means for the price, but the fact that it's on every show. You were early to it, right? I mean, it's got to be nuts to see it at this point.
- [22:18]
A
Oh, yeah, Extremely nuts. But to me, honestly, still. And I. And I know there's still a ton of people who feel this way, we still don't understand it because they're saying there's. There's only so certain amount of bitcoins out there. Who's. How. How is that? Is it. Is it. Is there a gold where it's just a bank, where it's just gold, you know, in there, or they're saying there's just only a certain number out there? So if there's only a certain number out there, and we're dealing with the digital age, where everything's digital, where it's just your account goes up or down, we're dealing with that. And now there's this thing of mining. What we hear of mining. How does that happen? How are you mining bitcoin? How does that happen? And I'm sure everyone wants to know, how does that happen? And what does that mean for just basic bitcoin or cryptocurrency?
- [23:11]
B
Yeah, I mean, there'll only ever be 21 million Bitcoin, no matter what. And most likely about 5 million are lost from those early days when people had old laptops and hard drives that got burnt. And the first wallet has a million, and that's never been unlocked. So you got to figure you're really talking about 16, 17 million bitcoin total, and there's only just over a million left to be mined. So what mining is, is at the most basic level, is literally just solving a really complex mathematical equation, a math problem. But it requires a lot of computers and a lot of electricity to solve that problem. Like, you and I couldn't do it. And so miners are competing to solve that problem. And every time, about every 10 minutes, that problem is solved. Whichever computer, whichever miner solves it, they get bitcoin as a reward. And so every four years, the reward gets cut in half. And that's how you eventually only get to 21 million and there's none left to be mined. So it's really complicated. Mining is kind of the wrong term, but I think they probably did that because people understand digital gold and they know that gold gets mined. But no, it's just. It's a math problem that gets solved and the reward is a bitcoin. And then that bitcoin, eventually, if they buy it or sell it or distribute it, ends up on exchanges and in our hands, really. So every four years it gets cut in half. How much they get paid to. To mine to solve math problems. But so you think about that. Even if a basic understanding of supply and demand, if the supply is getting. The new supply is getting cut in half every four years and the demand even remains the same, only one way price can really go with time, right? Yeah. And most people don't understand it at all, but they do understand something being scarce.
- [24:47]
A
Yes.
- [24:48]
B
If you trust that that is the case.
- [24:50]
A
That's. I mean, obviously that's the. That's the exact word is trust there. Because you have to trust that this is what they say it is. There's only 21 million. Okay. So that means if everybody wants it, everyone's storing money in there. This price is going to continue to go up. So when you have companies like Coinbase or all these exchanges. Exchanges to where? So we're giving them money for them to give us a piece of those.
- [25:20]
B
Bitcoins, they're just making fees off us, trading it together. I buy, you sell. They make their little fee on it. Just like the stock market, you know. So that's their business and it's a huge one. It's just based on volume. Right. And then you get into the other exchanges outside the United States where they have leverage and you can like 10x50x, you know, I can use a thousand and turn it into 100,000 and they all lose their money. Those people make you a lot more money.
- [25:47]
A
Wow.
- [25:48]
B
Yes.
- [25:49]
A
We all lose our money.
- [25:50]
B
That's right. But at the end of the day, the lesson is just like buy some and hold onto it. I told you, I went through all the trading phases, all the speculating, messing with all this stuff. At the end of the day, you realize you're just in a big ass casino. And it's worse than Vegas, really, because with anything other than bitcoin, it's more centralized. Somebody controls. Bitcoin is beautiful because Satoshi Nakamoto, whoever that may be, created it and left. So there's nobody that can manipulate it, Nobody who can change it, nobody who can do anything really, otherwise.
- [26:22]
A
So they say the other ones are.
- [26:23]
B
Kind of like, no, they can't. I mean, that person could come back, theoretically, and unlock that million Bitcoin. That would be the only thing that they could do. But there's no way to change the actual algorithm, really. It's literally perfect.
- [26:36]
A
Okay. And now, obviously, with me being a fighter and doing what we do is. The UFC clearly has gotten into the space as well with their partnership with crypto.comvechain v.chain. i got to spend a little bit of time with Vechain and some guys there to kind of try to understand that a little bit more. And, I mean, it sounds fantastic what they're doing. If this is really what it is, where this is kind of where the way the world is moving towards 100% and VeChain, through their different apps and programs, are willing to create platforms for us to still be able to function and function in society properly and be rewarded in that way. I mean, I think it's fantastic.
- [27:28]
B
What they've built is absolutely brilliant. Because you want to do good, right? Like, everybody. I talked to Dana White about this yesterday. He's an advisor now for them. But, like, I think everyone agrees that, like, you don't want to swim in the ocean and have plastic, like, floating around next to you, right? So whether, like, you think environmentalism is bullshit or global warming people, it's all political. Everybody wants to not, like, swim in trash, right? So there's a basic understanding. And if you can collect that and even just get a little reward, it can be money, or you could think of it like a Starbucks point, like, whatever, it is a reward for doing that. Who wouldn't do that?
- [28:06]
A
Absolutely right.
- [28:08]
B
And then if you're not trading it and you're not trying to speculate it, you're not putting your money into that. You're just earning it. So anything you get is a reward, right? And so I think they've really, like, hacked the best use case for the technology.
- [28:25]
A
And I mean, I think that's incredible. Obviously, with we live in just the media world right now, I think getting that out is kind of like the thing, because obviously, with the partnership with ufc, yes, UFC is going to help do that with all of the fans that actually watch in ufc. Because. And another reason why I think this is great is because obviously, the biggest thing that we wanted that in this world is opportunities. Most people just don't have opportunities or get opportunities. And, you know, you might Wake up. And you might want to work hard and say, yes, I'm ready to work hard, but there's no jobs for you to work. And so with something like this, if I can. If it's just an application that I can have on my phone and I can go around and earn at different places and doing different things and doing different tasks, that obviously helps benefit the world as well as a whole. I mean, I think it's fantastic. And for me, I still need to be brought up to speed on how to really utilize that because, I mean, I still don't necessarily know. Necessarily know how to utilize it, to be honest.
- [29:40]
B
Like, most of it hasn't gained traction where almost anybody knows how to.
- [29:45]
A
Right.
- [29:45]
B
I was talking to Sunny from V Chain about that and it was like, I've been here since 2016. When are we going to see one of these things become the thing? We have bitcoin, obviously that's now, I think, well established. It's all over the place. And you have stable coins, which are just dollars, and everybody understands that. Right. It's just a dollar on a different rail. But all the other promises of blockchain, the technology still haven't really caught that real tipping point.
- [30:11]
A
Right. I mean, what do you think is, how do we get there?
- [30:15]
B
I think that this is definitely one of the things that they've built. I think there's a few avenues. I think gaming makes a ton of sense for blockchain technology. Like, kids are spending thousands of dollars in Fortnite. Imagine if that went into an asset like the shield you bought or the sword. You could actually trade it with somebody for money. That makes a lot of sense to me.
- [30:35]
A
Absolutely.
- [30:36]
B
But at the end of the day, I still think at the core, the best use case is freedom from the system to whatever degree. You know, Americans don't get that. You're from Nigeria. You know, Nigeria is a top five country for bitcoin adoption in the world. Because you have youth, they're tech savvy. Oh, yeah. And you have inflating currency. So we live in this sort of, you know, glass house. Everything's perfect here. We can send money, but I've also tried to send somebody in Africa like a 20 wire. You can't do that.
- [31:07]
A
No.
- [31:07]
B
But I can send him a stable coin in five seconds. You know, if I can send you 30 cents in five seconds for one penny using crypto. And so in Nigeria, it's absolutely exploded.
- [31:19]
A
Right.
- [31:20]
B
Bitcoin's extremely, extremely popular there.
- [31:22]
A
I mean, I've been hearing a lot of things about it. But I haven't been there long enough to start to really utilize it. But I mean, it only makes sense. I mean, if this is really the true currency that we're. Because we. Obviously there's a currency war every day, and even right now, more so than ever.
- [31:43]
B
Crazy.
- [31:44]
A
And so if bitcoin is really, truly the one true stable currency, it only makes sense.
- [31:53]
B
And there's one opportunity right now. I still think that. I actually think that right now, even though we all bought it at 2000 and 3000 and 5000, back then it was more of a lottery ticket. Like, you really felt like it could go to zero. Maybe governments would ban it, maybe all those things. So even though the price is higher, I think the best risk reward right now. Because you know that it's accepted now, right? I think it's a great price. Personally, I'm buying it here. You know what I mean? Like, maybe. And I still tell people I think it's a good idea long term because I think it's going way, way higher. Let me ask you, though. You got paid 20 grand a couple years ago in bitcoin. Did you sell it?
- [32:30]
A
No, I did not sell. Well, I'll tell you what I did. I got the 20 grand. And this is before the current administration came. So I got the training just in time. Boom, 20 grand. My God, $20,000 in there. All of a sudden, administration comes in. 26 grand. Within a matter of, I want to say, a day or two, couple months. Boom.
- [33:00]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [33:02]
A
26. 26 grand. I'm. Yes, I'm loving life, you know, I'm like, you know what? Let me go ahead and transfer some of this. So I put it in my wallet and. But in that I left. In that I left about. I want to say, two grand in there, and I just left it. And then here comes these new coins that are skyrocketing right away. And I'm like, huh? Let's. Let's try it. You know, we've never really gambled with these, but let's try it. These, these. It flew from one.
- [33:40]
B
Remember what they were?
- [33:42]
A
Yes, we know what some of them were. We don't want to say what some of them were, but boom, they drop in there. $10, $20, $25. I'm like, Whoa, in a couple of days. Yeah, let's do that. So I started getting that out of that two grand. I'm getting out and buying those ones with my bitcoin.
- [34:04]
B
At least you're only doing it with that two grand, though.
- [34:07]
A
And then that's what I was introduced to, what a pump and dump is.
- [34:11]
B
Yeah. Welcome. Welcome to the party.
- [34:14]
A
And within the weekend, I had lost 1400.
- [34:21]
B
Yeah. I was just like, wow, they meme coins.
- [34:24]
A
Yeah. Yeah. What just happened?
- [34:27]
B
Were you messing with, like, Haktua and.
- [34:29]
A
Oh, no, I. That. I. I did hear of that. And I was just like, how is that even possible? Like, who. Who is.
- [34:37]
B
There's a team that was going around convincing celebrities, governments, like, the Argentina thing, like, literally convincing them that they were going to build something serious and then basically programming it so they could just get the bulk of the coins and sell them off immediately, right as people were buying them. It's absolutely disgusting. It's a real big problem because people conflate it with bitcoin, right? And it, like, tarnishes the reputation of this thing that actually is quite pristine and serious and legitimate. And you can't blame people for just hearing crypto and thinking that bitcoin's the same as all this stuff. But it's like, there's this wild casino over here, and like I said, it's like Vegas, but Vegas has, like, a 50, 51% chance of, like, you know, for the house edge, and that's enough for them. There's like, a 99% house edge in crypto. It's. It's all. I mean, that stuff is legitimately all scams. It's horrible.
- [35:29]
A
And I saw that because it's. I guess that's where the fear is, is who's regulating all of these? Who's allowing these people to. Or I'm creating the coin. And if you make enough buzz outside here, that starts to go up.
- [35:45]
B
Have you ever had anyone come to you and try to use your likeness to create one?
- [35:49]
A
Absolutely. I. I kid you not. There was approached. I've been approached several times, but I was approached as far as making a coin that will be used in gaming. I was just like, they're like, is this easy money, bro? You're gonna make money? Blah, blah, blah. And I'm just like, I don't know enough about it. So I'm.
- [36:11]
B
Okay, that's good. Because most people say, let's go.
- [36:16]
A
And honestly, I was just approached again, like, so I was. I've been approached a couple of times. I was approached this one time, I want to say, last year by this guy. Got quite a good following, which now it seemed fake. Got quite a good following. And so he approaches me and through social media and says, hey, with your name and likeness, could you. Will you post about this coin? Blah, blah, blah. And we'll pay you this amount. It's a handsome amount. I'm not gonna lie. So I considered it. I mean, it's just a post, but I do take my social media serious because that's like my voice. That's my. That's an extension of me.
- [36:57]
B
Same.
- [36:58]
A
So I'm considering this now. It's a good amount. And I'm like, okay, I'm gonna do this. So we're talking back and forth, me and this individual, and I think it's an individual. So we get to the point where they're. Okay, what the. What the deal is, is you're gonna post this and this and this, and we'll send you that. I'm like, okay, but I already know how this space works. You know, I need the money up front. And they're like, all right, we'll send you the money. So last minute, I was just thinking to myself, I'm like, should probably do a little bit of research on this guy. Just a little bit. Not, you know, you've seen followers here on this platform, but try to do a little bit of research.
- [37:40]
B
Had to be Twitter.
- [37:41]
A
So I actually go on Twitter to do some research on this guy. Lo and behold, I have to scroll quite a bit. But once I start seeing. I got scammed again. I got scammed again. Oh, this guy used me to scam. Wasn't that dude Sahil say Hill?
- [38:05]
B
Maybe not. That was the one who was behind a lot of the bigger, like, celebrity ones.
- [38:08]
A
I was it. I. You know what?
- [38:11]
B
Swear to God, I think that's.
- [38:12]
A
You know what? I think I was hit up by. By that guy. And so I'm like, let me do a little bit of research. And I once I did a little bit of that research. I'm seeing some things come out, and I'm like, whoa, I'm not doing this.
- [38:29]
B
He made the right decision because it would have been a scam.
- [38:32]
A
And that's so. But the thing is, okay, I understand it's. If it's a scam, but do I get paid?
- [38:40]
B
So I wonder if they were gonna pay you in the token. So are they goes down on you? Or if they were just gonna pay you in advance and say, hey, man, you get this much, but we're gonna be able to scam this much, so it's worth it. Because.
- [38:51]
A
So that's what I was thinking. Because of course, you got to pay me USD.
- [38:55]
B
Yeah.
- [38:55]
A
So I'm thinking, okay, you pay me in USD, but so are you scamming everyone who or you scam me. As soon as I need my account details, you go ahead and just. I don't know how the scam is.
- [39:08]
B
Probably everybody else. Yes, but you might get scammed one way or another. But it's probably like they pay you.
- [39:14]
A
Yeah.
- [39:14]
B
You do the tweet, they launch the token, they run a bot to run it up.
- [39:18]
A
Right.
- [39:18]
B
But they got all the tokens, and then when people start to buy, they dump on all those people. So every penny you make or anyone else makes is coming out of the pocket. That's a zero sum game. It's coming out of the pocket of the people who trusted your post. See, Conor McGregor just launched one, like, last week.
- [39:33]
A
Did he?
- [39:34]
B
Nothing. Yeah, right off his account. A tweet about. Same thing.
- [39:39]
A
Wow. Did nothing as in where we at?
- [39:42]
B
Like. No, I don't think. No, but I think. I think they tried to, like, do a presale on it and only got, like a couple hundred grand or something. They were expecting to get tens of millions of dollars, so it just didn't happen. So I think at least, like, I think that's kind of dead. Like, I don't even think. I don't think any of those celebrity coins didn't, like, ended up doing well. And the Trump.
- [40:01]
A
That Trump coin didn't do well. Right.
- [40:03]
B
I mean. I mean, I mean, for a few days, if you were there at the day one, you still did well. If you were there in the first hours.
- [40:10]
A
Well, you know what?
- [40:11]
B
But most people buy it at the top.
- [40:13]
A
Yeah. And I started seeing tweets by, I think the. One of the Trumps.
- [40:18]
B
Yeah. Eric. Eric loves it.
- [40:21]
A
Said that I just made this amount of money in a day. Is this wrong?
- [40:27]
B
Oh, yeah. I don't know if that was him or. Yeah.
- [40:30]
A
So where it was almost insinuating, like a pump and dump, it was almost like, I'm making an obscene amount of money and I'm not doing anything. Is this wrong?
- [40:40]
B
And the same dude who did that to the Argentina coin really, like this kid. And what somehow convinced everybody.
- [40:47]
A
Oh, so. So that he did the Melania token. That was also technically.
- [40:51]
B
Well, the. The Argentina coin was an outright scam. I think once they realized how much money was made by doing Trump, which I will not say was a scam, I think it just. It's unfortunate because most people are going to lose money.
- [41:02]
A
Right.
- [41:02]
B
But yeah, the Argentina one, I mean, they basically, like, took the supply of what they had and just dumped it way back down. And they had the President tweeting about it and then he was Erasing his tweets. I mean, there was a call for him to be impeached over this token that he probably had. His social media team was probably doing it and he didn't even really know about it. You know, it's a cautionary tale though. And you know, I think, I think hopefully, because after seeing the Trump token and then the Melania won the day later, which, that 1 down 99 whatever percent and then the Argentina stuff, I think everybody's like, I'm not attaching my name to something like this. Right, right. What's your upside? Really? That one check and then people think you scammed them the rest of your life.
- [41:40]
A
Right, Exactly. And that's why I happily just bowed out. I, yeah, I'm okay, I won't do it. But so what? So with a platform like Vechain, can you help explain that to me a little bit on how that keeps me in the crypto world besides me just earning tokens for what I do?
- [42:05]
B
Well, they have a token that's been around forever and have had multiple use cases. And frankly, I'm relatively new to being close with them. I've been friends with Sunny forever. But this new iteration is what kind of got me really excited about it again. But they're one of the few that actually has real clients, real adoption, real companies, institutions are using it. But I mean, at the most basic level, like I said, you literally take a picture of the stuff you cleaned up or it connects automatically to your Tesla. So once you enter your account, if you ev charge, you're just getting rewards into an account. There's nothing about that that can be negative. Like I said, maybe that token is $10 one day and $1 one day or $5 and you can choose what you want to do with it. But no matter what, it's a rewarding something you're doing anyways. To me, that's just such a no brainer. Who wouldn't do that?
- [42:54]
A
Absolutely. I think it's obviously it's a thing of the future because you're connecting people in this space of crypto where like obviously for most, for us it was to get into crypto, you got to put your money in.
- [43:06]
B
Yep.
- [43:07]
A
And based on the recent events, what we just talked about, with all these different scams, it scares people away. Like, why would I ever dip my toes?
- [43:15]
B
That's right. But if you can get it for free.
- [43:17]
A
Exactly. So if you can get it for free and then at the same time with the component of actually helping to make the world a better place, I think it's a slam dunk and I think it's something that, like people always late to the party sometimes be honest, I'll be late sometimes not. Not on purpose. But I still think.
- [43:35]
B
I still think for most of it. We're early, though, man. I got to put you in touch with some people in Africa who are doing crazy things with crypto that I met with.
- [43:43]
A
Crazy things.
- [43:44]
B
Perfect marriage of what you're doing. And it's really, genuinely helping people there.
- [43:48]
A
Yes, absolutely. I would love that. Because I think go hand in hand because Nigeria especially is. It leads the world in youth population and there's so many different things, especially with. Even with my promotion that we're doing. It's just trying to empower the youth to just do things in a better way or give them an opportunity to do things. Because it's like I said, there's so many places in the world where there's the want, there's the will, but there's no opportunities. And so, yeah, anything to make the world a better place. And of course, if I'm helping, you know, the country that produced me. Absolutely.
- [44:32]
B
I love that, man. Really appreciate your time. It was really, really, really a pleasure. We got to do this, though, for real.
- [44:37]
A
Thank you. Thank you. Definitely. Let's do.