Hey, this is Stephen Cole This is Gary Leadlon and you're listening to the
episode one thirty nine as a Crypto Cousins podcast. Fat your interest in bitcoin
and cryptocurrencies by joining Hall of Fame podcaster Gary Leland on the Crypto Cousins Podcast.
And remember we are all cousins in the world of crypto. This week's
price a bitcoin eight thousand, eight hundred and twenty seven dollars. That's down
eight hundred and sixty one dollars or eight point nine percent over the past seven
days. How do how do? How do? Steven? Welcome to the
show? Hey, Gary, thanks for having me excited to be Yes.
So, what's so like out there right now? In California? California?
It could be better all things considered. I'm doing pretty well. I'm near
Los Angeles and the whole state has been in quarantine for a while, so
I'm kind of adapting to that life and getting into a good routine. But
I'm looking forward to things being opened back up. And for everybody out there,
if you during this show, if you seem to hear or see some
pausing or some lag I have noticed, and Steve and I were talking about
it. In the pre show. Whenever I'm talking to anyone in California,
they're all in their apartments because they're all locked in so heavily that there's an
excess strain on their internet for the building. The buildings aren't really set up
for one hundred percent of the people to be in there using the Internet at
one time. Absolutely. Yeah, it's good for Netflix and not so good
for people at home trying to use their Internet. Yeah. Yeah, So
how are you adapting? Have things changed any for you being stuck in your
house more than you normally are, because it seems to me that people in
California are kind of stuck in their house. Yeah, it's true to a
large part. I do spend most of the day at home. I think
I'm adapting pretty well. At first, it was just tough to figure out
how to feel about the entire situation, you know, should I be terrified
out of the deal? I thought it would be a lot easier than it
is, because I'm a bit of a homebody anyway and just liked to kind
of be in the zone on work. But I didn't realize how much I
liked a change of scenery and even something as simple as going down to a
coffee shop and being able to work from there for a while I really miss
And my apartment has a lot of construction noise around it, so my ability
to focus has been an exercise to figure out. But all things considered,
not too bad. You know what I really missed the most because I haven't
been locked in at all. My wife was for like three four weeks.
She wouldn't you leave the house. I think after three weeks I talked to
her a new going to the park with me on Saturday to go for a
walk. But I've gone to work every day because I have a one man
off the studio here, so I never saw anyone anyway, you know,
I drove up to the door, walked in, came home, and had
no contact with anyone. But I miss like socializing with people, like walking
down the street to the neighbor's house, sitting in their front yard or house,
having a glass of wine, you know, doing that. You know,
we did that last week where like six of us met. We have
a small park in our neighborhood. That's why it's like a gated community,
so there's not a lot of people there, and we all met with lounge
chairs like in a big circle six feet apart, and that was kind of
nice to talk someone different than my wife, right, Yeah, yeah,
for a change in person. I mean, I've talked to people all the
time like we're talking, but to actually interact with someone is the thing I
think I missed more than anything while we were doing it was actually interact and
I still miss it because I'm not I'm used to doing it all the time,
not just like on a Saturday afternoon for two that two hours. Yeah,
it's so true. I mean, zoom and conferences like this are certainly
better than nothing, but nothing beats that energy right of just being in the
same room as someone, even for something as little as a lunch. Yeah,
I agree completely. And I miss h you know. And I think
I'm going to have a hard time because I'm like a touch person. I
hug, I shake hands a lot, and I'm not even wanting to like
shake hands and hugs, So I don't know how that's going to affect me
mentally long term. It's not like I'm going up to people with gloves on
I wanting to give him a hug, you know what I mean. But
I'm like, I'm the kind of person if I haven't seen you all year,
I'm probably going to give you a hug you know where. Now I
don't know how that's going to affect me mentally, changing my whole way my
personality is. It's amazing how quickly people can adapt and change. And I
was even in the apartment complex that I live in last week and I remember
holding the elevator, you know, just try to be conscious of if somebody
else wants to get in and all that, and they were almost like annoyed
that I was holding the elevator. They're like, why would I want to
be in the same elevator as you, Like you go up and I'm going
to catch the next elevator. And so it almost introduces this extra layer of
overthinking to all the social interactions that we took for granted, I hadn't even
thought about that. Yeah. Yeah, It's like I have a guy come
over him. This actually made me decide him gonna build. I'm I have
a big attic space, and I'm gonna build like a twenty by twenty foot
studio up there office instead of driving the work to a twenty by maybe thirty
foot studio. It be a little smaller, but it's just gonna be upstairs.
And I decided that with the money i'll say, from not paying rent
and an extra internet, an extra security and all this stuff, I'll pay
for it in five years, you know. Plus i'll have this room edition
that someone else could use as a TV room, you know or something.
And the guy came over to work on it to try to make a story
shorter than it was going. And he was an older fellow like myself,
and he stuck out his hand to shake hands, and I was like,
I just kind of held my hands out like ah, and he goes,
oh, yeah, I forgot. We're not shaking hands. Yeah, so
that was kind of funny. Tell me about your yourself, give us a
little short bio here on um who you are? You know? Yeah,
sure it is right. Bitcoin's been the big focus for me in the last
few years. I my background is in web technology mostly. So born and
raised in Missouri from the Midwest. Originally went to school out there, studied
computer science, and I moved near Joplin. So I was born in Kansas
City, but then moved to Joplin. In a small town near Joplin.
After that, Yeah, So went to college down in that area studied computer
science was always kind of a computer narrowed growing up, even when I was
much younger. I wish they had computers when I was growing up. All
right, It's funny, I feel like, I, you know, I
wasn't around for the early days of the Internet by any means. All of
that was kind of in place, and I was around the like Windows ninety
five and Doss Days were kind of the first things that I remember tinkering with
as as a middle schooler, I suppose, but he just made me appreciate,
like, oh wow, if you had seen and been around for this
stuff so early then, and how amazing that would have been. And I
often feel that way about bitcoin. It's kind of my opportunity to be involved
with something so transformative early, I hope. But in terms of my background,
yeah, studied computer science. Then spent about ten years up in Silicon
Valley, so I was doing web engineering for some big web companies and some
small startups. I was at eBay for the first few years. That was
kind of my first foot in the door in Silicon Valley. I was at
eBay about four years as engineer, mostly doing back end systems and Linux type
technology and then let's see, after that, I got fascinated with the small
startup scene. So I saw the cloud computing movement and kind of the consolidation
there of companies like Amazon Web Services, and I knew some people I really
admired who were involved in companies, so I hopped over to the startup world
and took some swings at that. That whole time, my professional focus was
web and internet infrastructure. But around two thousand and twelve I started hearing about
bitcoin while I was at those startups. And then in twenty thirteen, when
there was that big run up in price, and I kept hearing about it
from co workers and friends, so I thought were brilliant people. I was
like, why are they so into this thing? You know? Is is
there something really here? And so late twenty thirteen I started looking closer into
bitcoin, and then I just you know, I became fascinated and that became
my passion and became more professionally involved in that scene around twenty sixteen, So
that's when I started investing in companies in the space and trying to learn more
about angel investing and seed investing and uh, you know, we improve at
that and make that more of my focus, and that's been my focus for
the last few years. Well, you were a seed investing like Cosa,
Samurai Wallets, Tocy Energy, and swan Bitcoin, which swan Bitcoin's just now
get in, out and out, and I'm an advisor to them. So
you've been in some strong names. He tell me about that. I'm kind
of curious. How does that work, being a seed investor and a startup
like that. I've just always been curious about that. How does that work
and what's the deal on stuff? Not. You don't have to give me
a specific company or anything, just a general yeah, in general. I
became fascinated with that kind of investing as part of being an employee at those
types of startups. So, you know, I worked at that cloud computing
startup called cloud Scaling. I was at an AI and deep learning startup called
their Blend of Systems, and as an engineer and kind of managing teams there,
I got some interaction with the board and with investors that we had in
the company, and I just became really intrigued, like, what, you
know, what's it like to be on the other side of the table,
And I saw the impact that someone could have on a company's trajectory as a
really great investor in terms of making connections, helping with business rategy and all
of that beyond just capital. So that's kind of what sparked my interest initially,
and I think I realize that it's this cool intersection of the ability to
certainly like try to make money, but also to try to kind of predict
to the future and like influence the future. Right, So if there are
entrepreneurs out there and they have this contrarian view and they want to build something,
some kind of tech, then if that's something that not many people believe
in, then if you are aligned with them ideologically or on that vision,
then you can really make or break their potential to build something and to kind
of affect the course of tech or the world. So, you know,
it sounds kind of grand when you frame it that way, but but I
really do love that opportunity of like getting to just see brilliant ideas, work
with brilliant people, and hopefully try to help them bring their vision to life
in some way. The mechanics are interesting. It's typically like a very illiquid
investment, so you'll be providing capital early on. Sometimes in a couple of
my investments. I've been the first outside check into the company. So it's
just kind of the founders in many cases even like messaging you on Twitter out
of the blue and you've never spoken to them before, and they say,
hey, this is something that I think would be cool to build in,
starting the conversation that way, and then it's usually like at least a three
to five year return on investment. If you ever forget a return, it's
startup investing is super risky, and there's most startups fails, as you'll hear
all the time. But in some cases you can get very significant upside.
There can be huge multiples. You can make ten x or hundred x investment
on your money. Yeah, I was going to say, I assume that
you're it's just common sense that most businesses startup, no matter what they are,
aren't going to stay in business five six years. So you're hoping that
the money you put in, if you put in for seven of them,
that's a one out of seven, it hits. The odds are it's going
to hit so good that it's going to make up for the six that loss
and you're still going to make some money. Yeah, total, And that's
the kind of thinking that you have to put into that. Yeah, that's
a really common framework in the angel investing industry. A lot of the literature
and best practices that you'll read it will say, you know, you've got
a place a lot of bets because most of them will fail, but when
you do find them, one with really high upside and that will compensate for
all those losses. And I think that's like, in practice, that is
a very effective strategy. You know, I don't have as much capital to
deploy as like angels who have been doing this for a long time or who
have already had huge exits. So given that and just the type of brand
that I hope to build or the type of thing that I want to be
known for, I don't really like the idea of just spray and pray,
you know, put a lot of investments out there and hope that something works,
and it's like all about the dollars. The reason that I'm into this
is because I have a vision for what I think would be a good and
cool future, and so trying to find teams and founders that are enabling that
and working towards it, I think that's exciting. Like I love that aspect
of it. So I'm okay with placing far fewer bets than probably most professional
angel investors as long as they're like focused and ideologically aligned. That's what it's
all about for me. So me and an angel investor. And as you
said, you're not someone who's sprang a lot of money, you know,
and you're maybe more limited to someone who's hit three or four giant home runs.
What And I'm not trying to think a way to ask this without you
giving me personal information, but how small can someone get into something like as
a angel investor, into something that looks like it could have good returns?
I mean how small do they go and they glad? When are you go
mess with this guy because he doesn't have enough money? I mean, did
they go, oh, we want you to come in if you've got five
thousand dollars, or do a lot of glad? We don't want anyone in
here. Let's say have one hundred thousand dollars. I guess is what I'm
trying to find out. Yeah, it really does vary case by case.
Twenty five thousand dollars tends to be kind of a common lower barrier to entry
on a startup investment, But there are vehicles that helped democratize this a little
bit. So over the last you know, five plus years, organizations like
angel dot co have helped make angel investing accessible to more people. I'm looking
at your page right now on angel dot co. Yeah, yeah, so
I've surprised. I found a page on me on there with an old photo,
and I was going where they help this page come? Where photo come
from? Yeah, it's it's a whole um, you know, social network
in some ways, So that site is an example of something that. So
they're like angel syndicates where if you, as an individual investor, don't have
enough capital or maybe you just don't have the network or relationships to kind find
your way into startup deals, then you can sign up to be a part
of these syndicates. And so the syndicate will pool together smaller checks from potentially
many investors and then get like one allocation to startups. So from the startups
perspective, they've maybe just got a one hundred thousand dollars allocation to a syndicate,
and that's as much as they have to care about it. But then
from the syndicate side, they know that that's composed of potentially a lot of
smaller checks. But I guess also on the same side thinking about it.
If let's just say if twenty five thousand dollars, let's use that number.
If you had a lot of startups that we're looking for twenty five thousand dollars
and you had five friends, you just start your own kind of syndicate.
We all get together, Okay, but throw five five thousand. We're gonna
do this one. Yeah, we're gonna do this one. And you could
do more. You can get into more startups and spread it around and have
a little piece of a lot more because if that one hits, that little
piece of the one that hit is better than all of the one that was
the one out its ten that you were hoping might hit. Yeah. Absolutely,
And it is pretty common to see independent angel investors share deal flow or
you know, have a strong network with one another and an idea of what
each person likes to be involved in, so that if something comes your way
and maybe you're a good fit and they're looking for more investors, or if
we're not a good fit but you know someone else who is, then you
can kind of guide things that direction and then at some point it might make
sense to, yeah, like formalize it into a syndicate, and then if
you're doing it at large enough scale where you're deploying a ton of capital,
then maybe that becomes a full blown investment fund, and that kind of gets
into the realm of venture capital. But what I love about early stage investing,
and I'll preface all of this by saying that I don't think I'm necessarily
an expert angel investor. I think I'm more of a bitcoiner, and I
like thinking about the type of future that bitcoin enables, and so I think
that view of the future and the tech that's involved is what gives me a
potential edge when it comes to investing. I don't have a finance pedigree.
I don't get excited about analyzing spreadsheets of returns and all the stuff that comes
in the later stages. But as for being an angel, I think it's
nice because you just have full autonomy. You can make your process whatever you
want it to be, so in you know, if you're at like an
A sixteen Z or a Founder's fund or some of those big name venture capital
firms that operate in later stages, then they each have their own process certainly,
and some of them are maybe better than others. But in some form
it ultimately comes down to like taking what you think is a good investment and
justifying it to a lot of other people. And when you're independent, you
can just do whatever you want. And if you want to have a whole
thorough process, then you can. And if you want to write a check
after talking to a potential founder at a bar, then that can be your
process. So right, right, yeah, whatever you're you know, I
guess that would be an awso thing though, might be a good thing about
having a small cartel or small groups. You could have a guy who's part
of the team that that's his deal. He loves charts, Yeah, exactly,
And you have a guy who just you know, he gets all his
information from talking to somebody. Because people have different skill sets, totally,
you can really assemble the team. Yeah, somebody could talk with someone and
go, man, I wouldn't trust that guy anymore. And I look at
him. Where the guy working stats will go? But do you stats all
good? You know? And he go yeah. And I would be remiss
too not to give a quick shout out to bitcoin your ventures. So they
are an example of an Angel syndicate one that literally exists on that website we
talked about Angel dot com. I'm not formally involved with them, but but
they are, Like I think the fact that they exist is really cool because
a challenge in funding startups has been for bitcoin only companies. A lot of
venture capital money is still like blockchain and cryptocurrency more broadly, and so if
you have a bitcoin focused strategy, it's been taught the Bitcoin Fortress Ventures.
No, the name is just bitcoiner at Ventures and it's run by Corey Clipston,
U, Stefan Levera, Jon Pritzker. A bunch of good bitcoiners are
doing that, so it's pretty cool. I just trying to look it up,
but I don't see it here. Oh I see Bitcoiners Social Venture.
You think that's it. No, it's I remember the search engine on angel
dot co being lacking, shall we say, so that might be the problem.
But the name is just bitcoiner Ventures and it is it's a syndicate on
angel dot com. Okay, well I'll try to find that later. I
just yeah, because I know everybody who's in that. Yeah, it's good.
So what would be the difference between just to educate me a Angel investor
and the next level up it does get The line is kind of fuzzy,
but but typically it's the amount of capital that you'll be looking to deploy.
So angel investors will typically deal very early on in what's called like preseed or
seed stage, and then after that would be more of early stage, and
then you kind of get into these so the seed investors just start them out.
That's enough money for them to get operating. So you're getting going,
we have an idea, we'd like to do this idea, but we don't
even have enough money to get it started, and you're going, we can
help you get it started. We're not gonna give you a ton of money,
but we're given enough to get you going exactly, and we own a
piece of whatever happens for providing you this money and taking the risk. Girl.
Yeah, And so it tends to be the highest risk portion of a
startups life cycle simply because it is the earliest and the idea is not proven
out. It's pretty common for you know, at that angel stage, maybe
they're not even product market yet. Maybe it's an idea and division and you
literally have zero customers so far, or if there are customers, maybe it's
just a handful and not too much traction yet. And by the time the
next guy comes in, now the ideas were working idea and there may be
a sales track record or a product in hand, so his risk is not
near as high. He has something to look at besides of drawing on a
napkin exactly, and so he's willing to put in bigger money. And that's
where it typically gets more into funds and traditional venture capital as opposed to Angel.
Now. I noticed the ones you have listed on what does this site
again, angel dot COO or they're all crypto. Yeah, there are companies
cosa samurai like I said, are actually toci energy swan bitcoin. I mean,
so you like bitcoin, yes, understatement, Yeah, you try to
get involved with entities that are early bitcoin. Yeah. There are some other
investments that I've made that are outside of the bitcoin space, but they aren't
Some of them are pre product or pre launch, so they're not kind of
in a place where you can talk as much about them. Or I think
that in general on angel dot co also, they're just maybe not options to
search and find. They don't exist as entities on angel dot com. I
think it could be the reason that they're not on my profile, But that's
kind of a long way of saying I don't exclusively just invest in the bitcoin
space, but it is my focus, and when I do go into that
space, I do tend to focus simply on bitcoin companies and not I try
to avoid cryptocurrency more broadly or like blockchain technology companies. I think bitcoins where
it's at, and all of that is mostly noise. Do you think that
Bitcoin Entities is a startup if they have a sound idea have an easier time
maybe getting seed round because there are so many bitcoiners that got bitcoin. I
mean, I'm not saying there's the time, but there are a lot of
people who got bitcoin at a relatively low price compared to the market price now
and believe in bitcoin just as much as the people who are trying to do
the start totally. Yeah, And so maybe they look at the investment as
number one being something they really believe in is needed, and number two they're
going with, gosh, I'm not going to feel anyone's gonna feel the crunch
when you throw ten thousand dollars or twenty thousand dollars into it, But their
actual outlay into that twenty five thousand dollars might be three hundred that they actually
put into it originally. So that that's why I'm asking, And the entity
might take bitcoin, you know, where a lot of things to go,
Well, no, we want money, we don't, we don't want that
bitcoin. So using all those things, do you think entityam like Swan on
Swan because I like Corey and I liked the team, and I'm like yeah,
and I think they have a great tea. Do you think they would
have an easier time raising funds maybe than some places would, or it's kind
of a double ledged sword trying to raise as a bitcoin focused company, because
you're right that there are a lot of people who are early to bitcoin and
maybe have a lot of capital to deploy because of that, and I think
that there are examples of great companies coming to life for that reason. However,
a lot of those people also just see holding bitcoin directly as a very
attractive investment, and maybe the additional risk of a specific company trying to do
something on that space is not kind of worth higher. It's like the return
becomes measured versus bitcoin in that investor's mind, and so that's like, you
know, when you're trying to raise funds and you're comparing your potential returns to
bitcoin. It's like fundraising on hard mode. So no, no, that
makes a lot of sense. So you're saying to someone, are the startups
saying to someone, you'll give us a twenty five thousand dollars worth a bitcoin
or approximately two and a half bitcoin right now, and within two three years
you can make one hundred thousand dollars. And then the person's going, well,
I think my bitcoin's going to hit one hundred thousand dollars apiece maybe in
a year and a half. So I would have two hundred fifty thousand dollars
if I just didn't spend it. Is it's really funny when you view bitcoin
when you're so you know, optimistic about bitcoin's potential to increase your purchasing power.
Then in the same way that it helps people lower their time preference and
not go and spend money at the mall when they're shopping for clothes as much
because they want to see their bitcoin increasing value. Like I think that applies
to professional investors just as much. Once you reach a certain level of confidence
and belief in bitcoin, then it makes you a lot more frugal or calculated
about the ideas, and you don't part with that bitcoin lightly. So yeah,
so my account. In the other day, I was telling her,
I said, you know, she knows i'm doing on a bitcoin stuff.
She goes, well, I'm trying to trying to add that as bitcoin.
Maybe you can start paying me a bitcoin, Geary, because I really don't
understand, as I can't ate a bitcoin, I'm going to pay a feat
I keep him, Yeah, yeah, I don't something. I'll teach you
how to go buy it and stuff, but I'm not spending my feet.
Yeah. It's really funny too along those lines, but reminds me of over
the years since twenty thirteen, of just being the excited person trying to go
around and evangelize bitcoin and get other people interested in it. I saw this
very clear difference in how receptive people were to it when I stopped trying to
give it to them and started just showing them how much I care about it
and want to accumulate it. So early on. I would like if I
would go to a university and talk to a computer science club, which I
did a few times, and tell them about bitcoin, then afterwards I'd be
like, Hey, if anybody wants, you know, a dollar or two
of bitcoin, I'll give it to you. And I didn't realize that at
the time. Psychologically, I think that triggers a lot of the same feeling
as when you're walking down a sidewalk and someone's like trying to hand you a
pamphlet or you know, an ad for something. You just kind of have
this like it's almost like, oh, if I'm being given this thing for
free, then you know, I'm skeptical of its value. It's like it's
being pushed on me. And so lately I've been taking the opposite approach.
And if I'm in an uber or you know, I'm like talking to an
uber driver or a cab driver about something, then if bitcoin comes up,
I'll say, oh, yeah, but you know, I don't part with
bitcoin easily, Like those are super valued. I'm trying to like hold onto
those and accumulate as much as I can. And then you can almost see
it. They're like, what, there's this thing out Yeah, there's this
thing out there in the world that you're like spending a lot of time thinking
about how to accumulate, and I don't have any should I be thinking about
this, so that psychology is really interesting. Yeah, I've noticed then.
I don't know if you've had in the last even before Corona, at leastway
as far as in person. Maybe back to December, I was having more
people in my peer group, more Boomers that when I'd be in an event,
would come up and ask me, Hey, explain this bitcoin to me,
you know, wanting to explain it. And I was telling someone I
think Dan held Us talked to him. I was telling him, it's the
super Bowl. This guy sat beside me, and the whole time he was
asking him a bitcoin, which I love talking about, but I was at
a super Bowl party. I didn't want to talk about bitcoin. Old super
Bowl party, you know, And so I started getting up, moving away
from him, which I hardly ever do if someone wants to learn about bitcoin.
But I was finding out more. I had more people asking me about
bitcoin. And now that it's Corona time, I've had people who I haven't
talked to him Facebook in years that have been messaging me asking questions about bitcoin,
where to buy it at, simple questions, where to find out more?
And are people I haven't talked to that I've known in you know,
the internet, social world for years, but all of a sudden they're recontacted
me just to ask, because I've kind of gotten known on Facebook as in
my five thousand followers or whatever, as the guy who knows about Facebook,
I mean about bitcoin. So have you noticed an uptick in people inquiring?
I have, and very similar to to you. It's acquaintances I've encountered over
the years. I went backpacking around the world for six months back in two
fifteen and met a lot of people in my travels and mentioned bitcoin to some
of them, and some of them, you know, haven't communicated with them
in a couple of years in some cases, and got more than one outreach
asking about this bitcoin stuff. And I think that seeing the virus and all
of the changes as a result of that, particularly the money printing from central
banks, is at the root of some of that. People are looking for
alternatives and starting ask questions. A bunch of my high school cool buddies,
you know, still my best friends in the world from back in Missouri,
are not They like, don't care about economics at all. They are not
particularly interested in bitcoin at all. But I've noticed even they are starting to
joke about US dollars they're saying, oh, well, it's just funny money
anyway, Like they're printing trillions of it, you know, and it's kind
of tongue in cheek and it's a joke. But at the root of it
is like, yeah, people are noticing that trillions of dollars. People are
realizing that their dollars getting the VAD the government, the central banks can wave
a magic wand and bring trillions of this stuff into existence. And so if
you have your savings in dollars just sitting there at a bank account and somebody
is speaking more of those, then that should get you started asking questions.
I think I read an article today which I'm gonna is on Tomorrow's For a
Minute Bitcoin Show camera. Who wrote the article. It was a fun one
of these big fun guys like Paul Tutor Jones, you know, and he
wrote in his article that people need to beware the governments might start confiscating gold
again, in his opinion, because the fact that they're going to have to
do it to crop back up the prop back up the value of their fiat
currencies. Yeah, and to be careful. He was basically saying, you
need to find an alternative, you know, which honey alternatives are the gold
other than mid coin. Yeah, that's something I think about a lot in
the history. There's really interesting. So the government did that before, and
not many average person doesn't know that. In nineteen thirty three, FDR issued
Executive Order six one out two and its outlawed the private ownership of gold in
the United States and it said, if you are a citizen and you have
gold, then you have to turn it into US and we'll pay you.
But you know, here's the price that we are declaring that we will pay
you for it. I didn't know that until I got into bitcoin. I
mean, I didn't know that. And it's funny how that disappeared kind of
from the history books. Yeah, it's not talked about a lot. I
wasn't taught that in school. Certainly the kind of glass over that one,
right, Yeah, that's something kind of important in US history. Yeah,
and so I think that is an important consideration when thinking about ways to store
your value, is how resistant it is to those kinds of attacks. And
what I'm what makes me optimistic about the future is that bitcoin has a lot
of strengths over gold when it comes to being resistant to seizure, so you
know, gold is physical, and if you if you don't hold gold physically,
if you just invest in like a gl like an ETF related to gold
of GLD, then that's just kind of on paper anyway to start with.
And the you know, governments or banks can can kind of influence your holdings
over those assets. But if you have physical balls of gold, like tucked
away in a closet somewhere, then maybe that's resistant to those types of attacks.
But they can certainly kick your door in and do whatever they want with
you and then look around and take your gold away, but they can't exactly
do that with bitcoin. Bitcoin favors the defender in a way that has never
been true for any asset ever before. But I've heard that conversation that if
bitcoin did become a world currency and it did do what we're all thinking it
could do, that the US government, for an example, since it doesn't
hold any or it doesn't hold enough. Even if it holds some, it's
not going to have enough. No one's ever, no country can ever have
enough that the first thing it would do would go to all the exchanges and
confiscate all the bitcoin that's on the exchanges, because it could get there.
Yeah, I agree. And then the people who've left their bitcoin, even
if they five hundred dollars they left or one hundred dollars or ten dollars or
whatever the amount is, and they haven't messed with it because it wasn't a
large amount. If you put that all together and you went to a coin
base and the kraken into all these places, that's a lot of bitcoin.
Yeah, I agree, and that would be confiscated by the government. Yeah.
I could see centralized custodians exchanges being targets for that, as well as
large mining infrastructure. So maybe if bitcoin becomes deemed critical to national security,
then I could see huge bitcoin minds being I didn't think about it nationalized.
Matt O'Dell has done a really good job in recent weeks of or longer than
that, potentially of kind of highlighting that risk too, of centralized institutions and
talking about, oh, even if they don't maybe they won't ban bitcoin entirely,
maybe they will ban private ownership of bitcoin, and it could even be
framed as this way, that's good for you right where you know, they've
been too many cases of people losing bitcoin, so we're you have to use
a government approved way to hold it. And I well, I think in
nineteen thirties when they took to goal, they sold it to you that it
was a good thing to do, to give the government your goal, that
it was for the betterment of the world. And so I think it's important
to start talking about those risks early on, because it's a lot more powerful
if if you are retweeting things that were said years ago, and you know,
there's evidence of people warning about these risks as opposed to reacting in the
moment and just being seen as reactionary. So yeah, I think preparing for
a future in which there's a bitcoin equivalent of Executive Order six two, like
when governments try to outlaw the private ownership at bitcoin. I hope that won't
happen. I would love for a smooth upgrade where it's just encouraged and governments
buy it as part of their reserves and everyone's happy. But I don't want
to say I'm printing as much me as they want. You think they will,
Yeah, start turning the crank and you know, let's flow into bitcoin
and then put those bitcoins on the central bank balance sheet. I do.
I'm optimistic about the game theory there. I think that there's a path forward
that looks like that, but I don't think we should depend on it.
I think not your keys, not your coins, take ownership of them,
be as private as possible. If you can acquire coins without KYC, then
that's even better. But just whatever way you can get more and more bitcoin
really into the hands of individuals, that's where we gain resilience against those potential
attacks. Well, these are the kind of things and conversations that we have
at bit block Boom. Yeah, and if you've listened to the show for
the first time, then I want to make sure you know about the conference
that I host with the help a lot of my friends called bit block Boom,
which is on and it is happening at the end of August. Texas
is like opened up almost completely now and by the end of August we're going
to be open I feel confident. So bit block Boom is last weekend in
August, and it's a bitcoin conference. It's not a cryptocurrency conference, it's
not a blockchain conference. This is a bitcoin conference for bitcoiners. So with
this would be our third year. So if you're not for me with bit
block Boom, take a moment. Go to bitblockboom dot com. If you
use the code word cousins cous i ns at checkout when you're buying a ticket,
you'll get thirty percent off the price of your ticket. So check that
out and I'll see you in Dallas, hopefully I will definitely be there.
How we originally yeah, yeah, well that's how we met is Pierre introduced
me to you saying I should I should meet Yeah, Piers fantastic, and
I yes, fantast I went to bit block Boom last year, loved it
and looking forward to it again this year. I love the bitcoin focus.
I love how grassroots it is. It's not a bunch of you know,
very It's basically the polar opposite of a consensus or kind of a suit and
tie marketing fluff conference. It's real instance do it. And I keep saying
this, and I feel like I'm I just them on auto rewind and saying
this over and over. But I so much believe that we are going to
be the event of the year, because we're going to be the first real
event of the year since tone Vases event in Vegas. Yeah, you know,
so tomorrow I think we sign our platinum sponsor, which last year,
you know, we weren't able to get a platinum sponsor, and that's going
to be our first big sponsor this year is our platinum Yeah, that's very
cool. It's going to be someone you know and you think a lot of
and they want to build a long term relationship with bit block Room. So
I think this year is going to be our year. And I think I
kind of think my feelings are that there are a lot of companies that had
money budgeted for conferences this year that haven't been able to spend any of it.
Yep. And all of a sudden, I'm gonna be the first conference
of the year and one of the only conferences of the year, and they're
gonna this is what I'm thinking. They're gonna go, well, how come
we not involved with that thing? What else are we going to sponsor?
And then once I get them, they're gonna be hooked and they're going to
come back a year after year. Yeah. You know, it's like like
last year, the sponsor came but they didn't want to sponsor it, but
after being there, they wanted to be the Platinus spots and Virtuous Cyclement.
They involved a little bit to see how successful it is and then get even
more involved. Well, now I have some questions for you. I always
ask when I have someone coming on here. I asked the Twitter world,
Bitcoin, Twitter, whatever we want to be love Bitcoin, Twitter, They
have any questions for my speaker? So do I? You know, I
opened up my Twitter account like the first year, you know, and I
never used it for years and years and years, and I had like four
or five of them, never used any of them. And all of a
sudden, now that I'm on Bitcoin, that's all I use is Twitter.
I don't even use anything else. Say, it's amazing how that's changed.
Yeah, for me too. A lot of the connections that I've made,
people that I met and formed really good relationship tips with started through Twitter.
I had a Twitter account for a long time, but never really used it
until Bitcoin. That's the same exact way, And it took me a while
even then we get using it. But now you know that's all I use.
Well, let's start with these questions. First, one is surfer Jim.
I like surf. He is a good bitcoiner. How's that surfing coming?
How's your surfing coming? You had told him you were planning on learning
and that you're always welcome to come surf up there. So how's your surfing?
Shout out to surfer Jim. I love that guy. So he taught
He basically taught me to surf over in New York, which is kind of
ironic since I live in southern California that I would go and become passionate about
surfing over in New York. But he took the Safetan and I out for
a day on the water and it was a ton of fun. The I
he will be pleased to know that, in a few hours after we wrap
up this conversation, I'm headed out to the water to get my surf on.
I haven't made as much progress as he might expect. There's still a
lot of falling involved. But I own a board, I have all the
infrastructure, and and I love the stuff. Sweet. I grew up,
sir. I grew up in an island in South Carolina, so I grew
up surface and I was like from the high school surf team. You know,
we surfed against other. Having a high school surf team even exists,
like a sign up a good yeah, like we always wear or orange T
shirts when we SURFD and like who played if we surfed against Bishop England,
they wore green ones and we would start we would compete on Saturdays that we're
gonna be out to be surfing anyway. So it was a great day.
Awesome. Yeah, And so your next question is from the Wizard of Oz.
Someone knew to bitcoin has just bought their first SATs. What's the one
piece of advice you would give them. I think it would I would kind
of ask them some questions about where those SATs are and how they bought them,
and because I think if well, going back to what we discussed earlier,
having true owners ship of your bitcoin is just super important. And so
if someone throws a few dollars into bitcoin on a centralized exchange, then that
is wonderful. That's a great first step. That's how I got into it,
and that's important. But making sure that they know that that's not not
the end state and there are levels to this thing, and and encouraging them,
showing them the value of holding your own bitcoin and being self sovereign and
just kind of guiding them towards ways to do that safely is really important.
Okay, good answer, Panic says, what's your favorite kebab sauce. I
love the range of questions. Yeah, I didn't know. I didn't know
if that was like, you know, and that's why I said, when
I asked these questions, you might like be a guy who makes kebab sauce
for all I know. So it could be a real you know, my
pitch. Yeah, and you go, I just started a new brand of
kebab sauce or something, you know, so I asked him off. No,
no ownership or equity in any kebab sauce companies, unfortunately. But but
panic is a is a great bitcoiner, so I you know, I'm actually
leaning towards the bitcoin carnivore direction. I'm on the ketogenic diet, the paleolithic
ketogenic diet. So I'm a meat eater. I'm probably gonna have an antiche
I've been a carnivore since January the first nice here, good for you,
boss, like seventeen pound. That's great to hear. Yeah, and I
eat as much as I want. I mean, you know, literally,
it's great. I don't feel hungry, I you know everything, I sleep
better. Improvements in many facets of my life since going keto and then even
taking it a step further. I haven't been strict carnivore in about a year
now, but my diet is probably seventy five percent red meat, so it's
very carnivore heavy. And yeah, I notice a lot of positive difference with
that foundation. But I have a very anticlimactic answer for her. I'm more
of has eyeballs. Yeah, yeah, I like that. I do a
lot of fish, a lot of it. Yes, um. Yeah.
Like some people say, I don't eat anything with the eyes, I only
eat that, Yeah, salads, not food. It's what my food eats.
Yeah, that having eyes. Yeah, but I do avoid I tend
to avoid sugar, and I miss a lot of sauces, even things you
don't think about, right, like ketchup and sauces like that barbecue sauce.
I grew up in Kansas City and had a huge appreciation for Kansas City barbecue.
And even though I still treat myself from time to time, I try
not to just do that too frequently, and so I miss some of that,
but I feel so much better without it. I miss ice cream.
That's the one thing that I miss. I love ice cream. That's my
favorite dessert. But you know, every once in a while. If they
fall, the family comes over and they will inevitably buy a couple of gallons
of ice cream. When they're all over there, I will get a ca
fee cup. Yeah, and put some in there where I used to have
a giant ball that was overwhelved. It might have been happy, right,
that's like your appetizer. Yeah, but I will now I just can't resist
it, and I'll get like two scoop or two in a cup, small
scoops. He Now, you and Brian must be pretty good friends, Harry,
Yeah, we are, and he's out here. He asked a lot
of questions. He's great. Um. He has been a huge help too
over the last year with the Orange County Bitcoin Network. So I also organize
a meet up here in Orange County. It's the oc Bitcoin Network. We
started almost a year ago to the day. In fact, it only one
year tomorrow because it was Bitcoin Pizza Day May twenty second, m was our
very first event last year. Is that tomorrow? I think so? Yeah,
it's May twenty second every year. Yeah, yeah, it is tomorrow.
Yeah. Well for those listening with the twenty first now you know who?
Oh yeah, true. I so there will be the delay, but
I founded that meet up because I moved to Orange County and saw a lot
of crypto meetups, a lot of blockchain meetups. There was nothing bitcoin focused,
so I was pretty disappointed in that, and I started a group and
then Brian joined shortly after, and he's just an all around good bitcoiner.
Um. So he's helped take things to the next level and it's got really
involved. He has experience in helping organize political campaigns and things of that nature,
so he's been great. Well, I'm going to read you his three
questions. All is one, are you willing to go to jail for the
ability to be free? Who is John Galt? And what did Elon mean
by the red Pill? I think I think you just have to go read
the book to know who John Galt is or is there something there? Yeah?
I know you got to go read the book. Um, Atlas Shrugged
is my favorite book of all time, and I don't say that lightly.
Um it really, Well, what did you think of a movie? Horrible?
Yeah? Yeah, that's what is disappointing, because I think a lot
of people are but coming intrigued about Atlas Shrugged in looking around at the world
right now and seeing people kind of make Atlas shrug references, and so now
that the movies exist, they go to that to determine how to feel about
it, and it doesn't really do the book's justice in my opinion. But
I understand that the books are super long, so carving out the time for
that to me a challenge too. But that book three books, yeah,
yeah, they're like The fountain Head is also great. Atlas shrug Though,
changed my life. I think it gave me an appreciation for building things and
for people who do hard work. It's just the value of hard work.
And unfortunately you'll often get characterized as selfish or you know, like those greedy
capitalists who don't care about anybody. I just don't. That's not my takeaway
from it. That's just not what I see in it. I think it's
possible to be very philanthropic, it's possible to be very charitable and social and
I care about and all that whilst having those values. I don't think you
can force that on a population and have it really Yeah, but it is
amazing how prophetic Atlas Shrugs has started to seem with some of what's happening in
the world with you know, and it was written quite a while. Yeah,
it was written like back around like nineteen fifty forties or fifties, and
they're, you know, seeing Elon Musk be ordered to stop what he's doing
in his business by the government, invite these regulators. Just there are such
interesting parallels with that story some of ion Rand's characters. So I recommend that
book. Have you. I've watched Iron Ran on old talk shows, you
know, when she was a guest, and she's not apologenic at all and
pretty even though her person interviewing and will make me confused on her thoughts,
she's pretty damn clear when you know, ask her her thoughts as that you
know this. Hey, Paul Witted wants to know, how did you get
name Sunshine? Great question. Paul and I used to work together at eBay
and he's a great guy. I had the nickname Sunshine, and a lot
of people still refer to me as Sunshine. It's fun because I tend to
be a very smiley guy, and so people hear that this guy was nicknamed
Sunshine, and they assume it's for that reason that he's just kind of a
smiley character about him. But actually it's because when I first moved to California
for my eBay internship back in like two thousand and seven or eight from the
Midwest. I went out and got my I had like a lot of sunlight
and you know, was getting a tan, and then I went out and
got my hair bleached completely blonde. And so I walked into the office the
next day and somebody at eBay called me Sunshine and that just stuck. So
there it is. Softwign Hotel not wants to know. I don't know you
had anything to do with this, but maybe you do. What guns?
Will you be shooting at bit block Boon. I went to the gun event
last year that Brian Lockhart organized, loved it. Yeah he's doing it again,
he says, he's doing it again. So I didn't know what you
That's why I said. I thought maybe from the way the question was you
were working with Brian, I'm putting it together, but that's going I didn't
know you were. No, I'm just enthusiastic supporter in general. I think
you know then the stuff that like Ragnar leaf Graser is doing with guns in
bitcoin and making gun ownership more accessible, like building the technology to ensure that
defense is available to the average person, is something that I think a lot
about and believing, so I will I will definitely be shooting if there's another
event a bit block boom, and look forward to trying out some other I
feel like I can still feel the bruise from the shotgun that was going around
last year, so I'll give that a world again. Definitely supposed to be
that going on, and I guess from what I understand it might be bigger
this year. He Brian wanted to It was a test run last year.
Nice, but he doesn't want to open it up to the whole world because
everybody is shooting. Understandable, but he is going to open it up.
So I'll have to bring by a couple of my guns and leave with him
so he can have more weapons there. If we have a bigger very cool.
So I'm your Hoddleberry wants to know what's your biggest productivity hack? Biggest
productivity hack? There are a couple. I think, like I've realized recently
how much more productive I become when I have a solid foundation of sleep and
nutrition. I know that's just really generic, but if I don't get a
lot of sleep, if I stay up late to try to work at something
and just hammer something out, then it doesn't end up being as good as
if I just get quality sleep and I eat right and I spend half the
amount of time trying to accomplish that same thing. So well, Mark Mark
at mm local says Stephen tweets about health topics from time to time. Does
he see a relationship between bitcoin, low time preferences and your health choices?
Kind of goes with what you're talking very much, so I do, and
I think safe Adinamuse and his book The Bitcoin Standard helped open my eyes to
a lot of that as well. Just bitcoin helps you think more long term,
and as part of that, you you care more about being around longer
and about your your life. And removing that high time preference and short term
thinking is transformative in so many ways. I know, I know people through
bitcoin Twitter who have literally SAIDs me, I quit smoking because I want to
be around to see bitcoin moon, and I like those types of anecdotes are
really powerful. You know, when people get more optimistic about the future,
they want to be around for that future, they want to help influence that
future, they want to benefit from that future. Then it can ripple through
so many different facets it's like my wife. She always goes, you know
the one thing I hate about bitcoin, and I go watch. I don't
ask her anymore because now I know the She goes, we're just so damn
all because we're both sixty five. She goes, why couldn't this have come
out? Well, we're like thirty, yeah, and we would be able
to reap the reward, you know. So she says, uh, I
have one last question for you, Beat from BTC x Zelko. What's your
favorite wallet? And why? Oh I am I'm biased. I am an
investor in Samurai Wallet, but it is what I use personally as well,
and I used it before I became an investor. That's for Google Android only.
Is at the moment, Yeah, it's for Google Android only, but
I stop. So. I'm an iPhone user primarily. That's my day to
day device, and I used to be really be hesitant to get an Android
because I thought, oh, you know, I don't want another phone that
I have to deal with just to kind of use this other wallet. But
then when I changed how I thought about it, and it's not like having
another phone. It's to me like, this is my bitcoin wallet, this
is my mixing device. This is what enables me to regain privacy in my
bitcoin. Person. You use two phones, yeah, but I don't really
use I don't think of one as a phone. I think of one as
my Samurai device. Use your iPhone as your phone, and you have an
Android phone that you use for your exactly Yeah, I bought and it's not
like your phone. It'd be kind of like having I guess the world.
Way to relate to that is you'd have a iPhone and an iPod touch whatever
that is, you know what I mean, because that there's a lot of
stuff, but you really don't make phone calls on right, And I think
there's just a lot of mental baggage for people that comes along with the word
phone, where they feel like there's this thing and I need to like pay
for a plan and I have a number and all that. You don't need
any of that, Like you can just use Wi Fi and have this device.
You pay for it one time. So you just went in a store
and bought a phone and said I just want to buy the phone for sixty
nine dollars and I don't want anything exactly, Yeah, and you can be
as price you want to be extra private, which I do encourage everyone to
do. You know, you can go in you can walk into a T
mobile store hand them cash for a device. Wearing a mask now is socially
acceptable. That's kind of crazy that you can walk in a bank with a
mask on and gloves and then for that cost you get this device that can
run Samurai and can do coin joints and just enable you to be private in
your like retake your financial sovereignty and privacy, and that's very powerful. I've
never thought about. I use old iPhones, you know, because they don't
need to have a lot of the bells and whistles. So like a bit
block boom. The people who will be working I like the T shirt shop
and souvenir shop will assist call it. They'll have older iPhones that are just
right now in storage and we'll pull them out just for that event. And
all they have are on them a wallets. That's all that's on it is
a wallet and it hooks up to Wi Fi, you know, and that's
it. It's just a wallet on there. That's a good idea though in
the Android phones because it's inexpensive too. If there are any entrepreneurs out there
who are building things in a cipher punk way to encourage, like to encourage
a future of you know, bitcoin as the world's global base money and building
on bitcoin to help people be sovereign. Then that's what I'm all about.
And I love you know, even if I'm not investing directly, I just
want to see a future like that, and however I can help, I
want too. So so yeah, that's what I'm all about. My Twitter
dms are open. I'm s THENC on Twitter and hope. I'm always just
down to connect with good bitcoiners and chat. Sweet. Where can people follow
you? I'm on Twitter st h E n C like S then C.
That's probably the best starting point for people to follow me. And then I
run the Orange County Bitcoin Network, as we touched on, so for anyone
in southern California. And we've also been doing a lot of zoom virtual events
accessible to anyone in the world during this uh these times. Um so we
do monthly stuff and that's oh we seetcn on Twitter. We're going to have
an event actually coming up at the end of May on the thirty first,
with Stefan Vera and Matt O'Dell talking about the importance of running full nodes and
and that whole not you, not your keys, not your online event.
Yeah, it'll be streamed to YouTube, so anybody can tune in and learn
the value of full nodes and options we're doing. So we have a pretty
good group there. Yeah, we've got a solid We've got over three hundred
people who are registered as part of our group online. But we have a
really really solid core group of good bitcoins and others are like in LA.
There's also Andrew Yang's bit Dev's LA group, which I'd love to give a
shout out too. They put on great technical events and we have a really
good, you know, culture of supporting each other and attending each other stuff
too. Thankscellent. Well that's really about it, And I want to make
sure you know you're an officially a crypto cousin. So honored, love it,
Welcome to the family. You know, I've changed four minute crypto four
minute bitcoin, but I hadn't figured out a way to change this cryptocas in
the bitcoin as it just doesn't have the same ring to me, you know,
So right, I'm gonna have to work on that. So I appreciate
you taking the time to come on the show with me. I appreciate the
opportunity. Good chatting Gary, and I guess if ida I'll see you four
so I'll see you and I'll be looking forward to it and bit block Moon.
Thanks. I hope you've enjoyed today's show, and I want to give
a big thank you to all my cousins out there for listening and subscribe.
If you haven't subscribed yet, just go to cryptocusins dot com and you'll see
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Investing in any cryptocurrency is risky and you should never invest more than you can
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understand you are using any and all information from the crypto cousins at your own risk.