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Dec. 20, 2022 - The Adam King Show

01:35:26

EP017: What’s UP With Crypto?

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	I'd like to welcome everybody to a brand new edition of the Adam King show.
	I'm your host, Adam King, joined by the one and only Rock Breath.
	Welcome. We have an incredible show in store for you today.
	We are going to be joined later on in the segment by crypto mega player, lawyer, entrepreneur, tech genius, Gordon Einstein.
	Inside this episode is everything that you're going to need to know about crypto moving forward in the future.
	Excellent. But first, I want to turn to my associate producer, the one and only Rock Breath, and say, what's up, man?
	How's it going? It's going really well.
	I'm freezing here in Ocala.
	It's starting to drop in temperature.
	Should be about 40 over the holiday.
	But other than that, it's a fantastic day.
	Are you getting ready for Christmas? Yeah, you know what?
	I'm looking forward to having a little time off with my wife.
	She gets an extra few days off during the holiday.
	So, yeah. Yep, for sure.
	I love the holiday season.
	It's all about bringing light into the darkness.
	That's for sure. But it is the second day of Hanukkah, so I want to wish a happy Hanukkah to all of our Maccabees out there.
	Watching us from out yonder.
	That's right. Happy Hanukkah, Adam.
	Thank you very much. It's been a joyous Hanukkah.
	Beautiful. A lot of light, a lot of love, a lot of gifts, and most importantly, a lot of memes.
	All right, good. Let's see.
	Let's get into this meme segment and get into our interview, shall we?
	We sure shall. I'm changing the meme segment, by the way.
	It's not just memes.
	It's memes and announcements and news.
	And I want to give a special announcement to To all of our listeners who are joining us on iTunes podcast and iHeartRadio, I've just come to learn that we actually have a fairly large presence on audio only.
	And so I'm going to do my best to describe the memes for all of you guys so that you can know what's going on.
	We have our first in-studio bonus edition coming.
	Emily Saves America will be joining us for our Thursday segment this week.
	We have a lot of cool stuff to talk about.
	We're going to be doing some collaboration, and it's going to be a lot of fun.
	So stay tuned later on in the week for Emily Saves America coming on the Adam King Show.
	It'll be our first in-studio interview ever, which is a big deal for us.
	Wow, looking forward to that.
	The SEC awards 37 million to the whistleblower who gave key information, the whistleblower.
	She gets invited to the White House.
	I know. It's insanity.
	She's such a snake, this one.
	I know. Laura Loomer, if you're gonna steal something, make it big, says Sam Bingman-Fried.
	And Joe Biden says, you're both amateurs.
	Oh, that's funny.
	That guy went to jail, though.
	Sam, whatever. Project knowledge.
	Let's tax the air they breathe and tell them it's to save the planet.
	But look who's in this picture.
	I know, Reagan's right up in front.
	So is Bush. New world order.
	They don't care about anything but having money in the government.
	This one, I need to bring awareness to this.
	I shared this on my Instagram.
	As you can see, my Instagram handle is Adam Melech.
	And I said, why?
	This is just a meme by New York Patriot 1978.
	Why do we need cell towers every three miles if the president could call the moon in 1969?
	Very simple, right?
	We just had that conversation five minutes ago.
	Instagram flags this post, Rock.
	And they, why do they flag it?
	Because they fact check me.
	Nixon did not need cell towers to call the astronauts in the moon in 1969.
	How freaking petty are they?
	What? They would censor me for that.
	What? I got censored for that.
	Oh my gosh. That's insane.
	It's insanely petty.
	Look at the meme.
	It's a funny meme. It's just a funny meme.
	So they're reading the memes now?
	They're reading the meme.
	But that was from November 6th.
	So they went back a month and a half in order to censor that.
	And it was on my stories, too.
	So it's only a 24-hour cycle.
	So it was only up for 24 hours.
	But they censored it from November 6th.
	I'm throwing that up on my account.
	Here's one. A guy that hates America traded a guy that hates America to a guy that hates America for a guy that hates America.
	It's a giant loop of insanity.
	Brittany Griner, they said that she was a man, actually.
	Alright, this is some news.
	Classical Liberty came with the kill.
	Instagram shadowbans are very real.
	If you look at his account and how the shadowban occurred, you can see how his interaction with followers versus non-followers has all but expanded when his shadowban was lifted.
	So, for all of our listeners who don't think that shadowbans are real, just look at this meme and you will see that they are very, very real.
	Yeah, right. Low-effort Zionist memes.
	Hamas leader was filmed with a prostitute in an Israeli hotel, and then he was condemned by Hamas for doing so.
	But it's very interesting to know that all their Hamas leaders are sitting in Israel, you know, going to, enjoying medical treatment in Israel, vacationing in Israel while they launch this stupid war from Gaza.
	Sister Shanti.
	Everybody should follow her.
	She's so funny. Summary of 2022.
	January. Ah!
	December. And yesterday, Carrie Lake with some huge breaking news.
	Our election case is going to trial.
	Katie Hobbs' attempt to have our case thrown out failed.
	She will have to take to the stand and testify.
	Buckle up, America. This is far from over.
	This is big news, Rock.
	This is going to be a major, major thing.
	I'll say, you know, that's my home state.
	We at the Adam King Show are thinking about actually heading to Maricopa County and doing some on-the-ground reporting, so stay tuned for that.
	That might happen. Wow.
	Another Hanukkah post.
	Jewish teens in 160 BCE. I kicked out the Greeks from our land and reestablished the traditional Jewish worship in the temple.
	Jewish teens in 2020.
	I twerk against anti-Semites on TikTok.
	Stupid. I get so sick of it, honestly.
	As a Jew, they bombard the internet.
	They fight the wars with memes and stuff like that.
	It's like, come on, do something else.
	Deplorable Dad breaking report.
	Twitter CEO Elon Musk drops a hint that a poll about him stepping down as CEO was a trick to catch bots.
	Really a genius move.
	Kim.com says, I'm hoping that Elon did this as a poll to honeypot to catch all the deep state bots.
	The data set for this poll will contain the most of them.
	Some good data mining and he could kill them all in one go.
	Elon Musk says, interesting.
	I'm not leaving. Excellent.
	Elon to stay as Twitter CEO after counting mail-in votes.
	Did you know about this poll?
	Here's the poll up in the right.
	He put up a poll on Twitter.
	Should I step down his head as Twitter?
	I will abide by the results of this poll.
	And everybody ran in to say yes, 17 million people voted in the poll.
	I didn't know. Otherwise, I would have voted no.
	And mostly peaceful memes.
	Stunt on these hoes.
	He's so funny. Jimmy Falla, anyone who wants to ban the word pedophile because it's unfair to pedophiles is probably a pedophile.
	Why did I post this?
	Rock, why did I post this?
	Because our YouTube video on pedophilia was taken down for harassment.
	That's right. That's right.
	And it didn't take any more than an hour.
	We did a YouTube video with Avery Williamson and Noel Cacciatorian.
	Avery's an NFL player who wanted to speak out against Balenciaga, and that's episode 13, which is now censored off YouTube.
	We got a nine-day ban from YouTube just from sharing that because we were harassing...
	On banned.video.
	Everything is always available on banned.video, including our special bonuses, which are only found on banned.video, like my response to Nick Fuentes, Alex Jones debate.
	Of course. Big stuff only on banned.video.
	Of course. But as soon as something were to get banned on YouTube, it goes right to rumble.
	Right. Shoo, I like how over the weekend it was basically confirmed that the CIA killed JFK, but it was so unsurprising and common sense that we just kind of went, yeah, and moved on.
	Yeah, right. And I think that the biggest story with this, Rock, is that every director of the CIA had to have known that the CIA was involved in the killing of Kennedy.
	Sure, they had to pass intelligence.
	So does that mean that Mike Pompeo is also complicit in that?
	Because he was CIA director.
	And now Mike Pompeo wants all sorts of perks and he wants to run, you know, and they're talking about Mike Pompeo for president and stuff like that.
	But that's entry level for deep state.
	Dude is touching the bottom.
	Yeah, for sure. Anyways, I want to get to our interview.
	We got a great guest. Rock, thank you.
	I'll see you in the backstage. And I'm going to welcome on our guest, Gordon Einstein.
	That was great. Have a great show, Adam.
	Welcome to the Adam King Show.
	Our guest today is Gordon Einstein from Crypto Law Partners.
	And I'm just going to say everything Einstein because Gordon is an absolute renaissance man.
	If I were to call myself a renaissance man, which I do believe I am, I look to Gordon as somebody in my world who is absolutely a renaissance man.
	So before we get into all the nitty gritty stuff, you know, I want to say for my audience a little bit about you and what you do and where we met.
	And, you know, I've been blessed to have you in my life for, you know, I don't even remember how long ago Happy Hour Mafia.
	I think we're creeping up on a decade, if not more.
	We certainly are.
	You know, I became... We're talking about Happy Hour Mafia.
	It started in Happy Hour Mafia, which was before a small world.
	You know, that was like the original small world of Los Angeles was Happy Hour Mafia.
	And it was founded by none other than this man right here, Gordon Einstein.
	And Happy Hour Mafia was like a club at Happy Hour.
	And it was like the biggest deal in LA for like, how many, how many, it was a once a month party.
	What was the final number that you got to?
	Do you know? I did 40 of them.
	40 of them. And some of these were up to...
	Ah, this is an interesting interview topic.
	Some of them were up to 200 or 250 people.
	They were amazing. They were great.
	And they were charity-supporting, and they had some intellectual content.
	Yeah. I don't know if you remember the invitations, but they were not your normal invitations.
	Not at all. Very thoughtful.
	And there was always, like, something that it was benefiting.
	But they were really some of the best parties ever.
	And, you know, LA has...
	There's never been a scene in LA like the Happy Hour Mafia scene.
	In all my experience, being a part of every social scene that ever existed in LA. And it was really the quality of the people that would come.
	And you were the host.
	And back then, you were the president of the IP Bar Association, I believe.
	Am I right? For like a flat minute.
	For a flat minute.
	I just remembered that about you.
	And then we were friends and we were always social.
	We never went into business.
	Our relationship never ventured into business.
	And then as crypto began to blow up, I watched you blow up with it.
	And your public profile has just gone through the roof.
	And then I remember, you know, all the different things you were doing, your fitness campaign.
	You were like my source of inspiration.
	You were bigger than Andrew Tate out there in the world.
	You know, you were killing it for everybody in your world.
	And it was so inspiring to watch you create crypto, go from Adaptive Sky to Gordon to Crypto Law Partners.
	And maybe you could give a little bit of background about yourself for our audience so they could hear first from you.
	Sure. I'll just kind of start from the beginning, the real beginning.
	So I'm a Los Angeles native, was born there.
	My dad was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force.
	So shortly after being born, I grew up a little bit in Virginia because he was stationed at the Pentagon.
	So you can hear, I don't have the 100% standard Los Angeles accent.
	And then after Pentagon, we moved back to Los Angeles because he's working at the Rand Corporation.
	So I mostly grew up in Los Angeles.
	I went to law school in LA and USC. So technology was always a part of your family?
	Kind of. My dad was into personal computing.
	This is back in the 70s and 80s.
	I'm dating myself. I took all my bar mitzvah money and bought an Apple II Plus.
	I didn't have any money left over for games, but I had the computer, so that was something.
	If you remember Ultima and all that fun stuff.
	I've always been interested in technology.
	It's more recently that I became a hobbyist programmer in Python.
	I wouldn't call myself a real developer, but I do it for fun.
	I practiced estate planning, business, and tax for a while.
	Then I broke off from law and started my own company, Adapter Sky, which you mentioned.
	That's a hosted desktop solution for law firms.
	And then, well, we can dive into this, but I discovered crypto, blockchain, and Bitcoin in 2014 in Ukraine, of all places.
	Interesting. And that's a good story.
	And then I realized...
	I always say my major epiphany was two things.
	This area... Blockchain crypto needed law, but much more strongly, I realized that law needed blockchain and crypto.
	In other words, for law to be made better, it needed access to these new tools.
	Actually, that's such a great point that you made.
	I went ahead and asked a bunch of the big crypto players in my world to give me some questions for you, and some of the questions was pertaining to that exactly.
	We'll get to that in the second half of the segment.
	But that crypto, that law needs crypto for its advancement, which is, you know, very interesting.
	So, but continue, please.
	Sure. So, I had this epiphany and I came back and I talked to my employees at Adapter Sky.
	I said, look, I'm I'm going back into law because I want to work on this revolution.
	So, you know, make a decision whether you're going to support me because I can always shut down and die for the sky or I can keep it going while I do this.
	And they're like, no, no, we couldn't stop you even if we wanted to, which is true.
	And so since 2000, you know, it was about a year of switching, but 2015 or so, let's say, I started doing law again.
	And having an exclusive focus on crypto and blockchain.
	And just for an international audience.
	In 2015, you're saying?
	Yeah, early. Wow.
	Very OG lawyer in this area.
	That's why I got kind of famous. That's crazy.
	And I... Something interesting happened, which is I had always had a deep fear of public speaking.
	I was never very good at it.
	I had a speech impediment.
	Some... Spiritual psychological blocks against it, if you like, but I couldn't accomplish what I wanted to accomplish without getting up on the stage.
	So I would force myself to get on the stage and speak in public again and again and again.
	Right. As nerve-wracking and soul-destroying as it felt.
	And finally got slightly less nervous and less nervous than I remember cracking a couple jokes on stage.
	Now, I mean, I was just on stage last night.
	Can't get me off the freaking stage.
	I love doing interviews. I love talking.
	I love being, you know, messing with people.
	I'll get up there and I'll just get on the stage and I'll just rip at people, you know, because I want direct answers.
	I want to deliver value for the audience.
	And when people are providing valuable stuff, I facilitate it when they're being a little, you know, waving this way or that way.
	I'm just, I'm using my deposition skills to get to the truth.
	I love public speaking now.
	So I think, you know, that's a You know, when you first met me, you know, Happy Hour Mafia, what we can talk about is when we first met, that was sort of me using being an event organizer as a crutch for the fact that I was a little socially shy.
	You know, it's easier to meet people if you're organizing the event.
	You have a thing to immediately contact.
	You can walk up to them and say, hey, I'm the organizer.
	Are you having a good time? Just make sure you're being taken care of.
	And that's a natural conversation starter.
	Interesting. You don't need to be creative.
	You can just do that. Because you were also such a good host.
	You know, it's interesting to hear that now, looking back at those years, because you were such an amazing host, and no one would have ever thought that it was like overcoming a social impediment.
	Well, it certainly was.
	I mean, everything, half the stuff I do, I don't know why I did it at the time, and then I look back, I'm like, oh, if I had been thinking about it, that's what I would have been thinking.
	Right. You know, and then some stuff I do for multiple reasons.
	Most of my best life choices have been pure instinct, and pure, impulsive, fast instinct.
	And it ends up being right in retrospect.
	So, the Happy Aramati thing was, you know, winding social circle, you know, working on social anxiety.
	Really wanting to support charity, really wanting to get my friends together.
	It was also an efficiency thing, because rather than going to 20 different places to be 20 different friends, why not do one event and have them meet each other and hang out?
	You know, it's just time management.
	There's all these good reasons. So just kind of wrapping up the crypto thing, you know, I've had a successful international practice, and I was based in Los Angeles, though going to Ukraine obviously is, you know, quite a lot.
	I didn't know that your history with Ukraine started that early.
	Oh, yeah. Just a real fast anecdote.
	So for Adapter Sky, I was displaying a legal tech.
	I think it was in 2014 in New York.
	We got a booth. We got everything else.
	And this Ukrainian couple came up to this booth, not my booth, but the booth next to mine.
	And they're speaking in Russian.
	And I've always had a thing for the Russian language.
	You probably know that. Yeah.
	So we started talking. Got to be really good friends, spent some time together in New York.
	And then it turned out that these were the founders of Distributed Lab, Pavel Kravchenko and Lily Kravchenko.
	I then invited them to stay with me in Los Angeles at my place.
	So if you can picture the scene, you know, nice, good-sized apartment, big couch.
	We're watching that TV show, Sherlock, with Benedict Cumberbatch, whatever his name is.
	I'm making steak, I'm pouring them wine, and they go, Gordon, have you ever been to Ukraine?
	And I hadn't been out of the country, not counting Mexico, for 25 years.
	I'm like, no. And they're like, you should come.
	You should come to Odessa. Let us show you pictures of it.
	And I looked at it. I said, okay, I'll come.
	I didn't have a passport. I hadn't left the country for 25 years.
	They didn't really believe me. But I addressed all those things.
	And next thing you know, I'm in Odessa, Ukraine.
	Think about it. A silly American doesn't leave the country for 25 years.
	Then goes right after the Maidan revolution in Ukraine.
	Goes right to Odessa. You still see the customs house that was in flames.
	But because I did this, they organized a conference to keep me happy.
	A blockchain credible party, BIP. And so they brought all their friends down who were involved in crypto and blockchain to Odessa, Ukraine.
	And it was amazing.
	It really opened my eyes.
	Once I got a taste of that, there was just no going back.
	Because Odessa is rich with history and all the beautiful stuff.
	Actually, my first time that I ever went to Ukraine, I believe, was 2003.
	And I've been four times.
	And I love Ukraine.
	First time I ever went to Ukraine, actually, I sailed from Istanbul to Odessa.
	Wow. It was an amazing...
	That's epic. It was so epic.
	Epic, my friend. It was so epic.
	We got lost at sea.
	We got caught in a storm and lost at sea.
	What kind of boat were you on?
	A cargo ship.
	Oh my God. It's a short story.
	I'll tell you the story. So we were in Israel and we wanted to walk the path of Rebbe Nachman.
	He went from Israel to Uman where he passed away.
	So we were trying to walk the path.
	So he sailed from Istanbul to Odessa.
	And I was reading this book about his life.
	So I was like, I'm going to go sail from Istanbul to Odessa.
	We boarded the ship.
	And the ship, I went with two of my guy friends, all Jewish.
	It's like a non-Jewish ship.
	And ironically, they sent us to a room.
	They gave us a cabin on the ship.
	It had two bunk beds.
	And one of the bunk beds, we get in the room, and there's a Jewish guy sitting there.
	And we say, what are you doing? He said, what are you doing here?
	He says, I'm going to walk the path of Rabbi Nachman.
	I was like, what is this?
	What are the coincidences and the chances?
	I still think to this day that he might have been like Elijah the prophet, Eliyahu and Avi, there to protect us.
	So we get lost at sea, and in the middle of the night, because we're all, at that time, you remember me, I used to have the long payas and the long beard and everything.
	Oh, I remember. You were quite the scene.
	A very eccentric character, the Javi Armada.
	And by the way, we have a Chabad yarmulke.
	I want a Chabad of Dubai yarmulke.
	I need you to send me one of those.
	That's incredible. That's a pleasure item.
	Yeah. So they wanted to know what we were doing on the boat.
	So in the middle of the night, this drunk Ukrainian guy knocks our door in.
	He's drunk. He's like, you're to come with me to the bar.
	We're like, what is this?
	This is kind of scary.
	Like we were in the middle of a storm.
	It was like, it was wild storm.
	The ship was going side to side.
	He said, they're not letting me go to the bar.
	Yeah. He's like, they're not letting me come to the bar until I bring back the Jews with me to the bar.
	This is what he says. We're like, we're kind of screwed.
	We have nothing to do. We go down to the bar.
	And in the bar scene, it's like total mafia on the cargo ship.
	And the music, it was like a scene from a movie.
	And these three Hasidic guys with long payas and beards walk into like, everybody's got gold chains.
	There was guns. It was like a scene that they needed to know who we were because there was something on the ship that we weren't supposed to be on that ship.
	And the music was playing and I ended up jumping on a table and started dancing.
	They had like cookers and prostitutes and strippers everywhere.
	And I just started dancing.
	I just started dancing and throwing a party in the main bus.
	He looked at me and he's like, you know, these jewels aren't so bad after all.
	And we stayed with them the whole time.
	We got lost at sea with them.
	And when we pulled into Odessa, everybody was required to stay in our rooms.
	Armed guards with AK-47s came on the boat, took off cargo after cargo after cargo, and then we were finally allowed to leave the boat.
	So I don't know what it was, but it was a trip for the ages.
	And I loved Odessa.
	I know.
	You know there's a Russian Moffat comedy skit on YouTube.
	I never saw it. Oh, I'll send you, like, this is like this.
	It's like, you know, basically, you know, this guy goes, you're reminding me, he goes to Russia on, like, a school trip, and he gets adopted by these mafia guys.
	He's like, I am the machine!
	Okay, well, anyways, and finally, you know, the teacher tries to get him in trouble, and they're like, you know, I'm not going to use the word, but like, look, lady, this is Russia.
	So, you know, it's like, They're all friendly.
	I never had a problem.
	I attribute it to the Russian character because they were truly doing something illegal on the boat.
	These strangers happened to pop up on the boat.
	Once they saw that we weren't a problem, they didn't care.
	It was like, whatever. Enjoy the party.
	It was great.
	That was my first experience with Ukraine.
	God, but is Ukraine not made out of pastels?
	I mean, like, you look at the landscape and the countryside and all the beauty of the country.
	It's like the whole country is made out of pastels.
	I don't want to get...
	I don't want to get into Ukraine because it's a hot mess.
	I want peace for the people of Ukraine and I want peace for the region and for the whole world.
	And it's such a beautiful, rich country, you know, the people and the culture that it deserves peace to flourish.
	So we'll leave Ukraine at that and pivot into other things.
	So you were in Ukraine 2015.
	14, 15. I got exposed to crypto.
	I came back. I pivoted my career into law.
	When did you make your first purchase of Bitcoin?
	2016, I think? 2016.
	Not immediately. Yeah, but did okay.
	Clearly. Now I'm in Dubai.
	But I think, just to pick up where I left off, I was based in Los Angeles.
	I was doing a lot of international traveling.
	Just to get a little bit personal, so I was married, and then that kind of fell apart for a variety of reasons, partly because of COVID, partly because of some other stuff.
	But then when it was in his death throes, I was invited to Dubai in the end of 2020, December, because a friend saw that I was not in the best shape just because of COVID and what was going on with the marriage and all that other stuff.
	And I went out to Dubai. The gyms were open.
	Right. Crypto was happening.
	People were friendly.
	You know, mainly gyms were open because I, you know, didn't go through the marriage and just COVID. And I was like, okay, thank God.
	Came back, wrapped up some stuff, then ended up moving to Dubai end of February.
	And that's when you saw the fitness kick start.
	And it's been magic.
	There's so much entrepreneurial energy in this part of the world.
	When I see other YouTubers talk down about the Middle East and say they don't have anything except for oil and they're going to be poor and they're stupid, I have to laugh.
	I mean, this is It is the city of the future.
	Dubai doesn't have any oil, by the way.
	It gets its money from Abu Dhabi.
	So, you know, they're built on human activity and intelligence.
	And also something that our audience really loves, the no taxes.
	I think that really stimulates the economy.
	Well, remember, Americans are taxed on a global basis, but for everyone else, no taxes.
	Yes, the best and the brightest come here.
	They have an entrepreneurial environment that's not like at home.
	They have personal safety. Especially for women, they can walk down the street anywhere and they're fine.
	Feft happens, but it's low.
	And if you're not stupid, you're generally safe.
	The people are hospitable. The way I put it is, the government is what it is.
	But no one's not here by choice.
	So if you choose to come here, it's like choosing to go visit your friend in their mansion.
	Right. And the friend says, you know, while you're in my mansion, please observe these rules.
	Okay? You don't need to be in my mansion.
	You know, you're free to go anywhere you want.
	But if you're coming to my mansion...
	Where you're safe and being fed well and being protected and have all this opportunity.
	Here's some private doors.
	Please respect the fact that this is a private section of the house.
	Please don't swear. Please treat each other nicely.
	Even if someone else is next door to you, I have many guests in my mansion.
	If the person in the room next to you isn't someone you would normally get along with, while you're in my house, at least be polite.
	Which, to me, makes complete sense.
	I'm in someone awesome, generous person's mansion.
	Right. And that person is letting me run a business out of here.
	The person is letting me, you know, live life with my fiance here.
	You know, which is, you know, by the way, you know, things evolve quickly.
	Right. Mazel tov to you and the super assassin.
	Yeah, you saw that. Yeah, she's great.
	That, you know, that's fantastic.
	You know, there's a... And, you know, what other...
	How strange I got in touch, more in touch, never was not in touch, but, you know, was able to get a concerted touch with my Judaism here.
	In a Muslim Arab country.
	It's such a beautiful story.
	It's a beautiful story for Jews and it's a beautiful story for Arabs that somebody can find their Jewishness inside of the Arab world.
	It's beautiful.
	It's something that in the ancient world would have been accepted and for over a thousand years, maybe even two thousand years, there's been so much animosity that to see a story like this, it really speaks volumes, one for the ages.
	That one can discover their Judaism inside of the kingdom.
	So... I mean, as I'm sure you're well aware, there was large Jewish communities in most of these Middle Eastern countries prior to the establishment of Israel.
	Yeah. And then that, right or wrong, exacerbated tensions between the local governments and populations and the Jews.
	And then you had...
	Jews either choosing or being forced to flee to Israel or abroad.
	That's caused a multi-generational rift.
	And right, wrong, whatever.
	I'm not even talking about it. Just as a fact, the Jews of these areas left.
	And then Abraham, of course, kicked in.
	And then Magically, in some places, it's restarting.
	It's bizarre. The wheel of history has turned in a very surprising way.
	It's not a furtive community.
	It's actively integrating with the leaders and business people in this country, and they're collaborating.
	Groups of Israelis and Jews are working with groups of Arabs here, Emiratis, and getting stuff done.
	It's really neat. As a Jew abroad who's watching everything there, one cannot help but have tremendous admiration for His Highness Sheikh Mohammed ibn Rashid al-Maktoum and he is truly a visionary and one can even argue that Maybe even the true leader of the Arab people,
	the true visionary, the one who truly blazes the trail for all Arabs in all the other countries into the future, not just with his relationship with Israel and the Jewish people, but also with technology and with upright civil society, with fairness of law, due process of law.
	I mean, he's truly a...
	I know Salman gets a lot of attention because he's, you know, King of Saudi Arabia and everything, Prince Salman and everything.
	But, you know, Maktoum is really a tremendous, tremendous visionary.
	Have you spent time with him?
	No, not yet.
	Not yet. Not yet.
	Soon. He's on my calendar for early 2023.
	He just needs to know that I exist in Pennsylvania.
	That's incredible. No, I'm kidding.
	You know, there's layers and layers of relationships and families and shakes and his and her highnesses and excellencies here and massive commonality of names because the names are, you know, son of this and from this tribe and blah, blah, blah. So to parse that all out is a process.
	And the funny thing is you don't necessarily...
	There's certainly a model here where you add value, get noticed, and become aligned with or partner up with or advise the royalty here.
	That's certainly a valid model.
	Because, you know, it's funny, the parasha for today, for this week is, you know, Joseph in Egypt, you know, seven years of famine, like, be an advisor to the pharaoh.
	If you want to get all religious, that model is alive and well here, where you can add your value as an advisor to the local government and structures and come in line with them and do well.
	That's one model. It's nice to have those connections, but you don't actually need those connections to be successful here.
	It's funny, he's actually Iraqi.
	He put it that this is a hyper-competitive meritocracy.
	Okay? And you can have a beautiful life here if you take the time, you build the relationships, you build trust, and you keep your nose clean.
	Okay? And you don't need to know this shake or that shake or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	You can be successful.
	Now, there is... You don't need that.
	So that's a valid path also.
	I think the best way to proceed here is form...
	It's all that.
	You can't lay back.
	You know, it's maybe someone who's born here who has all the connections because they went to red school, could kind of lay back and get Habibi business, they call it, just because the Habibi business.
	Yallah, Habibi. Yeah. Come on.
	Yeah, Habibi, come to Dubai.
	You know, I'm here too late to develop that network from birth, okay?
	You know, I don't have anything from birth, right?
	You know, I'm Here in the 2020s, moving fast.
	So I think you need to work really hard.
	You need to make yourself known.
	You need to respect gatekeepers, but also build up your brand so that people behind the gates reach out to you.
	And through a combination of networking and hard work, you can get pretty far.
	To your other comment, I really respect the government here for what they've done and what their vision.
	I think it's important to differentiate between UAE, the country, and then Abu Dhabi, the Emirate, and Dubai, the Emirate.
	They're each pursuing Aligned but subtly different visions.
	And, you know, some of them have oil wealth, some of them don't have oil wealth, and they're finding a way to live together because they really are like cantons of Switzerland.
	They really are semi-independent within this national system.
	And, you know, MBS has its pros and its cons, okay?
	I'm not going to rehash them all here, but I think everyone knows.
	But I think on a macro level, he was given a different hand to play than the leaders here.
	He wasn't necessarily the initial first choice for, or his line wasn't the initial first choice for taking over the country.
	And that country has got a huge young population and a limited amount of oil.
	And he had to, and a certain family that he had to deal with.
	And, you know, he had to play a little bit rougher.
	And now he's played it rough.
	And now I think he's more focused on the future.
	So he's starting from a different place.
	I don't know if he's any better or worse.
	I'm not behind the scenes with these people.
	I don't know what the real conversations are.
	Exactly. There's a tremendous happening behind the scenes as well that is not in the public forefront.
	Yeah, 99% of it.
	Like I said, if you...
	I don't come to the UAE and think, you know, darn it, I deserve to know what's going on from before it happens.
	I'm in someone else's house.
	I'm in someone else's family house.
	If the brother and sister or the dad and the son are going to go have a private conversation in some other room, I wouldn't presume to bang down the door and go, hey guys, what are you talking about?
	It's not that kind of thing.
	If you don't like it, leave.
	Again, this is an expatriate country.
	90% of the population is expatriate.
	If you don't like it, go. It's not like...
	Again, everyone here is here by choice.
	There's a lot of personal freedom here.
	There's a lot of freedom associated with walking.
	It's the weirdest thing here. People hold onto tables, like if you're going to a buffet and you want to hold onto your table, by leaving their mobile phone on the table.
	That's so cool. It's there.
	It's there when you get back. It's not even a question.
	You know, in Proverbs, we learn that the blessing of abundance is acquired through peace.
	Peace is the greatest blessing of abundance.
	And just look around. I mean, they're killing it.
	In every single field, they're killing it in Dubai.
	All my friends that moved to Dubai are doing so well, better than they've ever done anywhere else.
	The life, the culture, it's all blossoming and flourishing and it's really exciting.
	So I want to move the conversation because we only have about an hour.
	So I want to stay focused and get to some crypto questions because my audience is very into crypto.
	Some of them have gotten destroyed.
	Some of them have made fortunes.
	I bet. Yeah.
	I've gotten destroyed. But when I announced to the community, because we announced everybody coming on the show, a lot of people spoke up.
	A lot of people were excited. In fact, I had one friend who even said I didn't get the actual.
	He's in Ireland.
	But he said that he's in multiple groups with you, WhatsApp groups with you.
	And he's been watching you.
	And he was absolutely ecstatic that you were coming on the show because he actually watched.
	He's been on the show before.
	So John Devine. Oh, sure.
	What's that? I recognize the name.
	Yeah. John D. Rockefeller.
	He calls himself on WhatsApp.
	Fantastic. But I got some really great questions for crypto for you.
	I want to get into those.
	But before we do, I want to touch on one more thing about crypto law partners.
	And just for our audience, anybody who needs crypto law advice is welcome to go to crypto law partners.
	Where do they find you?
	Cryptolawpartners.com? I'm easy to find out.
	I'm loud and clear on Instagram.
	It's cryptolawpartners.com.
	It's easy. You just fill out the form and say hi.
	I'm sure they can contact you and get WhatsApp.
	Basically, people find me on Instagram these days.
	I know that sounds funny, but I'm pretty loud and clear.
	Does Cryptolawpartners actually advise the Sovereign Crypto Fund of Dubai?
	I couldn't answer that question.
	You can't answer that question.
	Okay. All right, let's move on to some real questions.
	Let me put it this way.
	I have an extremely strong theoretical and practical interest and involvement with regulation of policy.
	And I really advise everybody to check out your YouTube channel because I did watch some of your YouTube interviews and they're very informative.
	Very, very informative.
	And for anybody who wants to know the cutting edge of what's going on in crypto, there's your guy right here.
	But that's really cool.
	So you are advising policy in Dubai, helping out with the structure.
	And Africa. And in Africa.
	Interesting. You know, then I'm going to just jump ahead to a different question.
	I had so many questions, I'm going to just jump to, since we're talking about advising policy.
	I wanted to ask you, one of my...
	Friends asked a question.
	They wanted to know what you think is the future of the U.S. and the U.S. money supply after ISO 2022 migration.
	Of course, the cleaning people just knocked on the door.
	I may have to yell at the cleaning people to not come in because they just decided to ring this again.
	The Let me comment about the U.S. generally.
	Okay. I'm not happy to say this, but the U.S. dollar has long been in a death spiral, but that spiral is increasing its path of descent, if you like. It's really sad to see it.
	I don't think the US is going to do well in the long term.
	I could be wrong. I'm not happy about it.
	It may get by just because everyone else will do worse, but it's just not where I see entrepreneurial activity taking place.
	And so with the money supply and everything else, they're just going to keep on printing more money.
	They can't not pay more money.
	You know, 2008 never ended, the crisis of that period.
	And we've just been hobbling along Ever since then, patching and hoping.
	And we moved from a real-based economy, I say, to a finance-based economy.
	And there's an expression I use, which is when I was growing up, I was looking forward to the physical future, whether it's flying cars or robots or things that were different.
	Now we have a future based on the screen.
	The thing that, you know, whether it's Twitter or Instagram or YouTube or whatever it is, our futures, or even in virtual reality, our futures are based on these little devices.
	I don't see too much of the physical future.
	And you can tell which country is going to do well, in my opinion, but I see who's building the physical future.
	And I see China doing that.
	Okay, I see the Middle East doing that.
	I don't see Germany doing that.
	That was very surprising and very disappointing when I was there.
	I was like, I always have my mind.
	Germany being this cutting edge country, it doesn't seem to be doing that right now.
	And I don't see the United States building the physical future.
	I see the infrastructure and the buildings just kind of rotting away and all this woke stuff being taught in the schools.
	You know, decolonizing mathematics rather than actually teaching mathematics.
	Yeah, exactly. And, you know, it's like...
	You have no idea how radically conservative the world's becoming and like dollar this dollar that.
	Bless you. You know long term the U.S. is not going to go great.
	And to answer the question more specifically, we're just going to keep on printing money.
	We can't not print money. I don't think the Fed – go ahead.
	No, go ahead. You don't think the Fed?
	The Fed is not in a position to stop – the amount of squeezing that would be required to truly deaden inflation is not something we can politically handle and stay together as a country.
	Correct. A lot of speculation right now is going on about USDC's.
	USDT probably. Not the USD, the USC. What are they calling the one that the Federal Reserve is going to issue, the US stablecoin that the US wants?
	The CBDC, Central Bank Digital Currency?
	Exactly. So, a lot of people have been commenting that the reason why the US wants to pivot and introduce an electric digital currency is because the game on the Federal Reserve has run out on printing physical money, and this is a way that they can kick the can down for another 20 to 30 years.
	What are your comments on that?
	I'd say that's not the case.
	The vast majority of money isn't printed.
	It's not in coin form, and it's not in physical paper form.
	The vast, vast, vast majority of money is merely electronic bookkeeping entries, and it has been for a long time.
	You mean like derivatives? A long, long time.
	No, I mean just entries in bank registers managed by the Federal Reserve.
	The amount of dollars in circulation are not the amount of dollars that are printed.
	It hasn't been for a long time.
	It's an illusion that the amount of dollars in circulation equals the amount of physical cash.
	That hasn't been a case for a long time, especially with fractional reserve banking.
	It's banks reconciling their databases.
	So we're already now and have been for a long time in the era of digital money and of electronic money.
	When you pay with Apple Pay, no one's moving physical dollar bills around, even on the back end.
	Okay, from one vault to another.
	Okay, it's just electronic entries, right, and that are mediated by a trusted third party, including the Federal Reserve System.
	Okay, so we're already with electronic money.
	What CBDCs do, Central Bank Digital Currencies, is they centralize, they do a few things.
	The definition of it is not entirely clear, but you centralize The bookkeeping of that process and maybe centralize the control of that process.
	So, for example, if I have a million dollars in my bank account, my bank account has that record, and that bank account record is checked and regulated by the authorities.
	But with a central bank, there's a currency, That million dollars would be an entry on a central government database, not a bank's database.
	Right. And when I transferred from party A to party B, the central bank, the government, will handle that transfer.
	It won't go through the banking system.
	Now, what happens if the government says, I don't like you?
	That's what my next question was going to be.
	Yeah, I mean, it is.
	They obviously have complete visibility.
	Yeah, they can. They just flip a switch.
	And if they really like you, can they also just turn you on and give you unlimited slush funds for whatever you want?
	Right. Well, we call that a bank, by the way.
	Okay, because favored banks borrow at extremely low interest rates from the government and reloan it based on the fractional reserve system so they get a multiplier effect and they earn an interest on the interest on the interest.
	Interesting. And so, you know, it's good to be the bank.
	Yeah. The CBDCs, in my opinion, are, you know, we used to have the separation of church and state.
	Yeah. Back when gold was gold and it was worth something separate from the government, you had the separation of money and state.
	Right? And then we, unfortunately, CBDCs represent the ultimate fusion of money and the state.
	Interesting. Literally, I mean, if you're China and you don't like someone, if you don't like Falun Gong, you just turn off their wallets.
	You piece their wallets. And you combine that with the social credit system where they can't use the train, and they can't get into a school, and they have to wait for medical treatment, but they can't even pay for it anyway.
	And you got a soft form of murder.
	Cancel culture at the highest level.
	I'm going to announce the different people who ask these questions.
	So Sarah asks, how do you think small players like us will be able to cash out on their crypto after the implementation of CBDC? And do you believe that they will be able to withdraw in the US if they are non-compliant?
	Or do you think that the government will put restrictions on specific people?
	I think that the U.S. is heading to a financial crisis, which is going to cause them to become very strict and unreasonable.
	And even though they may not have the right to do things that they're going to do, the fact that they don't have the right to do it isn't going to stop them from doing it.
	Because in practical effect, we, the citizens, are not in a position to stand united against them and get a timely resolution of our issues.
	So I'll give you a standard example.
	If you're accused of a crime or not even necessarily a crime, the government can seize your property, not by beyond a reasonable doubt standard, but just by preponderance of the evidence, or sometimes even a preliminary showing.
	It's called an in-rim warrant, a warrant against property.
	So if you're living abroad, you haven't done anything wrong, but the government wants to mess with you, they can go to the Southern District Court in New York, They can appear before a judge without you there, or you got some notice, but there's some notice requiring you to fly back, you know, or sometimes this stuff's even secret because they, you know, they want to make sure you don't abscond with your own money.
	You can get an in-rem warrant, and now that property's tied up in the legal system.
	Now, on some superficial level, you have the ability to hire a judge, sorry, hire a lawyer, And free that stuff up.
	But in real life, that's years and money and the government has the government's resources and citizens have whatever they have.
	And it's hard to pay for a lawyer when the money that you can use to pay for the lawyer is subject to an in-rem warrant.
	They know this. They freeze your assets and they go, hire a lawyer, free them up.
	Well, how do I pay my lawyer?
	So there's theoretical law and there's practical law.
	At a practical level, You need to move your assets and your life beyond the reach of avaricious individuals who happen to work for the government.
	These are all people, and these people are not necessarily nice.
	And the standards of due process and everything else that we used to have very strong in the U.S., Aren't quite as strong as they used to be, clearly.
	And there's political stuff and there's racial stuff.
	It's just like, eh. So my suggestion to Sarah, I think it was, was get a second passport, diversify your assets, don't shout, don't scream, and just kind of go dark.
	For a while. Now, for a while.
	Now, the trick is how do you go dark when you want to make a difference in the world?
	Build families, build businesses, build wealth.
	Build better communities. And the answer is tricky.
	I'm trying to figure that out myself.
	Sarah also asks in follow-up, she gave me a list of these questions.
	She got really excited. We like Sarah.
	Thanks, Sarah. We like Sarah a lot.
	We like Sarah. Yeah.
	Where is the safest place to hodl your assets?
	Is it a cold wallet?
	And she also asked about the French Ledger Company.
	It's definitely an offline wallet.
	You do not want the majority of your crypto in exchange.
	We're seeing that with FTX. Hopefully, we won't see it with Binance.
	I think Binance is stable, but the thing about this is, even if it is stable, if enough people withdraw from the bank all at once, even the bank has assets, that you can run into problems distributing those assets or calling in its other loans or working through it.
	You should always keep the vast majority of your crypto In the air-gapped cold storage wallet.
	No exceptions. Okay.
	And it doesn't matter if it's Coinbase or this or that.
	I mean, the exchanges are potentially good for engaging in transactions.
	You can move from your cold wallet to your exchange account and then engage in transactions.
	And then when you have your transactions complete, you pull back off the exchange.
	Or you...
	If the technology keeps on developing like it is, you start working with a decentralized exchange and DEX. Right.
	You know, that's obviously a good way to do it, so long as the code behind the DEX is good.
	But, you know, these DEXs do get hacked, so they're not perfect.
	But you absolutely, you know, want a ledger or some other cold wallet to hold your crypto.
	No exceptions. And that actually...
	What cold wallet do you recommend?
	What's your wallet of choice?
	There's a bunch. Ledger is fine.
	The trick there is Then you need to be mindful to not lose it.
	You need to be mindful to not lose your key to it because once it's gone, it's gone.
	You need to be aware of issues like you can get physically threatened.
	It's called a wrench attack.
	What happens if you die?
	What happens if you get injured? You've got $20 million in your cold wallet and you're married with kids and you love your wife and you love your family and you die.
	How do they get that $20 million?
	Make sure they have the passcodes.
	Right. And then what happens if you get a divorce?
	Life gets complicated.
	There's maybe some reason for- Set up two wallets.
	Put some of your money in one wallet and some of your money in another wallet.
	Well, people smarter than both you and I are working on this.
	There's multi-signature. There's maybe some estate planning tools you can use with this stuff, but you got to think it through.
	Ideally, you'd have a jurisdiction.
	Where you didn't have these INRAM warrants, you didn't have this sort of avaricious government, where you could truly trust the system to hold your stuff, if you really, really are dead, to distribute it a certain way, you know, to act in a legally appropriate way.
	Ironically enough, the free zones in the Emirates and around here that use English common law, in my opinion, are, to some extent, more reliable, more efficient than U.S. courts.
	U.S. courts are scary. I mean, they sued Alex Jones for $2.75 trillion.
	How is that even real? Despite what anybody thinks about the case or Sandy Hook or any of the stuff, when you see a court giving a settlement for larger than the GDP of Russia, you've got to question what's going on in the U.S. court system to allow that kind of stuff to behave.
	Well, hopefully that all gets reduced on appeal, but then you have to appeal.
	Yeah, which is expensive, and it's a whole process.
	Yeah. Does he have those assets?
	Of course not. It's all just a big joke.
	It's a political statement. Getting back to the original point I made, these are all traditional...
	About the store of cold storage.
	Well, let me just say this.
	This stuff about, you know, how do you manage your courts?
	How do you manage your assets? How do you plan for this?
	These are traditional legal conundrums that we've been struggling with for thousands of years.
	You know, do you trust the system?
	Do you trust law? Do you trust humans?
	What blend of that works?
	When I was originally saying that law will benefit from crypto and blockchain and not just other way around, I think that there's software and technical tools.
	To make law more deterministic, more knowable, more planable, more safe.
	You know, when you have contracts that are deterministic, that are based on code, and not just on human interpretations of vague English language, of human language, where numbers have clear meanings and aren't, you know, subject to some judges' lack of math skills, you can actually make much better law, much more efficient law.
	You can make computational law.
	You can make international law.
	Because, you know, programming in Python is the same whether you're in China or the US or Canada.
	So this is why I'm in this field.
	Because even though I'm a lawyer, the revolve I have towards the misapplication and unfairness and inconsistency in the way that law is done, you know, originally made me not practice law, but now drove me back into it because I want to fix using blockchain and crypto.
	So I just want to get that idea across the audience that if you're If you're one of those people that's of a builder mindset, one thing to look at is how do you make human systems more reliable and noble and predictable and efficient so that we can progress forward and not having these uncertainties?
	Because they affect our liberty.
	Right. So cold storage wallets are the way to go.
	That's the... Oh, sure.
	I mean, you do not have your funds on exchange, period.
	Do not have anything on an exchange right now.
	Oh, you can have something. With the collapse of FTX, I saw Mr.
	Wonderful give a testimony, and he really said that I don't know if he's just like an angry investor into FTX or do you believe him when he says that Binance kind of like strategically took FTX down or is he just...
	We're talking about Leary?
	Dennis Leary? Yeah. Dennis Leary.
	I barely watch him.
	He always... He never did it for me.
	He... No, I don't believe it.
	I mean, you know, if you...
	FTX was a scam.
	It was a total...
	The co-mingling client funds, they had no internal controls.
	We had no controls over the books.
	Look at them. I know, it was a mess.
	I mean, look at that woman who's running Alameda.
	It's just like, oh my God. And then you read your private emails, you're like, oh God, cringe.
	It's like, you know, they're dealing with money that, if properly deployed to build cities, Or we're dealing with money that could have trained tens of thousands of engineers.
	And it's all just They're not cool.
	They're not hip. I love young entrepreneurial energy.
	I don't knock it.
	And I think every generation, everyone, has iconoclasts come in there, say F you to the system, change the way things are done, see jobs or whoever, and God bless them.
	But to be iconoclastic and nonconformist, just to put up a show, which is what I think they were doing, And just to kind of stick it to the system without having a viable alternative, you know, it's what we all get excited about.
	Like, look at these ruffians. They showed up to meet with the VCs in pajamas.
	They really showed them who's boss.
	Yay! It's like, you know, that Zuckerberg thing.
	It's like, give me a break.
	You know, I don't care about that stuff.
	I want to go to Mars. Right.
	Exactly. And how much of the positive forward momentum of what a crypto and blockchain has to offer dissipates Because these fools at Celsius and FTX and the rest of it, it makes me sick.
	And I don't want them to be regulated.
	I want this stuff to be written in code.
	Do you think that the regulation, do you think that this whole thing is a controlled collapse to kind of like allow the Fed and the SEC to say, oh, look, we need regulations on crypto?
	If you look at the connections between Gary Gensler and Sam Bigman Freed and Caroline, it's a very incestuous little circle there.
	In more ways than one.
	In more ways than one.
	Yeah, I mean, I don't think...
	No, I mean, sometimes conspiracies end up being real, but a spiritual mindset is usually a sign of a problem in the person who has that mindset.
	Though, no, I don't think it's some big orchestrated thing.
	I think that you had some weird relationships.
	I think you had a ton of donations to democratic political people.
	You know, you had the New York Times, you know, writing weird softball articles about how Sam Beckman-Fried's You know, philanthropic ventures were taken down by his, you know, it's like, no, he's a criminal and a thief.
	And a jerk, actually.
	Have you met him? No, he's a jerk for taking in so much of other people's money and treating it in the cavalier, non-serious manner.
	That's a cavalier way, exactly. Yeah, I don't need to meet him until he's a jerk.
	I don't need to go to Mongolia to know that Mongolia exists.
	You don't need to go to Mongolia to have Mongolian beef, man.
	That is one dish. Give me some Mongolian beef.
	Later, please. Mongolian beef over here.
	Give me some of the yak action.
	Speaking of the FTX collapse, Vegas just announced a crypto predictions for the next crypto collapse.
	And I wanted to get your take on this because I think it's quite alarming that they're putting up these bets, odds on which crypto...
	Which crypto exchange is going to collapse?
	These are actual bets going on in Vegas right now.
	And Coinbase is obviously the best odds of staying.
	They're saying that Coinbase is...
	Vegas is saying Coinbase...
	I think that this is a great way to kind of gauge the safety and security of different exchanges.
	That Coinbase is the safest and crypto.com is the most risky.
	So what's your thoughts on that?
	I think it's pretty funny. It is funny, but there's money being transferred and gambled on this assumption.
	So it begs the mind to be inquisitive.
	Yes, it does. I mean, these prediction markets are freaky because they often end up being extremely right in ways that you wouldn't expect.
	The danger is that sometimes the prediction market actually ends up influencing actual events.
	In a way that those events wouldn't necessarily afford in the absence of a prediction market.
	So, you know, if everyone believes...
	If a prediction market...
	It's one thing to think a bank is going to collapse, but if a prediction market predicts that a bank is going to collapse and people start spending or gaining or losing money based on that, it can actually make the bank collapse when the bank wouldn't have necessarily collapsed before.
	The prediction markets actually affect the events that they're predicting.
	So, you know, it's like...
	You know, on one hand, they're super, you know, they kind of become self-fulfilling prophecies.
	It reinforces the idea that you need to be self-custaining your crypto.
	Now, unfortunately, that slows adoption, right?
	Because the people who can set up a Coinbase account are not necessarily the same people who can maintain a cold wallet.
	Because, you know, we're all, you know, operating, you know, You know, a Chinese kid can do it when he's two years old, but, you know, you show an American 18-year-old and they're like, uh, you know, wait, you mean I actually have to read the instructions?
	So, you know, self-custody is a fantastically simple action, but it's hard for people who don't have the intention to watch a three-minute video.
	So, you know, when you do self-custody, you're unfortunately going to cut back on adoption, but it's the safest thing to do.
	And I Until we have truly, reliably regulated exchanges in countries that don't aboraciously smack down and seize crypto, you've got to keep it off the market.
	It's sad because when you have crypto on exchanges, you have a lot of liquidity, you can get accurate price discovery, you don't need to know the person you're selling to or go to an over-the-counter facility.
	But we're seeing what happens.
	They've got drugs like FTX. What do you think about HBAR's claim on their website that they're owned by the U.S. government?
	I don't even know about that.
	Tell me. I don't know much about it either.
	It's one of the questions from the audience that HBAR supposedly claims on their website that they're owned and governed by the U.S. government.
	I don't know if that's true or not.
	Could be not true.
	Let's do a little Google.
	Maybe they were bringing something else.
	So.
	Thank you.
	I love technology, that if you don't have an answer to a problem, you just turn your head, Google, and...
	Hedera Global Governing Council, maybe?
	Oh, maybe HBAR is working on digital...
	Okay, Hedera...
	Rumor!
	I just Googled it, by the way.
	It says, this is from 21, rumor, Hedera, HBAR, working on digital dollars with Central Bank.
	I don't think Hedera is owned by the U.S. government.
	I'd love to get a link saying that.
	I don't think any of these projects are owned by the U.S. government.
	So... Moving on with that, you know, there's not so much that differentiates each individual coin.
	A lot of people are predicting the end of BTC and Ethereum.
	You know, a lot of people are thinking that the bottom is a lot further down than people would like to have seen.
	What do you think?
	Do you think we've reached the bottom of BTC or is there still yet bottom to happen?
	Okay, there's two separate...
	Let me unpack what you said.
	Because you probably saw my body language.
	The end of the stuff.
	Hardly. What does end mean?
	Is the Bitcoin network going to stop functioning?
	No. Okay, will people keep on mining to produce proof of work and validating transactions and create new Bitcoin?
	I really doubt it.
	Okay, the...
	Remember, the Bitcoin mining complexity algorithm self-adjusts so that new Bitcoin blocks come out every 10 minutes or so.
	So if there's a lack of hashing power on the network for a certain period of time, the mining algorithm gets easier so as to incent miners to stay in the game.
	It takes less effort to earn Bitcoin.
	When more and more miners come on and blocks are getting mined too quickly, less than 10 minutes for a consistent period of time, the complexity, the difficulty of the algorithm goes up.
	So there's... Sadoshi and Kru were very clever in designing Bitcoin so that even if there's moments where it looks like the miners are capitulating and not doing their mining, if you stick it out, it gets easier and you make more Bitcoin.
	Okay? And if Bitcoin...
	If it wasn't dead last time at $500, why would it be dead now at $16,000?
	Why? The algorithm can make it progressively easier to mine it so that people stay interested.
	The statement is dead or has a problem.
	The answer is Bitcoin and ETH are not dying.
	They're different animals.
	Let me tease it out. BTC might have a problem because the technology is a bit stagnant.
	But maybe that's a good thing. Maybe that makes it reliable.
	You know, a lot of this stuff changes a lot.
	Now getting to Ethereum, case on point, the technology changed, right?
	It was proof of work.
	And now it's proof of stake.
	And so it may have gone from something that people generally agreed was not a security, maybe it became something that's a security.
	Maybe now it's being run in a fuzzy, strange way that's environmentally friendly, but it's not quite as rigorous as Bitcoin was.
	But then again, now we're burning Ethereum in some cases, so it's deflationary.
	So I think we're building cool stuff on Ethereum.
	There's a huge development community out there.
	It seems to matter.
	So in my opinion, crypto's time hasn't passed.
	Things like AI and all this other stuff are certainly interesting, and people are like, oh, I'm leaving crypto, I'm going to AI. The illusion that these things don't all work together, to me, is funny.
	Right, they do work together.
	Yeah, of course. I mean, genetics and biotech work with this stuff.
	I can't imagine the first AI cities are not going to be built on blockchain technology.
	Yeah, the question was, are they going to use cryptocurrency?
	I don't know. But are they going to use blockchain?
	100 do you think that uh bitcoin will ever be safe to be used in defy um that's a really good and technically complex question so That's a question from Robert, actually.
	Robert asks...
	I'll read his full question to you, and you can address it.
	What are the risks of Ethereum being labeled as a security, as I believe BTC is the backbone of most cryptocurrencies in general?
	We mainly got WBTC we can use in DeFi.
	I suppose we got smart contract risks.
	Do we know how safe this is?
	Will there be Safeler implementations, and will Bitcoin ever be able to be safely used in DeFi?
	Okay, so...
	Good question, right? Fantastic questions.
	Okay, let me take it step by step.
	There was a general consensus that Ethereum was sufficiently decentralized.
	Gensler himself said this in his Gary Plastics speech.
	You can Google it. Gensler said in Gary Plastics, I think it was privately to Yahoo, that Ethereum appeared to be sufficiently decentralized that even if it had started off as a security, it probably wasn't a security now.
	Because when you have a security You need what's called a common enterprise.
	That's one of the four prongs of the Howey test, which is the most famous legal test for whether or not something is a security.
	You know, investment money, for-profit, and a common enterprise where the profits are from the result of the efforts of others.
	If something's decentralized, you don't have a common enterprise.
	So there's an argument that Ethereum and Bitcoin were on proof of work, which is decentralized, And so it's not a security.
	Now Ethereum has moved over to proof of stake.
	So rather than mining and solving complex math problems to publish each new block, there is a consensus on the network about what's right and what's wrong.
	And you basically bet or stake your Ethereum to back up that you're going to be a good actor in the network.
	Well, that kind of It's an opportunity for collusion and centrality of control that didn't exist before.
	So Ethereum may be a security, but I think on a practical level, it'd be so disruptive and so negative for the industry to make it a security that the SEC may hold back on Ethereum, but not hold back on others.
	Now, to your next question. DeFi is 99% built on Ethereum and Ethereum-like chains.
	So whether it's Ethereum itself, Whether it's Binance Smart Chain, whether it's all these Ethereum copies.
	DeFi decentralized finance is sort of Ethereum baby and also Progeny.
	You can do basic scripting on the Bitcoin blockchain.
	But you do not have the rich smart contract, as far as I understand it, logic that's available on Ethereum and its more or less accurate copies.
	So DeFi certainly lends itself to Ethereum much more than lends itself to Bitcoin.
	Now, a lot of value, the majority of the crypto value out there is in Bitcoin still, until there's the flippening between Ethereum and Bitcoin.
	So to unlock liquidity as in Bitcoin, of course, you have wrapped Bitcoin.
	You have You know, you deposit your Bitcoin with some trusted entity, you think, and they issue an Ethereum-based token, WPTC, wrapped Bitcoin, and place that Bitcoin.
	And then when you have wrapped Bitcoin, this Ethereum token that's equivalent to Bitcoin, then you can use that to make deposits or engage in decentralized finance transactions.
	But of course, there's an issue there, which is when you deposit your Bitcoin with someone else and get a wrapped version back, You're now trusting that institution to hold on to your Bitcoin, not give it to government, not go bankrupt, not pull, you know, an FTX, a Sam Beckman-Fried move, and actually keep that Bitcoin safe, keep it wrapped, and make it exchangeable back when you want to.
	And you're having to go through your KYC, you know, your customer process, usually when you wrap your Bitcoin.
	So you're going back to having to trust institutions And centrality, things that are points of attack for malicious actors.
	And sometimes the malicious actor is the institution itself.
	We saw that with FTX. FTX was an attack from the outside.
	FTX was the malicious actor.
	If CZ from Binance points out that they were malicious actors, that doesn't make CZ bad.
	He's just pointing out reality.
	If we're going to have truly strong regulated institutions that stand apart from the government or in a jurisdiction where the government behaves and knows what's right, issuing reliable wrapped Bitcoin, then I would hope that that liquidity could get it unlocked.
	Then, of course, you have the usual issues about whether your DeFi platform is secure.
	We keep on seeing hack after hack after hack of these DeFi platforms.
	My hope and goal is that the contracts will eventually become machine-ridden and well-vetted so that these tools become reliable, but they're not there yet.
	I've played with this idea of RapidBitcoin.
	I'd really like to see Somehow, the Bitcoin networks and Ethereum networks merged in a non-hacky, reliable way.
	Interesting. So that there was some kind of native functionality that I could trust.
	Maybe there's some project out there I don't know about.
	But maybe there's some native polychain functionality that can move assets back and forth between these chains in a way that did not require...
	A third-party intermediary that was just computationally secure.
	Maybe that exists. I haven't seen it.
	But that would be the real answer.
	But it seems like the two are inextricably bound, that BTC is almost nothing with F in that case, you know, that you could trade native BTC on AMM or CLOB or DEX, and without BTC, The two, the functionality just is not there.
	So it's almost like BTC and ETH kind of go hand in hand at some point.
	Would you agree? It should go hand in hand.
	And I know that Michael Saylor, he explains that ETH is really the security, whereas BTC is the commodity.
	Did you hear him talk about that?
	So it is the consensus...
	It is a consensus in the world right now, including the United States, that Bitcoin is a commodity.
	Michael, it is in no way the consensus that Ethereum is a commodity or security.
	It is subject to active debate.
	And I come down on the side that Ethereum is barely not a security, but they really expose themselves to danger.
	By going to proof of stake, though I certainly understand why they did it, including for environmental reasons.
	It's not necessarily the case that these things need to merge BTC and Ethereum for the benefit of humanity.
	Sometimes there's benefits in keeping things separate.
	Maybe Bitcoin, all it's meant to do is provide a reliable We have to store value over time.
	And its sort of backward nature is good in a way because you don't want to innovate with things that are storing your value.
	You just want your value. Maybe that's good.
	But the problem is there's just so much value there that it'd be nice to get that working in the financial markets through the Ethereum tools.
	But, you know, maybe...
	Maybe there needs to be a truly effective smart contract layer on top of Bitcoin.
	Bitcoin development has stalled out, in my opinion.
	It's a little bit of a shame, but it's also maybe a feature because it makes it a little bit more reliable.
	It's also, you know, as a practical commodity, Ethereum has just traded so much more than Bitcoin for basic transactions.
	Just from what I see, I mean, Metamask uses Ethereum, not Bitcoin, for all of its functions.
	And, you know, Bitcoin just has, from my experience, has slower hashes.
	So, but... They're doing two different things.
	You don't want to compare an elephant with an eagle.
	They're not meant to do the same thing.
	You don't compare a foot in the hand.
	Ethereum is doing smart contracts.
	Bitcoin is storing and transmitting value.
	I don't need to be storing and transmitting value as much as I need to do day-to-day computational work.
	It doesn't need to do all that.
	While they're separate. And Ethereum is kind of a muddied situation because it's meant to power these smart contracts, yet the token has value so people use it as an investment.
	It's a confusing thing.
	Like, is it this or is it this?
	And the fact that it fluctuates up and down based on investment interest actually interferes with its ability to be a good source of, yeah, or to power these smart contracts.
	Because there's a real period where the fees on the Ethereum network were so high and intolerable and it was so slow and congested that you couldn't really get anything done on Ethereum, whereas Bitcoin didn't have that issue.
	So where do you see...
	Yeah, I understand.
	Where do you see with all the different coins that are out there and everything, all the different values that each one has, who do you see emerging as like a true stable coin that the market could bank on as a more stable coin?
	Is it HBAR? Is it XLM? Is it...
	So let's be real clear.
	Stablecoins and not stablecoins, when you have a stablecoin, what you're saying is that this thing is going to be consistently exchangeable for something else at a set ratio, if you like, over time.
	There needs to be some reference asset.
	So USDT, US dollar token, or USDC, US dollar coin.
	Are mapped, we think, one-to-one with the US dollar.
	And they're sort of Euro equivalents.
	Or you can theoretically have a stable coin that exactly references one gram of 99.99% gold.
	It's always in reference to something else.
	To have a stable coin that's not referenced to anything else doesn't make any sense.
	It's not stable versus what.
	So, I think, I hope, I think USDT and USDC are reasonably reliable and trustworthy.
	There's always a question about these, both of them, for different reasons.
	Whether it's USDT having true dollars backing up their tokens, or USDC, you know, they can block and freeze wallets and transactions, or USDT can also.
	We already have pretty good stable coins that are asset backed.
	What What Terra was trying to do with USD or the Terra dollar before was having an algorithmic stablecoin that not just through strict backing, but through mechanisms of the market was going to have a consistent value over time.
	Algorithmic stablecoins are very hard to make and hard to keep in place over time because things happen.
	Black swans occur. So I don't know if theoretically it can happen.
	I don't know if it will happen.
	When you're talking about something like BTC, it's not a stablecoin.
	BTC doesn't exist in reference to anything else, nor does Ethereum.
	It just is. BTC is not meant to be an alternative dollar, alternative gold.
	It doesn't even know those things exist.
	It's just a computer program running on a bunch of computers.
	I think once we wrap our heads around the idea that it's not that BTC is worth something in dollars, it's that dollars is worth something in BTC, that BTC is the reference point Like we kind of think that US dollars are the reference point right now, then it becomes stable because one BTC will always equal one BTC and everything will be traded in reference to it.
	It would be how many barrels of oil can you get for one Bitcoin?
	Right. So that's a more macro play.
	When BTC Bitcoin becomes the one point of reference, everything else will get priced in BTC. Whether that's actually going to happen in real life, I don't know.
	Highly questionable, but I hope it happens.
	It is something that I think everybody hopes happens, that BTC becomes the basis for the entire system.
	But with so many different coins, and so many of them, they do so many very similar features, but with slight differences, What coins do you see stick out in the market and what are their real values?
	What are the coins that you're most fond of these days?
	Well, there's coins that are cryptocurrency and then there's tokens that do stuff.
	Cryptocurrency is to buy and sell and hold value and just act as a replacement for fiat.
	In my mind, for the most part, Bitcoin's the only game in town, unless you're looking at privacy's functionality like, for example, with Monero.
	I was going to ask you about Monero.
	Yeah, Monero is having a ransom now because as governments get overreaching, people are kind of like, I don't want you to follow what I'm doing.
	You know, privacy is a normal human value.
	And this whole thing about if you have nothing to hide, you might as well share it.
	It's a bunch of BS, okay?
	The government...
	You know, it's always the people, you know, when the police say that, you're like, fine, you send me all your personal information.
	Well, I'm not that, you know, I'm the one asking questions here.
	They never reciprocate.
	You know, when they say you have nothing to hide, tell us everything.
	It's like, well, fine, you too.
	Oh, really? Is that your wife? Is that your girlfriend?
	So, the Bitcoin is by far, BTC is by far the best cryptocurrency ever.
	And I'd love to see Monero-type privacy incorporated in it.
	We kind of can get that through tumblers and through this other stuff, but the US government would be nasty to that, like TornadoCash and other platforms.
	But that would be the ideal situation.
	Distinguish that in your mind from tokens, such as Ethereum token or Ethereum copy tokens.
	Those may have value because they're useful, but they're not designed Primarily to have value.
	They're designed to power, gain access to what these blockchains, these underlying blockchains offer.
	Ethereum's value is a side effect of its functionality and what people think it's going to do in the future, plus speculation to make more money than the next guy.
	When I look at these coins and when these chains, my fundamental question is, What are these blockchains doing now?
	What will they do in the future?
	Is that useful? Would I pay for that?
	And that thing that I'm going to use to pay for it, what are the economics of that thing?
	It's like a country.
	If I go to the Dominican Republic, do I want to go there?
	Do I want to stay in a hotel there?
	Do I want to eat the food there? Or do I want to go to Ecuador?
	And if I want to go to Dominican Republic, then the currency they use there becomes more interesting to me because I need it to spend there.
	And if I'm going to Ecuador, that currency becomes more interesting to me because I want to go there and spend there.
	And so it's like, oh, Ecuador's nice, but look at this.
	They are printing double the amount of pesos every year.
	Well, that affects my decision to buy it, even if I want to go to Ecuador.
	So it's the value.
	Each one of these blockchains is its own country.
	And you can choose which country to visit.
	And all these countries are competing against each other with the features and benefits.
	Do you have a favorite country to visit token wise?
	I am a frequent flyer.
	I like it.
	Frequent flyer of many different tokens and many different airlines.
	I am. You know what?
	I like it. I mean, just to extend the analogy, I like it when these countries hire me, fly me out Put me up in hotels and pay me in their token.
	That's cool. That's very cool.
	I'm not a big fan of buying stuff.
	I'm a fan of getting paid.
	That's actually very cool.
	So I have one more question, two more questions for you, actually.
	The one of my followers who's...
	In three groups with you, Kryptonite Warriors, Axe Capital, and NFT DeFi.
	Out of these three groups, what is your favorite out of these three groups?
	You really think I'm going to do that?
	Because I know who runs each one of these groups.
	How do I get myself in these groups?
	This is what my real question is.
	Well, then I can introduce you and add you.
	That's not a problem. Okay.
	Are we going to start a happy hour?
	Axe Capital is pretty active. Is there going to be a Happy Hour Mafia crypto group for the old school?
	In Dubai? I'm not doing anything called Happy Hour or Mafia.
	Exactly. That may be kind of a mistake.
	It's more like good boys and girls in Dubai.
	Yeah, go ahead.
	I mean, why not join all?
	I'll join all of them. Yeah, I will.
	To see what you like. I would love to.
	When I got here two years ago, I'm one of the first guys to start one of these groups.
	I have UAE Crypto Life.
	Then I have to say I got some admiring copycats, but I don't have an exclusive on the idea.
	I got some really good crypto friends.
	I'm sure they would all love to be in your groups.
	They were all super excited about you coming on the show.
	Some of them I've introduced you to, like my buddy James Smith.
	I introduced you to, I think, do you know Jason Teuch by any chance?
	Yeah. I've been trying to get him to come on.
	Amazing guys. He was a party animal too, that guy.
	That guy, believe it or not, he had some fun back in the day.
	But my last question that I have for you, what kind of strategic advice do you think you could give to serious crypto players who are out there that have their money on cold wallets that are not on the regulated systems that want to avoid taxes?
	What is the best strategy to how to bring your money back into the system if you were one of the few who got to be able to have their money out of the system on time and that the money exists outside of the system?
	How do you bring it into the system safely without the IRS or governments coming in and trying to snatch up all your booty?
	I'm not going to answer that question because that's asking for it, but I'll say in general, Read and look at nomadcapitalist.com and there's also lots of stuff online and at Amazon about how to organize your affairs.
	You want to think about being a sovereign individual, that's the name of a book.
	You want to think about five-flight theory.
	Most of the time It's not correcting what you did in the past.
	It's planning for your future affairs.
	Okay? And I'd say that if you're not American, move to Dubai and enjoy the tax structure here.
	And if you are American, they don't offer dual citizenship?
	Well, they do, but you as an American are taxing a global income regardless of where you reside.
	Right. Good old American socialism at work.
	Yeah, yeah. We've got to protect the oil for someone.
	Don't drill the oil.
	We have to protect it for future...
	For future Chinese.
	Exactly. More lithium batteries!
	So... We covered a variety of topics.
	This was so rich. I would love to have you back on a million times.
	You are such a wealth of information, and people look at you as a wealth of information of crypto, and it's so nice to see that, but you're also such a wealth of information for so many other things, including Ukraine, including all these other Amazingly important topics of discussion.
	So I'd love to get you back on the show for some of those too in the future.
	But in closing out, what do you see for 2023?
	And I don't want to talk about the having in 2024, but 2023, the year before the having, like departing wisdom from the divine Einstein.
	I should coin that. You know, that should go around the world and people should start introducing you at speaking events as the Divine Einstein, just so I can get credit for that.
	Please don't do that. What do you see?
	What is 2020? I got some life philosophy that I think answers your question, which is always be creatively building.
	Always be creatively building, no matter what.
	Crypto up, crypto down.
	Crypto up, crypto right. Blah, blah, blah, blah.
	It doesn't matter. Okay?
	Always be creatively building.
	Always be adding value and getting paid for your value.
	And then you don't need to worry about this stuff.
	Okay? You don't...
	I'm not in a position to give financial advice.
	My financial advice is earn and keep.
	Because there's artificial intelligence out there already that's much smarter than we are because of this trading stuff.
	I wouldn't Who am I to compare to 20, 20-year-olds sitting behind screens with AI-informed algorithms that are learning all the time in neural networks?
	I have nothing to say about that.
	But I'll tell you something.
	Earn and keep. Do good.
	Get paid for doing good.
	Keep what you make. Reinvest.
	Done. Yalla.
	That is such a beautiful way to close out the show.
	Earn, keep, reinvest.
	I love that strategy, including the yalla habibi at the end.
	Yalla habibi, yalla. After you're done, after you earn, and after you keep, and you see that statement, you say, yalla habibi.
	Yalla. Thank you, God.
	Thank you, God. Thank you, God, for this wonderful interview.
	Thank you, Gordon Einstein, for joining us today on the Adam King Show.
	I want to thank all of our wonderful listeners, all of our proud supporters and partners, our distributors, on Bandoff Video, on all the different platforms.
	We just found out that we're also on iHeartRadio today.
	A fan called me and they said, hey, can you get an iHeartRadio account so I can listen to you in the car?
	What do you know? We're already on iHeartRadio.
	You're doing great, my friend.
	The show is moving up, and you are a phenomenal guest.
	And thank you again so much for all this wonderful advice.
	I'm sure this information is going to go viral in a lot of very important communities where it needs to be heard.
	So once again, please check us out at theadamkingshow.com.
	You can find Gordon's profile at theadamkingshow.com under the guest tab, and there will be links to crypto law partners or whatever else Gordon wants to share.
	Hopefully, his YouTube channel, which has a tremendous wealth of information.
	Again, everybody have a wonderful Hanukkah.
	Christmas is coming, so don't get jealous, all you happy Christians out there, because your turn is next.
	Thank you for tuning in to The Adam King Show.

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