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May 8, 2023 - Triggered - Donald Trump Jr

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Bitboy Crypto's Ben Armstrong Takes You Inside the Collapse of FTX | TRIGGERED Ep. 30

Bitboy Crypto's Ben Armstrong Takes You Inside the Collapse of FTX | TRIGGERED Ep. 30 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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	Guys, Thursday, May 4th, and welcome to another episode of Triggered.
	Thanks for tuning in.
	I really appreciate you guys.
	If you can, like, share these videos so other people can see it so it stays up high in the algorithm.
	Give it a like.
	Pass it on to your friends.
	Make sure they do it.
	This episode is going to be cool because we're going to do something a little bit different.
	We're going to have
	Founder, the founder of BitBoy Crypto, Ben Armstrong.
	And we're going to learn about all things crypto.
	People want to understand it.
	Not an easy one to break into.
	And you have someone that's literally one of the earliest adapters out there.
	Someone who was on the inside of the collapse of FTX, calling it out, wondering what was going on.
	Someone who saw that coming.
	So I think you'll learn a lot.
	I think you'll really like it.
	I think it's a different approach.
	I think it's something that a lot of
	The guys that follow me, libertarian and conservative, want to understand cryptocurrencies and everything.
	So I think this will be a really cool one.
	Ben Armstrong, awesome dude, very outspoken, very loud and vocal, my kind of guy.
	I think you'll learn a lot.
	And I think it'll be a really cool episode to figure out something that's probably perhaps a little bit out of the scope of everything that we do here on a daily basis.
	So I think you'll like it.
	But before we get that, we got to get to a developing story from the Republican Congress.
	According to the House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and Senator Chuck Grassley, a whistleblower.
	These guys, James Comer and Senator Chuck Grassley, have a whistleblower alleging that the FBI and the Justice Department have a document that describes a criminal scheme involving then Vice President Joe Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions.
	I am shocked, folks.
	I am shocked.
	So, in other words, they have evidence of a bribe and more corruption from Joe Biden.
	I cannot believe it.
	I thought he was angelic.
	I thought that Hunter Biden got a billion-dollar investment from a Chinese state-controlled, essentially, entity.
	I thought, a billion dollars, right?
	Like, to a crackhead.
	Yes, China does a lot of investing with crackheads.
	Russian oligarchs, Ukrainian oil companies, all had him on the payroll because of the value that he brings, right?
	A crack addict, drug addict, serial sicko.
	Yes, they had him on the payroll because of the expertise that he brought, not
	Not corruption.
	There's no way they would trade that, his employment, money, etc.
	for policy decisions and influence in Washington D.C.
	That would never happen!
	Because of course that's what's been happening, folks.
	Like, there's literally no other explanation that Hunter Biden would get any of these things, right?
	It's insane.
	So add that to what we already know about the IRS whistleblower who says the investigation into Hunter is being plagued by interference and bias to protect the Biden family.
	Now, maybe they'll do something about the tax stuff to hide the bigger picture, but I think we're getting to the bigger picture now.
	I'll bet.
	I'll bet you guys a lot.
	They'll do a little something on the little things to make the bigger stuff go away.
	But we got to make sure we see this all the way through for each and every one of the things that's happening.
	Of course, this corruption has been staring us right in the face.
	But the media, as usual, big tech, big social, etc.
	They continue to deny reality, or they know it's the truth, but they also know they control all the methods for you to actually see it, for the American people to realize what's going on.
	That's why programs like this
	A couple others are important because we'll actually talk about these things to large audiences.
	Again, why you need to like, share, all this stuff so other people can see it.
	Guys, the delusion's hitting us right in the face.
	They're trying to make this stuff go away and pretend it's not happening because it's disgusting that it is.
	And now you have yet another whistleblower talking about it.
	Guys, the delusions, as we've discussed, are disgusting.
	And they want them to go away.
	They pretend that they're not real.
	But just look at this next story about gas stoves in New York State.
	Remember just a few months ago when liberals got on their soapboxes after stuff leaked about them wanting to ban gas stoves and they were telling you that you're crazy to think they're gonna ban gas stoves.
	Even though the Biden administration made it clear that they wanted to do just that.
	Just so we
	We can take a little trip down memory lane.
	Let's watch MSNBC's resident shrill host Stephanie Ruhle mock you or me for concerns about the plans to ban gas stoves.
	Apparently, and according to this MSDNC expert, it's all a lie.
	She tells us very clearly.
	Watch.
	The Consumer Product Safety Commission is deciding on whether to ban gas stoves totally because of safety.
	Safety?
	We've had these stoves for over 100 years!
	It's totally fine to give fentanyl to addicts, but a gas stove is a threat to your life?
	Right.
	So naturally, they decided gas-powered stoves, racist, and have to go.
	Firstly, Jill Biden getting roasted online for this photo of her cooking on the very thing that the administration was looking to ban.
	You can't make that up.
	No, you can make stuff up.
	And that's what they're doing there all day long.
	So the last thing before we go tonight, all about gaslighting.
	If you watched Fox News in the last 24 hours, you might think that the U.S.
	government is coming for your gas stove.
	That is a new and absolutely ridiculous one.
	So for fact's sake, let's get to the bottom.
	Remember folks, you're nuts to think that they want to come for your gas stoves, right?
	Just like you're nuts to think
	They don't want to come for your guns, right?
	No, no, no.
	They just want to, you know, we just want to get rid of, you know, the pistol brace.
	Maybe AR-15s.
	Then your hunting shotgun.
	Then
	Everything, okay?
	It's always a death by a thousand cuts.
	They tell you, yeah, it's not really happening, we don't really want to do that.
	Then they get the little win, they get another little win, they get another little win, and one day you're gonna wake up with no rights whatsoever, right?
	You're nuts to think they're gonna come after your gas stove.
	This isn't happening, folks, no way!
	But actually it is.
	New York just became the first state to ban natural gas stoves.
	And within the next seven years, new buildings will need to have all-electric cooking.
	Gas stoves will not be allowed.
	Watch!
	Remember, this was all a figment of your imagination, but it's not.
	It just happened a few weeks later.
	Right?
	All the conspiracy theories always tend to come true, right?
	This is what they're doing.
	Now, of course, we don't have the ability to get rid of natural gas because our power grid isn't strong enough.
	We don't want to use nuclear.
	We don't want to do that.
	Well, they're going to just magically make it up with solar and wind.
	Solar's been the next big thing for the last 35 years, but they got it this time, folks.
	Wind is killing whales and all sorts of stuff, creating disasters, killing birds all over the place.
	But, you know, when you really need electricity, what
	What's missing?
	Usually wind when it's really hot and you're really stressing the grid.
	That's what's missing.
	This is a classic liberal tactic.
	They deny something that is happening and then they celebrate it when it happens.
	They shout, oh no, no, no, for example, right?
	Schools aren't teaching critical race theory.
	They would never do that.
	It has nothing to do with the curriculum.
	But when Republicans then try to ban critical race theory from the classrooms,
	Liberals say that teaching that white people are racist is a must.
	It is a must in every curriculum.
	They can't help themselves, folks.
	Liberals are dishonest.
	They're dishonest snakes, and they'll keep doing this.
	Meanwhile, Joe Biden, speaking of dishonesty, his weakness has led to two separate oil tankers being seized by Iran in the past week.
	Iran, the world's leading state sponsor of terror, someone that we don't want to do business with, but now we actually have to get oil and gas from because we stopped producing it ourselves because Joe Biden's an idiot and he doesn't mind getting rid of American energy independence, clearly doesn't mind crushing
	Good, hard-working American jobs and labor.
	Certainly not the national security benefits that come along with being energy independent.
	Certainly not helping gas prices, right?
	Another conspiracy theory.
	We're not trying to destroy that, but we're going to Iran for that.
	But Iran is now capturing foreign vessels.
	They did so on Wednesday.
	This is the second ship that's been captured by Iran in a week.
	The Neovy, an oil tanker flying a Panamanian flag, was passing through the Straits of Hormuz when it was overtaken by Iran's navy.
	Check it out.
	Guys, another seizure happened last week off the Marshall Islands where a flagged oil tanker, the Tanker Advantage Suite, was leaving Kuwait en route to Houston.
	There's a dramatic video of Iranian troops rappelling from a helicopter onto the vessel.
	Okay, remember when President Trump, like, was in charge?
	You notice how this stuff didn't happen?
	Because we exhibited peace through strength.
	We were not to be trifled with.
	People didn't mess with America because they knew we had resolve.
	We had spirit.
	We had guts.
	We had everything that's missing from Joe Biden and the Democrat agenda.
	Okay, when Iran was thinking of attacking U.S.
	soldiers, we took out their top general with a missile through the face, okay?
	Biden, on the other hand, is so weak that Iran, again, the world's leading state sponsor of terror, feels so emboldened as to engage in piracy.
	They don't even care because they look at Joe Biden
	And it just encourages their aggression.
	Right?
	That's the nature of predation, folks.
	You see weakness in nature, and they prey on it.
	Right?
	That's what wolves do.
	That's what hyenas do.
	Jackals.
	When they see weaklings like Joe Biden, they attack.
	They pounce.
	We are putting this on ourselves by having weak and incompetent leaders.
	Okay?
	Everything about this administration is weak and everything is inept.
	They can't even explain how their $50 trillion.
	You can't even make this stuff up.
	Climate plan will reduce global warming.
	Just watch this grilling from Senator John Kennedy against a Biden official on Capitol Hill this week.
	Yeah, but if you could answer my question, if we spend $50 trillion,
	to become carbon neutral in the United States of America by 2050.
	You're the Deputy Secretary of Energy.
	Give me your estimate of how much that is going to reduce world temperatures.
	So first of all, it's a net cost.
	It's what benefits we're having from getting our act together and reducing all of those climate benefits.
	We're seeing hundreds of billions of dollars right now.
	Let me ask again.
	Maybe I'm not being clear.
	If we spent $50 trillion to become carbon neutral by 2050 in the United States of America, how much is that going to reduce world temperatures?
	This is a global problem, so we need to reduce our emissions and we need to do everything we can.
	How much, if we do our part, is it going to reduce world temperatures?
	So we're 13% of global emissions right now.
	You don't know, do you?
	You don't know, do you?
	You can do the math.
	You don't know, do you, Mr. Secretary?
	So we're 13% of global emissions.
	If you know, why won't you tell me?
	If we went to zero, that would be 13% of global emissions.
	You don't know, do you?
	You just want us to spend $50 trillion, and you don't have the slightest idea
	Guys, the point of these Green New Deal plans has nothing to do with helping the planet, okay?
	If they wanted to help the planet, they wouldn't support wheeled mills, again, that are killing whales, or electric vehicles that require extensive mining in China or Africa by slave labor in, let's just call it,
	Slightly less than environmental conditions, right?
	Far worse than if we were drilling in America under our regulations with actual environmental oversight.
	No, no, no.
	It's done by child slave labor in third world countries under totally non-humanitarian conditions, and that doesn't matter, right?
	The point of the Green New Deal initiatives is to funnel money from taxpayers like yourselves to left-wing non-profits and to decrease the quality of your life while making them rich and giving them power.
	There's nothing else to it, folks, because otherwise it doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
	And guys, there's another big issue that we need to talk about more.
	Artificial intelligence.
	Geoffrey Hinton, also known as the quote sort of godfather of AI, artificial intelligence, he recently quit his job at Google
	Over concerns about the risks associated with artificial intelligence.
	He says, and I quote, it's hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things.
	He told that to the New York Times.
	AI has grown very powerful in just the past few years.
	Most of us are finding out about it just in the last few months.
	Okay, but it's hard to imagine bad actors not manipulating now.
	The problem, obviously, is if America stops doing it, you think the Chinese will?
	No, they're gonna keep going.
	So there's a little bit of a catch-22 in all of this, but AI has grown very powerful in the last few years.
	You can have ChatGBT now write a convincing episode of Seinfeld in a matter of seconds.
	What will it be capable of in a couple of years?
	Dr. Hinton noted that he used to think that the idea that AI will be smarter than people would be way off.
	But obviously, he no longer thinks that.
	I mean, think of the jobs that were replaced.
	Maybe they could replace the media real quickly, just running off some nonsense because anyone can do a better job than what our media does.
	So maybe they're going to have to learn to code.
	But I think Elon Musk used the analogy, you know, when we build a highway, right, and there's an ant colony in the way, there could be a billion ants there.
	But, like, they're ants, right?
	We don't really think about it.
	We're not going to move the road to get around the ants.
	We're just going to build right over it.
	Imagine for a second, if you will, that we're the ants and AI is in charge.
	What's going to happen?
	It's not that far off.
	You've seen the advances literally in the last few weeks and the last few months.
	It's so exponential.
	What will it be able to do in years?
	And when do we become obsolete?
	I think we've seen this movie before, folks.
	It's called The Terminator.
	It doesn't work out well.
	Man, it feels like we could definitely be in the way in the not-too-distant future, but unfortunately, as long as our enemies are going to be using it, which they will, we probably also still have to be prepared.
	So we have to find that happy medium to make sure we can take care of ourselves, that we don't get subjugated to the Chinese, who are definitely going to be running with AI full bore to take over the world.
	And now finally, guys, in shocking, shocking medical news,
	You're going to want to sit down for this because it's scary.
	The geniuses at Harvard Medical School figured out that men are at risk of prostate cancer.
	The headlines this week from health.harvard.edu says, Prostate cancer in transgender women.
	What do we know about the risk?
	A new paper investigates.
	Guys, it's amazing that Harvard researchers need to conduct studies to come to the conclusion that men are at risk of prostate cancer.
	Women are not, because I don't believe they have a prostate.
	Now, I am not a doctor.
	But apparently I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night, so I understand basic biology.
	I wonder what these geniuses will come up with next.
	If we keep lying to ourselves, if we keep pretending that biological men are magically women, we too can waste millions in research dollars, spend and divert time and energy that could be used towards maybe actually curing prostate cancer, or perhaps
	Breast cancer or ovarian cancer in women, which perhaps I had imagined that even trans women also don't get.
	Now again, I am not a genius Harvard Medical School doctor, but I believe that biological men who identify as women and call themselves women are probably not at risk of ovarian cancer.
	Now my only, my only evidence of this
	Again, I'm going out there on a limb.
	I'm risking it, making scientific conclusions, hypotheses based on what I know, but my only evidence of that is that biological men don't have ovaries.
	Shocking.
	Shocking, folks.
	What will these brilliant minds come up with next?
	All right, so
	Well, kidding aside, and not really kidding, before I get to Ben Armstrong, I want to make sure to thank our brave sponsors, because again, even if I am out there calling the idiots at Harvard Medical School idiots for thinking that somehow calling yourself a woman, even if you're a biological male, would avert the risk of prostate cancer, or if you're a biological male that thinks they're female, that you would maybe
	Not have to worry about ovarian cancer.
	I understand there's some risks associated with that, even though at any other point in our history, that would be totally common sense and 100% logical.
	So I do want to make sure we thank our brave sponsors.
	Number one, Gold Co., guys.
	We see the decisions that are being made.
	You see how disastrous they are.
	We understand gold and silver can help protect your retirement savings from inflation, dollar devaluation, forced ESG from your retirement account managers, all of that nonsense.
	I just want you to be prepared.
	I also want you to support the companies who support you instead of supporting the woke companies that hate you.
	So go check out the folks at Goldco by going to donjrgold.com.
	That's D-O-N-J-R gold dot com.
	Learn how to protect your retirement savings.
	Again, guys, in the last month, we've seen like three major banks collapse.
	We see the volatility at a stock market.
	We see interest rates and inflation going through the roof.
	It is not a promising prospect.
	Pay attention.
	Protect yourselves.
	Just hear them out.
	You don't have to do anything.
	Just hear them out.
	Go to DonJrGold.com and learn from yourself.
	about what to do to protect yourself, your retirement savings, your family's well-being.
	Just hear him out.
	You don't have to do anything.
	If you think you may want to diversify a little bit, if you think about him on a hedge, probably a good idea.
	Again, donjrgold.com.
	Also, check out the folks at Patriot Mobile, okay?
	These guys are friends of mine.
	These are guys that literally have funded some of the anti-woke stuff in their area in Dallas, Fort Worth, in that area where they are based.
	They literally funded some of the
	The school board votes to be able to get conservative parents who represent the average area in the district on their local school boards and overthrow the radical leftists.
	They've been attacked by the big media guys as being radical for doing that.
	Check out Patriot Mobile, guys.
	You're gonna have a cell phone in your pocket, okay?
	You're going to have one.
	You might as well do it and give it to a company that supports what you believe in and a company that puts their money where their mouth is.
	A company that gives back to the causes that we believe in.
	Protecting the First Amendment.
	Protecting the Second Amendment.
	Our brave first responders.
	They do this sort of stuff.
	They, again, they were funding these school board battles to make sure that the kids in their area, and I'm sure they'll do it elsewhere,
	We're good to go.
	Okay?
	You're going to get free activation with that.
	But again, you're going to have a cell phone.
	Have a cell phone with a company that gives you the same services as the other providers, but cares about you, shares your values, and gives back to the causes that you actually believe in.
	So check out patriotmobile.com slash johnjr.
	Now, we're going to go to Ben Armstrong, and we're going to learn about crypto.
	It's going to be awesome.
	Thanks so much, guys.
	Welcome to another episode of Triggered.
	This one's going to be fun because we have Ben Armstrong, sort of real early adapter crypto guy, talking about everything that is crypto.
	I mean, this is going to be a little bit of a tutorial, getting people up to speed.
	I'm sure we'll go plenty of places.
	I don't even want this one to be political, but the nature of it is because government is cracking down so hard on anything that
	You know, puts a threat to the sort of hegemony they've had over currency and the control associated therewith.
	So, Ben is the founder of BitBoyCrypto.com.
	Started investing in Bitcoin in 2012.
	Yeah, 2012.
	I mean, before probably anyone had even heard of crypto and Bitcoin.
	So, tell us a little bit about that, Ben.
	I mean, I'm going to assume
	Plenty of the people watching, just given the nature of the conservative-slash-libertarian crowd, probably has an understanding, but there's probably a lot of people that have no idea.
	They see the pitfalls in the media, but I think they're also watching this because they're
	Rightfully skeptical of the media and the narrative that turns out to never be accurate but serves its purpose at the time.
	Right.
	Well, I think one thing is what I try to do is I try to show people the truth.
	Like, I try to get outside of the media narratives.
	Because at this point, if you don't understand that everything the media is telling you is wrong, then you don't have a brain.
	And I would assume all the people watching you right now, they have a brain and they can see what's happening.
	You know, there has been a lot of backlash against crypto.
	And I think when you go back to 2012, when I first got into Bitcoin, a lot of people that were getting in at that time, they were using what was called Silk Road.
	Silk Road was an anonymous drug marketplace.
	Now, I got into it, not through that, but through having to buy Bitcoin to purchase the software that I needed.
	And a guy who owned the software I used for Craigslist, posting ads, used to have a ticket business, and that's what I did, he got sued, and he couldn't come to America to answer the charge.
	He's from Ukraine.
	And they shut his payment processors down.
	And so he had to try to figure out some other way to get paid.
	And so that's how I got into it.
	The Silk Road narrative for Bitcoin, where people were buying drugs, you know, somebody was, you know, 30 Bitcoins for some shrooms, they gotta feel real dumb right now.
	Yeah, I mean, you hear about those transactions, you know?
	I saw something, it was like, you know, 1,000 Bitcoins for a pizza.
	10,000.
	10,000, was it?
	Yeah, that's right, 10,000.
	Yeah, and so even at today, even today, what are we at, about 18,000?
	We're back up to 30, right?
	So we got down to 18, and we're probably about 28, 30.
	Still a big deal.
	Certainly a big deal relative to 75, which would have been a peak, right?
	75,000.
	Yeah.
	Get a lot of pizza for that.
	A lot of pizza, a lot of pizza for that.
	But, you know, a lot of people don't know the guy, Laszlo, who was the guy that spent, that was the first Bitcoin transaction.
	To pay for a service or a good was the Bitcoin pizzas.
	They're from Papa John's, two pepperonis, 10,000 Bitcoin.
	But he's doing okay.
	I'm sure he had plenty of other Bitcoin.
	He had plenty of other Bitcoin.
	It's not one of those sad stories about people that were mining Bitcoin early on and lost their keys or whatever the case may be.
	Guys paying $150,000 to have somebody come excavate the landfill to try to find them.
	That's one of the things, right?
	For the average person, if they want to invest in that, if they're looking and they're scared of what's going on in the economy right now, you know, that is intimidating, right?
	I mean, I see it myself.
	I'm a real estate guy, so I sort of, I've always done better investing in things that I fundamentally know really well as opposed to speculating, right?
	So when people see those articles, you know, guy has a, you know, he's got his hard drive, it's right here in his desk, but he forgot his password and he has 220 million dollars in it.
	And like, one more attempt.
	Yeah.
	Man, that's intimidating for a lot of people.
	Yeah, I understand that, but when you look at the Bitcoin supply, so Bitcoin supply, the total ever is going to be $21 million.
	Bitcoin mining is how you bring those into the supply.
	The last Bitcoin will not be mined until 2140, so about 117 years from now.
	Now, Bitcoin mining has gotten to a place where it's very highly sophisticated and things like that, but it's not like people today are just going to have $220 million that they can't find.
	4 million Bitcoin is the approximate number that is in the total supply.
	I think about 19.6 million, somewhere around there right now.
	But yet, it'll never be moved because it's lost.
	But those are all people that were mining Bitcoin very early on.
	And so they were doing it with a laptop.
	And it's not like they had a lot of money into it, it's just they probably forgot about it.
	Or they accumulated something from nothing, right?
	I mean, like you said, you get 10,000 Bitcoin for a pizza today, that's worth
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah.
	Talk about the differences for the average people that are, again, looking to speculate.
	Because if you look at the stock market today, I mean, everything seems like it's pretty risky.
	Yeah.
	I mean, look at what happened with First Republic Bank.
	You know, one of the biggest red candles you've ever seen in history, right?
	The bank stocks are failing.
	Stocks everywhere are, you know, not across every sector, but especially in the banking sector, very questionable.
	But the thing is,
	Is that, you know, when it comes to, you know, storage, we call it custodianship.
	And we've got a phrase, not your keys, not your crypto.
	That's a very important phrase for people to understand because when people first get in, they're going to come in through an exchange.
	It was like Coinbase or Robinhood, something like that.
	And they're going to buy it, and they're just going to let it sit on that exchange.
	Well, what we've seen is through the FTX debacle, Celsius debacle, that if the exchanges go down,
	You lose your money.
	It's not really yours.
	So like on Coinbase, you can send it off of Coinbase.
	And so you own it from that perspective.
	But if it's still on Coinbase and Coinbase were to go down, then you're in trouble.
	So we have a couple different ways you can custody your Bitcoin.
	Basically, there's a really archaic way called paper Bitcoins or excuse me, paper wallets, where it's just a QR code on a piece of paper.
	And that's how you access your wallet.
	But it's still protected, I guess, through the blockchain.
	So that is your QR code unless someone else
	Right.
	You can scan it.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	So, um, you want to keep that thing under, you know, super, super, uh, you know, watchful eye.
	It's like, it's like Dumb and Dumber, like that.
	It is.
	That IOU, that spell IOU.
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, yeah.
	You're going to want to hold onto that one.
	Yeah.
	I love that move when I was a kid.
	One of my favorite moves.
	One of the best.
	Yeah, but we have cold storage and then we have hot wallets, right?
	Cold storage is a device, so it's a USB.
	Ledger is one of the most popular ones, Ledger and Trezor.
	And what happens is when it's plugged into your device or plugged into your computer,
	You're active on the blockchain and you can move the crypto around.
	As soon as you unplug it, it's called cold storage because it's frozen.
	Like, nobody can touch that.
	You can't move it.
	You got to reconnect it again.
	So, cutting off the connection to the internet, that's what we call cold storage.
	And so, that's not necessarily password protected.
	Because, I mean, I think one of the people, and people I talk to every day, they're like, well, listen, I'd probably give it a chance at some of these numbers.
	Because you can do fractional Bitcoin, right?
	You don't have to buy $30,000 worth.
	You can buy $1,000 worth, $10 worth.
	Uh, but everyone I know has problems with their password.
	No one wants to use sort of the, you know, the Microsoft Authenticators and all that.
	I mean, it's like, you know, by the time you remember the password of that and you get the password of the password of the password, no one knows what the hell's going on.
	So that is literally just, it's almost like just cash, but...
	Unpassword protected, you plug it in and you're on and you're... Well you still have to have, you have a password for your device, but it's much simpler than the complicated private keys.
	So for your device you basically would have, I believe it's an eight digit, I haven't touched mine in a while, it's all in cold storage.
	You know, I think it's an 8-digit number that you got to put in and it kind of like on your phone, right?
	You have a 4 or 6-digit number.
	This is an 8-digit number and it will unlock the device and then you can get in and you can move stuff around.
	Ledger has a platform called Ledger Live, which is where you would actually move, go into the system of Ledger to move your crypto around through your Ledger.
	So, it's not quite the same thing as cash.
	But, you know, we also have Hot Wallets.
	Like, Hot Wallets are apps or desktop platforms that are connected to the internet.
	They stay connected to the internet.
	And you own your private keys for that.
	So, Trust Wallet, Coinbase Wallet.
	It's important for people to understand, like,
	Yeah, but that's like having a banking app on your phone, essentially, right?
	No, it's not, actually.
	It's not.
	Because having Coinbase on your phone, that is like having a banking app.
	Having Coinbase Wallet is a different app.
	It's not the same thing.
	And so with the Coinbase Wallet, you own your private keys.
	And so Coinbase can't come in and touch your crypto.
	On the Coinbase app itself, they can.
	And they're trading, they're functioning like a bank, I mean using, just taking those reserve currencies, putting a multiple on it and speculating.
	I mean they're basically gambling with your money as the backup, just like the banking system is and that's why we're seeing a collapse like Credit Suisse, like Silicon Valley Bank, all in the last couple of weeks.
	Signature Bank, that was my bank, that's who I banked with.
	That was my answer to when BB&T, before they became Truist, they closed all my accounts back in 2020.
	I've been with them for 20 years because of crypto.
	And so I did a Coinbase wire from Coinbase.
	I bought a house.
	It was like $150,000, and I transferred it.
	It all went okay, and then three months later, they closed all my accounts.
	So why attack you for doing that?
	I mean, and I've dealt with this, you know, people who watch this show understand, you know, I dealt with it last month where I had literally a news aggregation app called MXM News where you just take all of the news, aggregate it.
	Not creating news, not making fake news, but allowing people to see everything.
	And we had PNC Bank
	Just, well, they sent us a cashier check.
	We didn't even know it.
	My partner in deal looked at our operating account to see, you know, just the business operating account, and it was like, we had like, you know, 750 grand in there to run the business.
	And he goes, there's nothing in the account.
	I'm like, well, that's a problem.
	Did we get hacked or whatever it was.
	And that was conventional banking.
	Turns out, we call them, oh no, we just don't want to do business with you anymore.
	And like, they didn't even, you know, they broke up with us without even telling us.
	And so they did that because
	They viewed the crypto that you were doing as a threat.
	What was the precipice for that?
	Yeah, well, they wanted to know where every single dollar came from.
	Basically, they asked us for super unrealistic expectations of what we could provide, and then we were told our account was going to be frozen until we were able to provide that much down the road.
	And they told us it was going to take three, six months.
	That was our business account we were paying employees out of.
	And so, what you learn is that this banking system is a joke.
	It's an absolute joke.
	When you look at the world banking, one of my favorite numbers that came out over the last two months is that in the entire world banking system, there's supposed to be $22 trillion worth of money in the banks.
	Do you know how much is actually in the banks?
	It's significantly less than that.
	1%.
	$220 billion.
	So they're leveraging 100x.
	100x.
	Absolutely.
	And that's very dangerous.
	I may do it sometimes, but it's very dangerous.
	But yeah, so the biggest was a joke, and I don't have an answer.
	They never gave us an answer for exactly why it was, but I can tell you I then went to a credit union, and I have a credit union account, and I was like, well, you know, let's move the business account here.
	So I went to the credit union.
	They denied me because my email address had crypto in it.
	So even, I mean, and I think most people think of credit unions much less leveraged.
	Yeah.
	Much less risky.
	So almost one-to-one, really.
	Yeah.
	And even they had a problem with it.
	Oh yeah.
	Oh yeah.
	So it's just one of these things where, you know, everybody that's in the banking system that's powerful, they see what's coming.
	They understand, like, crypto is a better system.
	Well, they're fighting for their lives, right?
	And that's the problem I think so many of our viewers are facing, which is they love the idea of crypto.
	They love the sort of, you know, the, well, I guess it depends on how you want to view it, right?
	Transparency or lack thereof.
	So not everyone's looking into all of your business.
	And yet you see, as governments starting to talk about their own digital crypto,
	They're on digital currencies, and all of this, it's like, all of the things that made it unique and appealing to people like yourself, people like myself, although it's clear, like, I'm a total noob, you know, when it comes to this, but again, I'm interested.
	It's just, I gotta learn the game, and I think so many people, you know, need that primer to kind of figure out exactly what's going on, but it feels like everything that the government now is doing to insert themselves is actually pulling all of the things that would actually make it attractive to the people for all the obvious reasons.
	Well, not necessarily.
	Because when you look at CBDCs, Central Bank Digital Currencies, and I would say, I'm going to shamelessly plug my book, Catching Up to Crypto, that we wrote that book to be the primer for people.
	It's a very simple read.
	It's only like 150, 170 pages worth of content.
	Audiobooks are going to be coming out next month.
	And I'm not saying that to show my book.
	I'm just saying this is the reason this was written is because I'm in my second decade in crypto now.
	I'm in my 11th year of crypto, and so I was able to take my experience from everything I've been through and be able to apply that to the audience.
	It's got great reviews, and so if anybody's looking for a good place to start, that's when we wrote the book, to say, this is where you start.
	Get it at the usual suspects?
	Yeah, of course.
	Amazon, Barnes & Noble, the whole thing.
	Wiley Publishing was our publishing company, the top financial publishing company in the world.
	Really excited about that, but going back to your question with CBDCs, Central Bank Digital Currencies, right?
	Basically a continuation of the fiat system that we already have.
	Except for, you can actually spend cash today, and nobody knows where you spend it, but with CBDCs, they're gonna know where you spend every single dollar.
	Well, that's what I'm talking about.
	In terms of the attractiveness, it's like, I don't need the government in every transaction I have.
	I mean, you see the weaponization, 87,000 new IRS agents.
	And they're going to watch your Venmo transactions if it's $601 more.
	Because there's not enough billionaires for them to be auditing with that many armed agents.
	So they're going after every possible transaction, getting involved in every aspect of our lives.
	I don't know that I trust
	Or have much faith in the institutions that are going to monitor a $601 transaction for me, but are $33 trillion in debt, managed to lose $220 billion from the Pentagon budget, and it's like, oh, well, that's okay.
	They're worried about my $600 transaction, but they can't control $220 billion.
	They have paying for fines for money laundering built into their budgets.
	It's crazy!
	All that happens when they get in trouble is they just get a slap on the wrist and they pay millions of dollars and they get out of it.
	In some cases, I think if you look at Deutsche Bank, they've had some really expensive fines for money laundering.
	It reminds me a lot of the supplement business.
	If you've ever seen some of the documentaries on supplements and the way the FDA works, somehow the supplements were able to have some kind of lawsuit to where
	You don't have to check to see if all the ingredients are good unless somebody dies.
	So if you go to GNC and you get some random stuff from there and then you die, that was never protected and it's only after you die that someone would file a lawsuit on your behalf and then they go after the supplements.
	So it reminds me a little bit of maybe the FDA as well and in other things over the last couple of years.
	Oh yeah.
	You know, but it's the same thing, right?
	It's like, oh it doesn't have to, like, oh we didn't have to actually
	Yeah, and that's kind of what you see, you know, kind of a similar mindset when it comes to the way that, you know, crypto is regulated or the lack thereof, and the way that, you know, things are sketchy out there.
	Like, there's a lot of sketchy stuff going on with the banks, and when it comes to the supplement thing, it's like,
	The banks are doing the same thing where they're building, so in the self-employment business, the companies build into their budgets having to pay for lawsuits.
	They build it in because they know that somebody's going to get sick, somebody's going to get hurt, and then later they just go and they pay for it from the budget.
	That's what the banks do.
	It's the same exact thing.
	It's like they know they're money laundering, they don't get held accountable, when they get caught publicly,
	They've got to come, you know, the SEC works with them to make sure that they, you know, say their apology and pay their fine and they move on.
	And it's just the dirtiest business in the world.
	And I think that that's why people have to understand that CBDCs and stablecoins, which are coins that are pegged to an asset, most likely to a dollar in USDC's case, is that this is not crypto, right?
	Crypto is about decentralization.
	It's about things that are permissionless.
	It's about things that are open source.
	That's the antithesis.
	Now, when we do get a digital dollar in America, which will probably come at some point, it will be a CBDC, then what that means is that's a walking, flashing neon sign for Bitcoin.
	Right?
	As those come in and people understand that the permission, the controls, the surveillance, that's what it is.
	It's going to be surveillance.
	They want to know everything.
	Yeah, 100%, right?
	And like the markets, you look at them and you compare them.
	And I mean, I imagine that adds a lot of weight towards your decision to put your money in a Bitcoin or perhaps one of the other crypto forms.
	I mean, talk about that.
	I mean, what are the differences say between Bitcoin, Ethereum, some of the other, you know, and, you know, you hear about, you know, the shit coins and all of that.
	Talk about those differences because, you know, where's the stability, you know, where's it become a lot more speculative, you know, for people who are looking to do that?
	Well, speculation's in the meme coins.
	Your Dogecoin, your Shiba, you know, plenty of other ones out there.
	Right now there's one that somebody made, Gensler.
	After Gary Gensler, and it's called Good Gensler.
	And so I'm invested in that, by the way.
	I don't want to, you know, not disclose that, but it's just a joke, right?
	In this pure speculation, you can ride those up, make money with them.
	I think it's really funny to make money in crypto off of Gary Gensler, which I really love.
	Yeah, the irony is sort of, I mean, it's worth a couple of bucks.
	The meme coins are speculation because they don't have any utility.
	They don't do anything.
	It's just a community of people that agree to buy something, they hype it up, and it's kind of what's wrong with crypto in a lot of senses, but yet people made a lot of money with it and continue to make a lot of money with it, so it's like, you've got to find the validity there for those people.
	Well, I mean, yeah, there's a pyramid scheme element to it, right?
	It's like the meme stocks, right?
	It's like, hey, we're going to make a meme about something, it's going to be a blockbuster video, it's coming back.
	Maybe for a little while, but you don't want to be the last guy buying it.
	100%.
	You would never invest in a meme coin for the long term.
	It doesn't make any sense.
	You just want to get in.
	If the price goes up, get out.
	Right there.
	Now, when you actually are looking at crypto projects like Ethereum or Cardano or XRP, these are projects that have utility in the future.
	I mean, there's utility now with Ethereum and some other things.
	Of course, XRP has a big lawsuit going on.
	We represent the XRP army because they're anti-Gary Gensler and anti-SEC, which we love.
	The SEC is a joke.
	We get more into that in a little bit.
	I think that Ethereum is a decentralized smart contract platform.
	So you kind of look at it like, you know, the way that America Online was when it first came out, right?
	We got on the internet.
	And when I was a kid, I thought
	That America Online was the internet.
	I didn't know there was a thing outside of that.
	Yes, exactly.
	Right.
	So, I didn't know you could type in web addresses.
	Like, I would just go log into AOL, and then there was chat rooms, and then there were, you know, sports message boards, and video game stuff, and that's where you would go.
	Well, you kind of think of Ethereum, or what we call Layer 2 projects,
	Oh, excuse me.
	Smart Contract Platforms, Layer Ones.
	You kind of think of them almost as like America Online.
	They live in a place in the internet.
	It's decentralized, but anything you want to do on that platform, you do within the platform.
	You can't really do things outside of the platform.
	So it's like little subsets kind of of the internet, the work in a decentralized fashion, which means that there are so many computers out there that are running this software.
	There's not one central point of failure, and they all contain the same information.
	And that's kind of the thing that ties this together, because
	Everybody's got to have the right information from the blockchain or else the network doesn't keep running.
	So that takes away the need for, we call it trustlessness.
	Like you don't have to trust that what it's telling you is true because every computer on the network is telling you it's true.
	And so you also got coins like XRP that are working to change the banking system.
	XRP is a coin that
	What they're trying to do is make it to where they can do international cross-border payments much faster.
	So, Bitcoin and XRP are both what we know as networks of value.
	So, SWIFT system that runs the banking system right now, the international transfers, cross-border payments,
	It's a network of information.
	So when something is happening on the SWIFT system, somebody's got to come in on the back end and do all the work.
	Yeah.
	So if you're dealing with time differences and everything else, like you would in an international transaction, that creates the headache.
	Or the time lag, really.
	Well, it's five to seven days is how long it takes for these things to actually settle.
	With XRP, it settles in 30 seconds.
	Because it's a network of value.
	You're literally sending the value through that network.
	Like, if I want to send you a payment on Venmo,
	Let's say about all the people are in the middle of that transaction.
	So I go to my phone, pull up Venmo.
	So there's Venmo.
	They're right there on the front.
	They're going to be the first person.
	And then you find the person you want to send money to, and you send them the money.
	It's going to go through your bank, through your credit card processing company for that transaction, and then it's got to go to the other person who's got to receive it in their Venmo, and then it's got to go through the same process.
	So you're looking at about five, six entities in the middle of every transaction.
	If I want to send you Bitcoin,
	That's it.
	There's nobody in the middle of it, and that's the whole point.
	Not just in America, but in the world.
	We built this huge system of brokers, third-party people.
	Everybody wants a cut of everything.
	Everyone's taking a piece, and all of those pieces take time and money.
	Absolutely.
	And that's what we're fighting against.
	For almost no value.
	No value.
	I mean, all of it can be automated like that.
	100%.
	And that's why they're fighting for their lives because they're trying to explain like, no, you do need us.
	I promise.
	I promise.
	I remember I went and spoke in 2019 at an event for college students at, I think it was UCF.
	And, you know, there was a guy that stood up in the back and he's like, now, look, I don't buy any of this crypto stuff.
	You know, I'm way against it, blah, blah, blah.
	I said, sir, what do you do?
	Well, I own a credit card processing company.
	Like, yeah, obviously.
	Like, this is the new system.
	What you'll find with crypto is the further we get into it, people are going to see it solves all the problems with our current financial system are solved.
	It has some other problems, of course, with people getting hacked.
	You have to remember your passwords.
	But I think, you know, in crypto, there's this phrase people say a lot, like, we're in the wild west of crypto.
	No, guys, we're still in the wild west of the internet.
	Like, that's what people have to understand.
	When you look back... When you think of even just what's going on in AI, in like the last two weeks, you're right.
	And it feels like, you know, I've been on the internet now for 20 years, I must be really... It's like, no man, I don't know anything.
	When an eight-year-old can pick up their phone and look at porn, it's broken.
	It hasn't been fixed.
	That's the Wild West, is the fact that anybody can access anything on the internet,
	No matter how old they are.
	And this is under the blockchain fixes too, you know, as well, is digital identity verification to where your phone is hooked up to your identity.
	So that way, I know there's some scary aspects of that, but that way they know that your kid is nine.
	They know that your kid, when he picks up his phone, he's nine years old, and it automatically prevents from going to certain places.
	Talk about the blockchain a little bit, because you, you know, as, again, as a neophyte looking on the outside, you hear about it as every aspect, you know, it's involved in everything, but break it down, you know, what exactly is it?
	How does it function?
	How is it sort of this infallible, you know, at least it's made out to be that way by the people, how is that possible, right?
	Well, we're just used to central points of failure.
	So, we're used to having, and when you think about this, like, it's shocking to people.
	I think it's going to be really shocking on how much trust you've given places that don't deserve it.
	Oh yeah, I see it every day.
	One of my big things is all of the social companies obviously have a big presence, big platforms.
	There's no doubt they're looking at everyone's information at all times.
	They're selling it to the highest bidder.
	Google probably being the worst offender, there's a reason they're a multi-trillion dollar company.
	You know, you don't even probably want to know what they know about you.
	No.
	And what they're doing with it, which is probably much worse.
	Exactly, but we've gotten used to the point where we just trust those people and what they say and the records that they show you.
	Like, for instance, in your bank account, when they show you your bank account, they show how much money is there.
	That money ain't there.
	Go try to withdraw it tomorrow.
	When we want to withdraw $5,000 of cash, it takes a week from Bank of America.
	Like, it's crazy the lack of cash, but yet that's what shows in your account.
	Now, with the blockchain, the blockchain is a ledger, basically.
	That's what it is.
	It's a ledger of transactions that, you know,
	For eternity, basically.
	Like, from the beginning of the blockchain, from the beginning of Bitcoin, every transaction that has ever occurred on Bitcoin is on that ledger.
	Now, when it comes to, like, the trustlessness that I was talking about before, it's because it's done in a decentralized way.
	So, the ledger is what the blockchain is, but then the infrastructure of how blockchain runs is through everybody that's on the network.
	So, every computer, we call them nodes, every computer that is on the blockchain network or on the Bitcoin network, for instance, it has that ledger within it, right?
	Well, every other computer on the network has it as well.
	So, if I were to, let's say, want to do a fraudulent transaction or try to show like, hey, this transaction occurred so I can get paid back or, you know, what we call a double spin transaction where the same transaction occurs multiple times on the blockchain,
	I'm not a nerd, that may not be the exact definition.
	But the point is, is that it would immediately be seen, because every computer on the network... Literally every other node is a check and balance to the fraudulent transaction.
	Yes, absolutely.
	So you can't have one bad actor.
	To take over the network, you'd have to do what we call a 51% attack, which would be where more than half
	Of the nodes on the network all contrive together to create fraudulent transactions.
	With Bitcoin, that's impossible now because the network is so big and it's so secure that there's not enough money in the world almost to try to make that happen.
	So not even like a bad actor, like a state, you know, you hear about the Russian bot farms and the Chinese are hacking the Pentagon.
	But that's less protected than this would be in your mind?
	Absolutely.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Because when you're attacking the Pentagon, you're attacking a system that has centralized points of failure.
	Bitcoin doesn't have that.
	And so, you know, I love altcoins.
	I love Ethereum.
	I love Cardano.
	I love XRP, ICP, HBAR, Algorand.
	These are all coins I really like.
	Polygon as well.
	But when it comes to—I'm investing in all those just for disclosure purposes.
	But those are the coins that we really like.
	I love altcoins.
	And a lot of people see me as, you know, the Bitcoin maximalists.
	They're the most evil people in the world.
	I hate the Bitcoin maximalists.
	What does that mean?
	So, a Bitcoin maximalist is someone who only supports Bitcoin and will not give, like, even Ethereum to them as a scam.
	Like, everything that's not Bitcoin is a scam.
	It's like the very people that set out to kind of change the world and say, like, hey, let's give people freedom to choose, like, now they're, like,
	The same.
	They're like, no, if you don't use Bitcoin, you're wrong!
	Are they just doing that to protect their asset?
	Is that like a pump and dump, basically?
	They're pumping something to keep that value up there?
	Because if you're less centralized towards one currency, I mean, it's sort of like what's going on right now in the currency wars.
	Right now, right?
	The petrodollar has been the gold standard, and now people, rightfully so, our administration's not necessarily paying attention.
	And this is a sort of a conflict I'd love you to talk about, which is like, the petrodollar has allowed America to be as prosperous as it is because we basically are borrowing money that we don't actually have, but it's essentially backed by everything that's in the ground all over the world.
	Once you lose that reserve currency status,
	You lose that ability to borrow.
	Now, I know there is a component sort of within the crypto world where they're like, you know, stop talking about the strength of the U.S.
	dollar.
	But, like, if you lose the U.S.
	dollar as that sort of preeminent world currency, there is a big ramification to the U.S.
	economy as well, which I think we still, even certainly crypto people in the U.S., still benefit from a strong U.S.
	economy, even if they may not be a fan of the U.S.
	dollar.
	But I don't know.
	How do you get it?
	How do you have it both ways?
	Well, I think this is very important because when your dad came out and made the statements about Bitcoin that he made, of course I'd criticize him heavily for that because I'm Bitcoin.
	That's my livelihood.
	I think it came from a fundamental misunderstanding at the time of thinking you can't be pro-dollar
	Pro-Bitcoin and pro-America.
	Yeah.
	And that's not true.
	I'm all three of those things.
	And it's one of these things where as the dollar goes down in value, obviously the value of Bitcoin is going to go up based on US dollars just like anything else with inflation.
	However, if we lose the reserve currency, we're screwed in America.
	Well, by the way, it may be a mixed blessing.
	Our economy will get a tank, but at least we won't be funding like Drag Queen Story Hour, because we won't have any money to fund anything.
	So maybe we solve some of the disasters that have managed to become government-funded things, which I don't know why they'd be government-funded at all.
	But no, I mean, it's overall really bad.
	Now, I don't know if it's as bad as racking up $33 trillion in debt, that we also have no real way of paying back while simultaneously shutting down our own energy sector, becoming dependent on our enemies.
	But if the GDP's growing, that debt number doesn't matter as much.
	When the GDP stops growing and we start getting stagnant, that's when the debt number starts becoming something you can't avoid.
	But the debt number's growing more rapidly than the GDP number.
	Yeah.
	So you're always sort of shrinking whatever buffer you had, right?
	And that buffer is what, you know, a couple bad weeks, a couple bad job reports.
	That collapses, and so does everything else.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	I think, like, people worrying so much about the debt, like, we should be more worried about the economy, in my opinion.
	Yeah, you can outgrow it, but it doesn't seem like we're doing anything to actually do that.
	Well, of course, because, like, I don't know if you've seen the guy running the country right now.
	He has no idea what he's doing.
	Like, it's always been hyperbole.
	They're like, oh, you know, whoever's the president, he's not really the president.
	Like, Dick Cheney was really the president, or Hillary was really the president.
	No, this guy really ain't the president.
	There's no way.
	And if he actually was, you know, it's like when they're like, well, they fired Susan Rice.
	I mean, you made Obama fire Susan Rice this week, or last week, whatever.
	It's crazy because, you know, you wouldn't allow
	Joe Biden to run, like, a fast food store.
	No.
	You wouldn't allow him to drive your children to school.
	Heck no.
	You wouldn't give him the keys to your house.
	He may have hunters with him.
	Exactly.
	And again, I always make it clear, I understand that I am not the upstanding human being that Hunter Biden is.
	Uh, but, you know, but that's exactly the point.
	You see the hypocrisy.
	You see the protections.
	You saw last week, you know, they did the, you know, they're giving him the notecard.
	This is the person from the LA Times, and this is the question they'll be asking you.
	It probably has an earpiece in.
	I mean, we're living the Wizard of Oz.
	Who's the man behind the curtain?
	Or woman, because I don't want to be a misogynist.
	We've got to make sure we cover both bases.
	Or, maybe they're neither.
	But the point is, when you look at one of the hearings that Gary Gensler testified at, Elizabeth Warren asked a lot of tough questions.
	We call Elizabeth Warren the banking broad.
	Because she pretends that she's for the people and against the banks, but really, she's a direct line between the banks.
	Get into detail on that, because I've done that a couple times, where I'm reading Twitter and I'm like, wow, I'm actually, I sort of agree with what she's saying here, but what's the backstory to that?
	Go look at her donors.
	Go look at her donors.
	She's against a big corporation.
	She's against billionaires.
	We're doing a big expose video on her soon.
	But look at her background.
	She was an attorney that represented billionaires.
	That's what she was before she got into politics.
	Always a registered Republican until she got into politics, you know?
	So somebody that's just fake is a day as long.
	And, you know, she's on this like anti-crypto crusade.
	Look at her donors.
	All her top donors are Amazon, Google or Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft.
	It's all the people she pretends to fight.
	They're the ones funneling the money to her.
	That's what I'm saying.
	So when she's fighting them is when I'm like, oh, wait a minute, how can I actually be... But it's not actually real.
	No, I mean...
	The Republicans are guilty of this too, right?
	I see plenty of guys, you know, they're gonna take on big tech, and I'm like, well you're still cashing your Google checks, you're still doing this, and you know, you talk really good in a hearing, but when it comes time to actually vote, when you see the final legislation, I'm like, well, you know, so you aren't actually for... You can't vote both sides.
	But they do.
	And again, I'm probably much more familiar with our side and how bad an actor they are in that because I'm actually following it more closely.
	And you see it.
	They go on late night TV and news and, we should be doing this, this, this.
	But you're like the chairman of the committee that actually has the power to do that.
	So, do it!
	But they're taking advantage of people who are either, I don't want to say ignorant, because they've got other things going on.
	They don't live in that world.
	They just don't fully understand.
	They're like, oh, that guy's really fighting for us, but they're not.
	So, very interesting.
	I actually went to Washington, D.C.
	and met with six different offices of Congress about a bill that I had trying to create a digital asset commission in the United States.
	It's on pause right now.
	We'll see what happens with it.
	It was very interesting going up there and seeing kind of the way that things are working and what people are scared of.
	But before I went, I had to go buy a Gucci suit.
	Sorry, I don't mean to represent Gucci.
	I'm sponsored by stake.com.
	But not Gucci.
	Gucci, if you want to send me free clothes, I will take it.
	But I went to the Gucci store, and I bought a suit to go to Washington with, and the guy that was helping me there at the New York store, his name is Michael.
	Me and my wife love Michael.
	He's an awesome guy.
	Got to know him pretty well.
	And as we're checking out, I'm talking to him a little bit about what I do.
	And he says, well, you know there's somebody out there that's against those banks.
	I'm like, who is it?
	Elizabeth Warren.
	Yeah.
	Bro, you couldn't be more wrong.
	But again, I read her Twitter feed sometimes where I'll see, I'll pop in, I'm like, wait a minute, like, how is she with me on this?
	Because it's not, she's not.
	And it's, it's so that, all part of the scam.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And in addition, also, St.
	Bankman Freed, who is the biggest scammer in the history of the world, you know, his dad, Joseph Bankman, actually worked on tax legislation with Elizabeth Warren.
	Like, directly, like, three or four years ago.
	Yeah, I mean, he makes Madoff seem like small potatoes.
	So talk about that, because you guys broke, didn't you guys break sort of the FTX story, or, I mean, not that you're a news agency, but you sort of, like, something's wrong here, right?
	Like, talk about how you did that, you know, the entire SPF thing.
	How did, now, I understand why it happened and how, I mean, he became the second largest Democrat donor after Soros, so he's protected, in a way, I imagine.
	Well, but all that money's got to go back, so is he protected anymore?
	But notice, the Democrats aren't exactly, no one's clamoring for it.
	If I was the Republicans, I would do it because it would bankrupt them this cycle if they had to give that money back, but they're going to do it.
	Well, the money's gone, it's been spent, it's been, you know.
	And by the way, the people who invested, even the Democrats who invested in FTX,
	They ain't getting their money back, in my opinion.
	We'll see.
	That ain't coming back, and the dumb donors aren't giving it back.
	But talk about that, because you saw some of that coming.
	And yet, this guy could be meeting with the most powerful people in the world, he can be in the Oval Office, he can be everywhere.
	Yeah, so here's what happened.
	It's a crazy story.
	You're a hunter?
	Yeah.
	I'm a big hunter myself.
	Yeah, we'll have to go sometime.
	Yeah, I went to Alaska to kill a 60 inch moose.
	Yeah, we were supposed to go grizzly bear hunting as well.
	We're going to have to exchange pictures later on.
	Oh yeah, for sure.
	That's the stuff that will get me in trouble.
	Oh my god, he's killing animals.
	I love animals, they're delicious.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Moose is
	Unbelievably good.
	It's the best game meat in North America, certainly up-native.
	No guy down in Texas is pretty good, but that's sort of an invasive species.
	But everybody knows.
	Yeah, good stuff.
	Moose is phenomenal.
	So what happens is, this is relevant to the story, is that I get ready to go to Alaska on a trip, and right before I go to Alaska, I was going to be gone for two weeks, no internet service.
	We had this bill for a digital asset commission, we were trying to raise funding for it.
	And so one of my guys, Brian Evans, who is a big guy in crypto who I love, great friend, he actually told me, he's like, hey, we can send this to FTX for funding because he had a connection with Sam and with Brett Harrison where they had conversed before.
	He's like, well, let's try to leverage that and see if they'd be willing to fund this.
	So, you know, we need like, I don't know, I think it's like $1.6 million we're trying to raise.
	And so we sent this
	I don't know.
	They sat on the bill forever, and they just wouldn't answer after that, after it got sent to their policy department.
	So, we basically had a couple politicians that we were working with.
	They're just burying the evidence, or at least stalling it out as long as possible, like writing it out.
	Exactly.
	Well, that's the time that Sam starts really going in and trying to get involved in the regulation of the DCCA.
	I can't remember what it was.
	But it was the bill that got killed that was trying to change stuff in crypto.
	I can't remember what it's called now.
	It's so irrelevant.
	But this is when he really latched onto that.
	That was the bill that Sam was trying to use as his vehicle to get all the centralized exchange regulations the way that he wanted it because he doesn't care about crypto.
	He didn't care about decentralized.
	He just cared about making money and becoming powerful and being able to fund all the people that he was funding.
	So I'm going to go ahead and maybe I shouldn't say this, but I'm going to say it anyways.
	Uh, so we were working with... we're bipartisan.
	We had, um, supporters on both sides.
	I won't say who... No, but by the way, that's okay, because like, I mean, and I'll get crap from my people, but like, hey man, like sometimes you actually have to deal within the realities of the world.
	Yeah.
	And I'd love to say, this is our side, and this is the stance, but it doesn't work that way.
	It's like business, you know, you don't ever get a hundred percent
	Of what you want in something, and you have to actually understand that game.
	People are like, are you sold out?
	I was like, no.
	Actual progress.
	This is what the Democrats actually do much better than Republicans.
	They'll take a 51% win and rack it up and go do it again, and again, and again, and aggregate a bigger pie that they end up with 100% of the win, or 99% of what they wanted.
	We will sit there and be like, we got 99% of what we want.
	We're going to blow it over the point of... it's stupid.
	And it's just not realistic in the world in which we live.
	I try to be pragmatic in that way, but it'll get you in trouble.
	Even if it's actually moving the needle forward as opposed to ultimately losing
	Losing ground.
	Exactly.
	100%.
	That's the way we see this thing works.
	What occurs is the Democrat that was working with the lobbying company that we were working with was actually Barbara Boxer.
	Nobody knows this.
	I haven't said that publicly ever.
	It was Barbara Boxer.
	Barbara Boxer calls Mark Wettgen.
	And says, what is the deal?
	Why are you all sitting on this bill?
	We need answers.
	Like, what is going on here?
	And he tells her that not only are they not going to be funding our bill, but also they were going to try to steal her to support what they were doing now.
	Interesting.
	They try to take her from us.
	And so, like I said, our bill is kind of dead right now in the water.
	We'll see what happens as regulation gets a little more friendly.
	But Barbara Boxer is the one that kind of started that entire thing.
	And what happens is they tell her, well, what we're doing is we want to basically create a federal BitLicense.
	So the BitLicense in New York City or in New York State, the Department of Financial Services, is the worst piece of crypto regulation that was ever passed.
	Well, it's like all gaming regulations and all that.
	Just horrible.
	And crypto companies had to leave overnight.
	And people who live in New York are like, I wish I lived anywhere else because it's so hard to do crypto here because of that BitLicense.
	Well, they were... And it's written by people who probably have no understanding.
	I mean, I saw this, like, you know, New York Safe Act.
	Yeah.
	They got to be the first to act on guns.
	So they write something that's clearly, like, no one understands what's even going on.
	I mean, law enforcement officials were literally committing a felony by showing up with their service weapons the next day.
	And it's like...
	There's always the perception of, we acted fast and first.
	It's like, no, you're idiots.
	You don't even know what you're talking about, nor should you be writing legislation about it.
	And guns are probably a lot more mechanically simple than crypto.
	Crypto, for sure.
	Yeah, exactly.
	So I think all that stuff is very important.
	That's one thing we've been pushing for in regulation.
	That's why we wanted Digital Assets Commission, because you'd actually have people to understand it, making the rules, instead of people that, you know, they might as well be regulating fried chicken.
	But how many people in government actually understand it?
	Because, you know, I spend a lot of time with a lot of people and, you know, there are much simpler concepts that most of them don't have much of a grasp on.
	That's true.
	I mean, it's a complicated thing.
	I've been kind of surprised, honestly.
	Like, with a lot of people that we've spoken to, them and their offices are a little bit more educated on crypto than I think people would suspect.
	I'm shocked to hear it, actually, based on everything else I know.
	I was as well.
	I was shocked as well.
	I've had some good conversations with some politicians about blockchain.
	They may not understand the ins and outs of it, but they see what it fixes.
	It fixes our financial system in a way that nothing else can.
	It holds people accountable like nothing else can.
	And so, you know, we're really encouraged to see all that, but what happens is that once we figure out what they're doing with the federal bit license, I'm like, oh no, this
	This guy's a bad actor.
	Like, if he's willing to throw away decentralization for his centralized exchange, this guy's a bad actor.
	And so, as we started attacking Sam Bankman for it, of course, I've got this very famous rant that was on my channel.
	I think the day after Sam released kind of his opinion on crypto regulation, I called him the devil.
	I called him the devil on the show.
	It went viral.
	People made these autotuned remixes of it and all this stuff.
	It was hilarious.
	And, you know, I said that day, I said, if I have to become a meme for people to see how bad this guy is, for us to stop,
	I'm happy to do it.
	Memes are powerful.
	They are powerful.
	As a general in the meme wars, I'm not myself.
	Listen, a pitcher can say a thousand words.
	Absolutely.
	So you caught that just from the way they took what would have been, in your opinion, based on actual experience, great legislation
	Because I mean, yeah, I guess people want to know, you know, how can it be regulated?
	Should it be regulated?
	You know, what's the government going to try to do to get rid of all of the stuff that we imagine would be good to sort of bastardize it down?
	And I guess that's probably where he was going because it allowed him to carry the scheme on longer.
	100%.
	Yeah, of course.
	I mean, because he becomes the only regulated centralized exchange in America, Coinbase probably would have gotten it as well.
	But all of a sudden, all the other exchanges that people were using,
	They had to actually now move towards, or they would have to move towards one of these regulated exchanges.
	So it's like an RFP, a request for proposal, like that basically was designed to only allow them to participate.
	100%.
	That's what the entire thing was about.
	So he basically created or changed the legislation to give himself monopoly power over crypto.
	And so we first, I first found out about this the day I got back from my hunting trip.
	So I'm in the airport.
	Yeah, I know what those days are like when you've been like incommunicado for 10 days and like it's just a shit storm and it's like... Exactly, like I'm walking around the Seattle airport where I had my layover like for hours just talking about this with all the people that were involved and like what do we do about this?
	And so we started attacking him relentlessly and then people thought we were crazy and then before you know it everybody's realizing, oh he knows something we don't.
	And so that's when all of a sudden Allseum's enemies started contacting me.
	Like, all these crypto projects, this is something people don't even know yet.
	I mean, we talked about it on my channel, but if you're not in the main, if you're not in crypto knowing that I talked about this, nobody's talking about it, Washington is not talking about it, is that not only were the retail investors victims because they were commingling funds, but also they straight up extorted and counterfeited projects all across the board specifically to destroy them.
	FTX had ICP as a project I love, and
	There was a thing where it launched in May of 2021 that it just absolutely tanked and went down like 98%.
	Everybody's like, what happened?
	Well, everybody's calling it a scam because they were saying, well, you know, like, they had all these founders tokens and all this stuff.
	Sam paid for all that.
	Sam launched perpetual futures contracts on ICP four days
	Before it was available to buy anywhere.
	How can you have a futures contract on something that doesn't have a baseline price?
	Yeah.
	And so, Sam used that to pump the price up of ICP to an unsustainable level, and they shorted it to the ground.
	His parents were the architects of the entire thing.
	Along with Dan Friedberg, who actually ran the biggest poker scam in history on Ultimate Bets, where they were doing what they call God Mode, to where they were able to actually look at the other players' cards.
	Right?
	Well,
	That's the same exact thing they did to FTX.
	Dan Freeberg was a compliance lawyer of FTX.
	The same guy that ran the biggest poker scam of all time.
	Well, if you're going to commit a fraud, that seems like the perfect guy to have as your general counsel.
	Well, it does, right?
	So Dan Freeberg, we believe, was the architect.
	There's tons of evidence tying him to all this.
	He was the architect of the entire thing.
	The parents were the puppet masters.
	I don't know.
	The philanthropy was bundling money, customer funds, to politicians.
	That's all it was.
	Even if you look, like, you know, certainly, you know, not as much with your audience, but I understand on a larger scale, there's some controversy around, like, you know, COVID-19 and the whole thing, the pandemic.
	Was it planned?
	Was it not?
	I mean, I definitely have my opinions.
	I believe they're probably very similar to yours.
	They're probably quite similar to mine, because it seems like there's one big beneficiary of everything that happened.
	There was one big cover-up for everyone that started it, and it's like,
	And it was always so obvious.
	It was always so obvious.
	I mean, I always talk about, like, the Wuhan lab leak theory was like, I'm like, I'm not a doctor.
	Yeah.
	But I'm also not an idiot.
	Like, of course it started there.
	Yeah.
	No, no, no, no.
	It started three feet outside of the lab.
	And you can't say that it did.
	They're studying the virus in question.
	It's never been seen before in mankind, but it wasn't from the lab studying the exact virus in question, funded by this, protected by the World Health Organization, and all of these things, who happen to be getting big donations from China.
	I'm like,
	Of course it was!
	Obviously.
	And who benefits?
	Because you're not allowed to talk about that either, right?
	Because that's terrible.
	Big Pharma!
	Well, beyond Big Pharma, if you have a virus or a disease that attacks predominantly the elderly and the already infirm, meaning people with pre-existing conditions, I don't know, it seems like something that a country with an aging 1.3 billion population
	You know, doesn't exactly care for their citizens as evidenced by the way they treat the Uyghurs and whatever.
	Like, I don't know.
	Maybe it's conspiratorial, but like, if they lost, you know, the elderly and firm that have maybe now experienced a little taste of wealth for the first time...
	There might be something there!
	Like all conspiracy theories that have been proven correctly, that's as plausible as anything else.
	And if they manage to take out the US economy, take out Trump in the process,
	Wow, that's a pretty solid added benefit.
	And again, I'm not saying this happened, but like, we'd be foolish to not have this conversation.
	And like all the conversations we'd be foolish not to have, no one's having them because of the uncomfortable truths that would probably come from it.
	Well, you're not allowed to.
	Thank God that Elon Musk has opened up Twitter to where I feel like we can go there and talk about realities of situations.
	Because before, you felt like if you even said COVID-19, you're going to get canceled.
	Well, for me, I mean, I was one of the early guys being like, hey, they're censoring me.
	Well, how do you know that?
	I was like, well, because I have, you know, at the time, you know, five million followers and I used to get a couple thousand retweets a post.
	Now I'm getting two.
	I'm getting four retweets a post.
	Like, I've been doing, you know, like you with crypto, I was an early adapter on social media.
	I was the first guy on Telegram to break a million followers at the time.
	Ever since the other ones opened up, that's come down.
	But like, you know, millions on Twitter early.
	Like, when I hit send, I know what it's going to do.
	I know when I'm pushing the boundaries.
	I know when it's miltos.
	Like, I get it.
	Yeah.
	Like, I saw discrepancies like this, but then I'd also see the lunatics on the left post something that wasn't particularly good, particularly would just go viral through the roof, and I'm like, okay, like, they're being assisted, and I'm being stymied.
	Now we have the evidence.
	It's very clear.
	We saw the government was working with Twitter.
	Yeah, of course.
	But the whole point, wrapping this back around to FTX, the whole thing is,
	They were supposed to, like, if you're against pandemic prevention and stuff, like, that's one thing.
	The main nonprofit they were giving money to was, I can't remember exactly what it's called, like, preparation for the pandemic or whatever.
	They're supposedly giving money to prevent the next pandemic, right?
	I mean, so even if you're against COVID-19, or not against COVID-19, but against, you know, you understand the conspiracy, it's like, okay, well, that's kind of controversial that that's where they're giving money to, but okay, whatever.
	That's not what it was.
	It was called like pandemic prevention, but it was all about funneling money to candidates on the left, and they just called it pandemic prevention.
	It had nothing to do with COVID-19, nothing to do with the pandemic at all.
	It's like everything on the philanthropy side was a straight-up scam.
	They were using other people's names because all these campaign finance
	Well, I feel like they were manipulated so badly by FTX by the time, again, you don't hear anything about it.
	I haven't heard anything about FTX in three months, so I'd be curious to see your thoughts on that, but yeah, it seems like
	If FTX or Sam was donating to Republicans, you know, the FEC, Federal Elections Commission, they'd be looking at these contributions a little differently than they are when they went to go benefit Democrats.
	Because, you know, like all of these big government institutions, they're controlled by the Communists essentially at this point.
	So, you know, that hasn't happened.
	So I'm hoping it will.
	So now you're seeing this stuff.
	What does he know that we don't know?
	People in the know are starting to understand it.
	The average consumer is still totally like, this guy is super genius.
	Child prodigy.
	He loves people.
	He loves altruism.
	So what happens then?
	So what happens then is we start exposing all these projects and I start realizing like,
	Oh, this is much bigger than just, you know, him being a bad person because of this regulation that he's pushing.
	As we started giving out all these narratives about what he was doing with counterfeiting projects, you know, he's probably actually the reason Terraluna collapsed.
	He's probably the reason why Celsius collapsed.
	He's probably the reason why Voyager, Three Heirs Capital, he was stop-loss hunting, the guys that own that.
	All this stuff is out there and is on the blockchain somewhere.
	Somebody's still got to find the evidence.
	But he was just trying to destroy
	All these projects across the board, because they were competitors.
	If you look at ICP, for instance, it was a competitor to Solana, which was his biggest investment.
	You look at Celsius, it was a competitor.
	Yeah, Solana was just a total scam, man.
	Oh yeah, absolutely, from day one.
	Now, it still has a network, but they can pause the blockchain.
	If you can pause the blockchain,
	That's not the point of blockchain.
	They favored speed of transactions over decentralization, and that's eventually what ended up causing Swann to fall off a cliff.
	On October 29th, FTX collapsed on November 9th.
	On October 29th, I had a tweet where I warned everybody, get your money.
	I said, if you don't take your money off FTX, you're low IQ.
	Like, get your money off, there's something wrong.
	And we were pushing this narrative because we knew something was wrong, but a couple days later, I actually said, well, I didn't think they were insolvent.
	Because we were working with the projects.
	And so what you're seeing on the project side is they were creating a fake market.
	I just hadn't came to the point yet until everything happened on the 9th of realizing, oh, the fake market was insolvency.
	Like that's what the whole thing was.
	They were creating a market that didn't exist because they were using customer funds and they were over leveraging everything and they didn't have the money.
	And they had to create these fake markets to be able to keep the appearance that they had all the money.
	And so
	You know, on November 2nd is when CoinDesk released the leaked balance sheet of FTX that showed how much trouble that they were in.
	And Sam literally came out and said, Oh, no, that's absolutely not true.
	We're 100% solvent.
	I actually talked to the CEO of a project.
	I won't say which one.
	It was a top 100 coin.
	I don't know where it is now.
	They literally lost eight figures on FTX because Sam came out and said, we are totally solvent.
	Everything's good.
	And they were getting ready to make a big move in there.
	And they took that vote of confidence as, oh, we can put the money on there.
	I told him, I said, well, you know, that's, that's the dreaded vote of confidence from the NFL owner.
	You know, it's like when, when, you know, your owner of your team comes out and says, we trust our coach.
	He's got our full support.
	He's always fired the next week, you know?
	And so that, that's really what that was.
	You know, so once all the Insolvency stuff came out, it's like, oh, this is what we were on to.
	We've been working with Gretchen Morgensen, an NBC reporter, putting out a big story about the fake market.
	We just hadn't made that final connection yet, and it was so crazy.
	Like, we were involved in this story from pretty much day one, and yet,
	It's all unfolding much more rapidly than we thought that it would.
	We were working on this story we thought we had a month on, and then all of a sudden, two weeks later, the entire exchange has collapsed.
	Should anyone else have seen this?
	Or was it just, I mean, again, you've made this your life for the better part of more than a decade.
	Could anyone else have seen this coming?
	No.
	So how do you prevent it from happening again?
	We remove these actors from the space.
	The traditional financial markets have no place in crypto.
	And when you have guys that are coming over from Goldman Sachs and are coming over from the banking system and creating crypto projects, these are our enemies.
	This is not what we want.
	Because when you're a hammer, everything's a nail, right?
	So if you're bringing that 25 years of experience at Goldman Sachs into crypto, it doesn't
	Doesn't translate, doesn't jive.
	The biggest, I'm the number two biggest, I'm the biggest in America, but there is one channel that's bigger than mine, I'm not trying to throw shade on, literally started by a guy from Goldman Sachs.
	The biggest channel in crypto started directly from a Goldman Sachs employee.
	And it's like, can we not see what these people are trying to do?
	Can we not see they're trying to turn crypto into the traditional financial sector?
	Because when you look at FTX as scam,
	It's the exact same way that the traditional system already works.
	We're, oh, it's so crazy that they were doing this, that they were taking the customer funds, and they were co-mingling, and they were over-leveraging, and...
	Hey, that's the way the entire system works!
	Have you heard of Credit Suisse?
	A hundred percent.
	They just went bankrupt, like, three weeks ago, like, you know, and that was one of the, like, you know, when I graduated from Wharton, you know, the Wharton School of Finance, in 2000, like, half my graduating class went to Credit Suisse, because that was where, if you were an investment banker, that was, like, before hedge funds were really a big thing, like, you know, that's what you wanted to do, and that's where you were going to make a lot of money doing that, but that's, I mean, that just went and solved it, and now you're bringing that same mentality here.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	I'm involved in this big class action lawsuit right now where they're suing me for a billion dollars along with eight other influencers.
	Welcome to my life.
	That's called Tuesday.
	I ain't worried about it.
	The funny thing is, out of all the nine people that are included on that, I'm the only person that literally did not promote FTX.
	I never was paid by them, never even had a conversation with them, and yet somehow I get looped into this billion dollar lawsuit.
	You get dragged in because you're
	Either you're a big name, or a big wallet, or perceived as a deep pocket, and you know, guess what?
	They're just going to add you in because they can, and you have to defend it, and that's the problem with, you know.
	I love to fight.
	Like, I love to fight.
	I got the Trump gene too, so it's like, you know, it's like, okay, my happy place.
	Let's go.
	You know, the law firm that is doing this against me, they're an absolute joke.
	They just tried to put me in, I was, on Monday I was down there for a harassment hearing, because I've been very, I've been very vocal about what a scam they are.
	Because they're going after an innocent person that had absolutely nothing to do with it.
	And so, in the court, on the transcripts, people will see when it's public, is that they literally lied about voicemails from me.
	So, in the courtroom, the guy is literally telling the judge, well, you know, my plaintiff is scared for his life, asking if I have to have a gun because of all of the violent threats
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	The entire hour that he says that I was calling for an hour straight, I was on a live stream, and I was literally recording videos with timestamps, and I was literally on camera the entire time he says that I did this.
	And the evidence he submitted... Well, never let the truth get in the way of a good story.
	Of course, of course.
	That's another thing you'll...
	You'll learn through this experience as I have as well through the media and others.
	Well, he's going to get a lot of learning to do himself on this because I think he just thought I was an idiot and thought that I'm just loud and brash and talking and all that stuff.
	But I come with receipts.
	When it's time for me to fight, I come with receipts.
	And so I had receipts.
	I literally could not have made those voicemails.
	And he was using those threatening voicemails that he said was definitely me.
	To fuel his plaintiff and his family to be fearful.
	And like, that's so sick.
	To try to bring down me, an innocent man, that's how far this guy is willing to go.
	And we were able to prove in court that, no, we actually didn't do those phone calls at all.
	He literally lied about it the entire time.
	And it's like, you know, come at me, bro.
	Like, come at me with false allegations because I've got the truth on my side.
	And yes, granted, like the truth doesn't always work,
	Listen, I did 50 hours of testimony for treason.
	A crime punishable by death for Russia, Russia, Russia.
	Now, you had the head of the Intelligence Committee saying that I was doing all these things.
	He had seen the evidence.
	The media will, like the lapdogs that they are, they'll run with that as though it's the gospel.
	And yet, now, we all know none of that was true.
	And there's still some that pretend it's real.
	So, it doesn't necessarily matter.
	I get it.
	That's the problem with BS.
	You still gotta deal with BS.
	This lawsuit has been so great for me.
	I love it.
	The fact that they literally have shown their lack of due diligence to the extent where they literally included someone that never even had a conversation with FTX.
	We're good to go.
	That I'm going to make a mockery of the entire thing.
	It's not fair that you can just attack people for no reason.
	We're going to be able to fight and show the receipts.
	I was down here on Monday to face that hearing.
	It's just so crazy the lack of due diligence from our legal system.
	It's just kind of allowed.
	Don't ask me how I know.
	And so between me and my father, probably more soothed than any human being in the history of the country.
	I mean, we're dealing with allegations.
	Well, 30 years ago, he was mean to me, and we're gonna... And guess what?
	You still have to deal with it, and you end up in a, you know, the Southern District of New York, where 99% of the people hate your guts, and they're like, oh, well, we'll do this.
	I mean, our legal system is a joke.
	Yeah, it is.
	There is no equal justice under our law, and that's the problem.
	I mean, it's something I think
	We have to fix because it's not sustainable this way where it could be weaponized this way against the people.
	That's what I'm doing.
	That's the reason why I'm making a mockery of the entire thing because people have to understand that not only is our financial system broken, our legal system is broken, our media system is broken, our medical system is broken.
	All of these are broken in the same way because they all favor centralization over
	The people!
	Well, so talk about that, because I mean, obviously, the notion that makes this so appealing in terms of crypto and certainly, you know, that decentralization, right?
	The deregulation.
	But when you watch an FTX happen, when you see that, you know, what's the happy medium of, I don't want to say regulation, because some people may be like, there should be none whatsoever!
	Well, you have to have some regulation.
	So what is that?
	Where should it be regulated to?
	How do you do that and how do you keep, sort of,
	Let's call it political bias out of it, right?
	You end up in a court in New York City, and if you're a hunter, if you're maybe even libertarian, whatever, zero chance.
	You're out because of that, and we'd love to believe it's a jury of your peers, but is someone in that jury going to...
	Are they going to take even the most ridiculous case against Trump and be like, you know what, it's just easier, we'll say guilty because I can't go home.
	I won't be able to go to school when the media leaks that I was on the jury and that I was one of the people that let him go.
	I mean, but those are the considerations that are going through these people's minds and it's sick.
	Yeah, I mean, I think that, like, we just are dealing with an irrational system that has to be changed from the inside out.
	And, you know, it's no longer, like, everything now is subjective and opinion-based.
	Like, as we move more towards blockchain decentralization, like, everything has rules and standards that have to be governed and have to be lived by.
	So, when you look at social media, for instance, you know, there are rules about shadowbanning.
	Like, Mark Zuckerberg, like, just two years ago, or maybe it was a little bit longer than that, three or four, said, shadowbanning doesn't exist.
	It's very clear.
	It's very obvious that it exists.
	It's very obvious that you're doing it.
	So the difference between a social media blockchain and what we have now with our centralized entities would be that they're still rules.
	There's still, like, it's not just a free, you can't go post child porn on a public, you know, blockchain or on a public social media site.
	So there are rules that people have to follow.
	The difference is is that those rules are ironclad and they're not subjective.
	They're not based on somebody sitting up on his perch saying, you know what, I don't like that one, but I like this one.
	So that's all regulated within the blockchain.
	Right, that's all regulated.
	We call it governance.
	You know, the governance within a blockchain, within a network, will be the ones that handle that.
	And so when you look at, like, look, I'll just be really honest.
	I think that, you know, if Trump, if your dad comes out as pro-Bitcoin, I think that would be enough to swing the entire election for him in the future because it's made up
	Of strictly independent libertarian voters that have to make a choice between one side or the other.
	That's almost the entire cross-section of crypto.
	And I think that, you know, when it comes to this libertarian mindset, a lot of these people have this mindset that there should be no rules and no regulation because, you know, they think you should be able to do heroin on the side of the road.
	Well, I don't really believe that.
	I think there's a happy medium between all of it.
	But when it comes to regulation, the thing is we're going to have common sense rules that are ironclad that aren't subjective.
	No one, no one is responsible for more people losing money in crypto than Gary Gensler.
	This guy literally met with Sam Bateman Freed for six months before FTX collapsed, and
	Yeah.
	The guy that's supposed to prevent these things and be for the people, like, literally was just getting scammed and not participating.
	And who Elizabeth Warren was protecting.
	And it's like, it's so crazy when you look at it to understand that there's no one in the middle here.
	This statement is 100% factual.
	Either Gary Gensler is the most incompetent regulator in the history of regulators to have met with... Which, by the way, is very possible.
	Because it could also be a both.
	Right, right, right.
	It's very possible that he was just that incompetent.
	And how does he get to keep running the SEC when he worked alongside the biggest scam, fraud, Ponzi scheme in the history of the world?
	This is possibly up to $50 billion when you factor in all the companies that were involved with FTX.
	It's not just the customer funds that were on the site.
	It's a lot bigger than that.
	So it's either he's totally incompetent, he's not capable of doing his job, and there's a guy, ZK Sharks, I think is his name, on Twitter.
	He's been doing a phenomenal job uncovering so many conflicts of interest of Gary Gensler from the stuff he said when he taught his MIT blockchain course.
	I can't remember what year it was.
	Maybe it was 2016, 17, 18.
	To where he says three-fourths of all cryptos are obviously not securities.
	He said that back in, you know, the early days, and now he's saying they're all securities.
	They're all securities.
	I'm sure it's not because he's being paid by his former employee, Goldman Sachs.
	You know, go figure.
	But the thing is that when you look at that, he's either a criminal
	Or he's incompetent.
	There's nothing in the middle.
	You can't meet with the biggest fraud in the history of the world, not know it.
	So how do you prevent, again, how do you prevent it from happening?
	If the guy that's in charge of these things doesn't know and can be scared, how do you create the level of confidence for people to be like, okay, I'm in?
	How do you get the adaption?
	For rights and freedom for, you know, ever since 9-11 especially, you know, you definitely go back before that, but 9-11 with the Patriot Act was really where we started giving up our rights.
	And so, you know, when you look at the convenience that, like, let's say the banking system offers you, like,
	Everything's, you know, on your account, and that if it's gone, you know, it's FDIC insured, and that, you know, all you gotta do is call them and say, hey, I really didn't spend this, and they'll, you know, they'll remove their transaction.
	It's taught people to be completely irresponsible with their money.
	Complacency.
	Apathy.
	Yeah, but they like it.
	They want that convenience of that.
	And so we've got to get Americans away from this idea of trading that convenience for
	We're good to go.
	Bought a crypto and then taken it off the site, you couldn't have been hurt.
	And that's what we've got to do in America is get back to like, let's be responsible for our own money.
	How about that?
	Like, this is stuff they don't teach you in school, you know?
	There's no financial education in school.
	There's barely financial education in business school.
	I don't have an economics degree.
	I didn't know anything about money when I got into crypto.
	I accidentally got into it because of that software that I had to buy.
	I've learned so much about the way the world works.
	My degree is in ministry leadership.
	I was a youth pastor for a while.
	I ran a non-profit organization.
	It was a rehab for teenage boys.
	I did that for years.
	I was an executive director there.
	That's right as I led into getting a full-time in crypto.
	That was the last thing that I did.
	It's this kind of thing where it's like,
	Guys, we got to start being responsible.
	Like, if you can just start from that standpoint, it doesn't matter what your background is or your education.
	It doesn't even have to be financially.
	I mean, I think that's a lesson we could have for everything.
	You know, and it's interesting.
	I mean, you know, it's sort of, you see that in the places, you know, where I was at the UFC with my father two, three weeks ago or whatever, and the place goes crazy and the fighters are jumping over the cages after they win and like giving them a high five kind of thing.
	And it's like,
	All those places where it's like, it's on you.
	Yeah.
	Like those guys all tend to be, you know, conservative leaning because it is on them.
	They're not falling to the team.
	They can't have an excuse, blame someone else.
	And I mean, I think that independence, that self-assuredness, all of that is so interesting.
	I mean, I think, yes, it's not just in crypto or your financial responsibility, like, hey, take some ownership of your actions.
	We'd be better off if they did that across the board in every aspect of their lives.
	Absolutely.
	When you look at the SEC, the way that they're trying to over-regulate everything right now, which, by the way, the SEC is going to fail to regulate crypto.
	There's already been one case decided that said that the secondary market is not securities, so they're not going to end up regulating crypto.
	It's not going to happen.
	Okay, fine.
	That's what it's now.
	Yeah.
	But are they just going to let it go?
	And is that why there's so much volatility in the markets?
	Yeah.
	Well, no, they're not going to let it go.
	And yes, certainly a lot of volatility comes from the unsureness of institutions to get into crypto right now because of all the stuff that the SEC is doing, but I would also argue like a lot of those institutions
	I think so.
	Everyone needs to be able to access the same kinds of investments if you understand how to do it.
	We're trying to change it where it's a test instead of having to have a million dollars.
	Recently they just came out and said now they're thinking about changing the credit investor law to ten million dollars.
	That takes out literally 99.9% of the populace doesn't have a net worth of ten million dollars to be able to check that box to be able to get into an investment.
	The elites get to stay the elites.
	And like, that's great if you're an elite, but I came from nothing, you know?
	Like, I'm glad I had the opportunity through crypto to be able to change my life.
	Like, I drive a Lamborghini.
	Like, never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that's something I would have been doing.
	I was living paycheck to paycheck five years ago, you know?
	And so, it's like, it provides this wealth redistribution in a way that nothing else does.
	And that's what the SEC is trying to stop.
	They don't want you to make money.
	Yeah.
	The SEC's main goal is to make you feel like an idiot and that you aren't capable of running your own investments.
	You don't know what to do with your money.
	They have to tell you.
	That's the scam.
	And so when it comes to regulation, we need some type of regulation across decentralized exchanges.
	But overall, what we hope is going to happen is everything's going to move to decentralized exchanges.
	To where everything is done with automatic market makers, and you're not having to custody your funds with someone else.
	You're able to do it all from your wallet, and your money stays in your wallet.
	It never touches somebody else.
	And so, it's really like moving more towards decentralization, which is what Sam was trying to prevent.
	It's what Gary Gensler is trying to prevent.
	Why?
	Because they just want the system to run the same way the broken system has continued to run.
	They just don't want to be the last one holding the potato in a game of Hot Potato.
	What people have to understand is everything they're doing is for a point.
	We need regulation, but we need people to understand crypto making the regulation.
	So how do you do that?
	Because I mean, I imagine that that plays into big into the adaption process.
	I mean, I think creating some confusion around that, not having sort of defined regulations on that creates a little bit of a, you know, an insurmountable obstacle for a lot of people to get in.
	Because I mean, how do you get the adaption where you have a critical mass that all of a sudden
	We're good to go.
	Forced to play with the bad actors because you know they're going to be taken care of by gambling with your money.
	It's this vicious cycle of insanity.
	How do you prevent that?
	How do you get the adoption?
	When will people be able to go to a grocery store and pay with Bitcoin?
	Well, you can right now through certain, you know, I use a crypto.com card, which is I convert crypto over to dollars like, you know, before I want to do a transaction, and then I can spend my crypto off the exchange with a card.
	Coinbase has a similar card.
	You can do it with USDC.
	So there are ways you can spend Bitcoin right now.
	I think the big confusion is people thinking you have to understand blockchain to use it.
	And I think it's just kind of a consequence of our internet culture where everything's public and it gets out there so fast.
	Where things that are growing, like look at AI for instance.
	We all kind of knew about AI, but now look where it's going so quickly.
	It's like now people are able to see what's happening in real time.
	Let me ask you this.
	Maybe you know.
	I don't know.
	Do you know what HTTP stands for?
	Yeah.
	Hypertext Transfer Protocol?
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	I only remember this because I had to do like a, you know, back in the day at Wharton, I think, and that could be off by a word or two, but it's something like that.
	Wow, you really ruined my entire spiel there, Don.
	Appreciate it.
	Yeah, but no, listen, I had to do that one time back in school.
	Did I get it?
	Nailed it!
	Alright guys, I'm done here.
	Thank you so much.
	Now, I don't know what the hell it means, I just know what the acronym is.
	I'm not going to pretend I know what it means, I'll give you that win, but I know what the acronym is because I had to do it 23 years ago when I graduated college.
	I made a point not to know what it stands for, because this is a big example I use all the time.
	That's every day when you go to a website, that's what you're using.
	You're using that protocol.
	Do you know how that protocol works?
	Do you know how it connects you to the internet?
	Do you know how it moves from website to website?
	Do you know all of the different networks that are included in on that?
	No, you don't.
	Nobody does.
	But you're using it every single day.
	And so in blockchain, we're really striving for a day where everybody's going to be using it
	And not really knowing that you're using it.
	It's the underlying infrastructure of the apps that you use.
	You don't need to know exactly how it connects or how it works.
	And so, unfortunately, with blockchain, it's so confusing to people.
	And you've got all these people making big investments, right?
	Big money is moving hands in crypto.
	Pound for pound, probably the most lucrative space in the history of the world.
	And when you look at it from that perspective, like, people are interested because of the money, and they're saying, one adoption, one adoption, one adoption.
	Adoption's a meme, right?
	Like, in the bull run, when Bitcoin's going up, everybody's like, adoption's here!
	You go in the bear market, everybody's like, oh, we'll never use it.
	It's a failure.
	It's like, you just keep seeing the same cycle over and over and over again.
	And one day, we're going to get to a point where things are going to reach an equilibrium.
	I believe, look, when I first got into, into, now, I got into crypto in 2012.
	2017 is when I really started dedicating my life to it.
	I was like, this is what I want to do.
	This fixes the system.
	I fell in love with the idea of decentralization and things like that.
	Looking back on those earlier days, I would have told you in 2017, oh, adoption is less than five years away.
	Definitely.
	Definitely less than five years away.
	It's one of those things where the longer you're in it and the more you learn about it, the further off you realize it is.
	So if you ask me today, I think it's maybe 10, 15 years, maybe 20 before we have full-blown adoption in crypto where all these protocols are being used
	Decentralized applications are built on top of those networks, and that people are using it on a daily basis and interacting with the blockchain without even knowing they're interacting on the blockchain.
	I think that's where we have to move to, because right now a lot of our decentralized applications are just blah.
	They're just not good.
	And is that what you're trying to achieve?
	Yeah, over time, that's what I'm all about is adopting this new technology because it's, in my opinion, it's the only way we're going to save America.
	I really believe that.
	I think that we've got to get off of this fiat system where you just print money at will because when we talked earlier about the dollar losing the world reserve currency status, that's terrifying.
	That's hard to get in America when that happens.
	It's almost when, right?
	Yeah, like when?
	That actually feels like it's a lot closer than 10 to 15 years because it's going on right now.
	Maybe if your dad comes back in and wins, maybe he can, you know, put his foot down on some stuff and maybe get tough with some of these BRICS nations, which, you know, Joe Biden, you know, he's not ever been tough with anybody in his life.
	Other than Twitter talking about Hunter Biden, but...
	I think that, you know, it's one of these things where, you know, the adoption curve is going to be, you know, very dramatic when it happens, but we're a long ways away from it happening now.
	And I think that, you know, this is something that hopefully we can use to prevent us losing the world reserve currency.
	Because if that happens, the main reason we're protected in America is because of that reserve currency.
	When that's gone, all of a sudden we're susceptible to hyperinflation.
	Oh, I mean, hey, we're going to call our $33 trillion.
	You know, you'd think FDX was a collapse.
	Exactly.
	But we're protected right now because the other countries in the world, they have to have dollars, and so they're all motivated to keep us from going into that hyperinflation.
	But when we lose that, like, now all of a sudden you're looking at
	What do we do now?
	And when you look at, like, Germany in the 1920s, you know, after World War I, when people were, you know, wheelbarrows of cash.
	Zimbabwe.
	Zimbabwe.
	You look at Venezuela, where, you know, they make trinkets in the street with their currency.
	They will make you a purse out of their currency.
	Because that's worth more than the currency.
	Exactly, because it's absolutely worthless.
	We think that could never happen in America.
	You're right.
	It could never happen in America as long as we have the world reserve currency.
	But once we lose that, you see these BRICS nations, you know, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa starting to move away from the dollar into the digital yuan.
	It's very scary.
	I do think that the digital dollar will come eventually, and it will kind of be used to pump up demand across the world to keep the Ponzi scheme going a little bit longer with the way we print money, but it's just the system is broken, and it's got to be fixed, and I believe that crypto and blockchain is the only way that we can start holding people accountable.
	There's this idea that, you know, there's so much fraudulent activity in crypto, and, you know, Elizabeth Warren's always saying like,
	All the criminals are using it!
	There's 0.1% of all blockchain transactions.
	Well, but they use that, you know, like you said, the Silk Road, that whole concept.
	They tried, like, early on, before I even knew much about it, they're trying to make it, it's a pedophile ring, it's a drug trafficking ring, it's all this.
	And so, you know, but, you know, I guess what I've learned over the last few years is, like, the second, like, the big government people are going after it, there's probably
	There's probably an understory that they're not telling you, and there's a reason for it.
	And that's why, you know, it's fascinating.
	But it's cool to see how early we are on the curve, because I feel like, you know, someone who's missed it, but it doesn't feel like we've actually missed it.
	Yeah, and I think, like, it's so amazing when I talk to people about crypto, because, you know, everybody's like, oh, well, you know, I can't get my family in crypto, or I can't talk to my buddy.
	My entire family's in crypto.
	We're good to go.
	Everything's a mystery in crypto, but it's not really a mystery.
	The truth is right in front of you the entire time.
	When you look at all the people losing money with crypto, not necessarily from the lack of having private keys, but just with the market, it works in a four-year cycle.
	Bitcoin has worked in a four-year cycle ever since the very beginning.
	You get one massive run-up for one year, you get one gigantic dump for one year, and then you get two years of the market building up stably.
	And when people are saying it's a scam,
	That's the time to get in, right?
	When FTX was collapsing, it went down to 15,000, which ironically, we had said all year last year, the bottom of the market was going to be in November.
	We didn't know what was going to cause it, but it's because that four-year cycle works so exact.
	Like, we could forecast when we should see a bottom.
	We called, you know, the top of the market, we said for years, top of the market would be in between Halloween and Thanksgiving in 2021.
	And
	Exactly!
	Like, November 22nd, I think, was when we saw, you know, or November 12th, I believe, is when we saw the top of Bitcoin.
	And, you know, it's just amazing to see how mapped out this thing is, and people will just follow it and understand it.
	What I'm trying to tell you is,
	Number one, we have the system that's broken that's got to be fixed, and it plugs a lot of the system.
	But a lot of the mystery surrounding the movements of crypto, it's not really a mystery.
	When you understand why that four-year cycle works, it's because every four years, the production of Bitcoin gets cut literally in half.
	It's supply and demand built into the code of Bitcoin that makes it so powerful.
	And every four years, everybody's like, well, you know, it's not going to work this time.
	This time, we're going to see something go totally different.
	This time, it'll be different.
	We've heard that a lot.
	I've been crushing that this time will be different narrative for years.
	And we just continue to be right.
	And, you know, the people who want to reinvent the wheel and try to figure out, like, I want to be the person that called the time that was going to be different.
	You just keep losing.
	And so I think that for people really understand, like, there's not as big of a mystery to Bitcoin as you think there is.
	It's not about
	It's choreographed when the right time to get in.
	So tell them how they can find your book.
	Yeah.
	So we can learn about it.
	Sure.
	Where can our audience find you?
	Because again, I think I have a feeling as more especially emerges from FTX and the regulation, we'll have to have you back on to talk about all that.
	But tell them where they can figure out so they can get that primer and they can start looking at it.
	Yeah, well you can find me.
	I'm very easy to find on the internet.
	If you just search BitBoy Crypto, you'll find me on any platform.
	But my book is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books of Million.
	Catching Up to Crypto is the name of the book.
	I just recorded the audiobook, so that's going to be coming out here hopefully in the next four to six weeks.
	So if you're more of an audiobook person, look, I don't read that much.
	I read tweets.
	I read 140 characters.
	That's me these days.
	100%.
	You know, if you're like, what's the best book you ever read?
	Well, does a Twitter thread count?
	So, you know, that's where you can find the book.
	It's on all those different platforms.
	Audiobook will be coming out soon.
	We've got a workbook coming out.
	We also have, I was very involved, I went down to the Bahamas, tried to track down Sam.
	I got some very interesting text messages from him while I was down in the Bahamas that he asked me what I would do if I was the CEO of FTX, which is a crazy question to ask.
	But the whole thing is our next book is actually going to be called Catching Up to FTX Lessons Learned During My Crusade Against Fraud, Corruption, and Bad Hair.
	Awesome, man.
	Well, guys, go check out Ben Armstrong.
	Ben, thanks so much for doing this.
	Appreciate it.
	Thank you.
	Guys, thanks so much.
	Ben, that was awesome.
	Guys, go check out Ben Armstrong.
	Make sure to check out his book.
	Follow him on social.
	Definitely a trend that's here to stay.
	I think the government's going to try to do whatever they can to prevent the outside crypto guys from doing it so that they can control it and learn everything about you.
	I think we probably want to avoid that and follow the guys like Ben.
	And whether it's the exchanges or the actual currencies, start looking at it.
	Check it out.
	Again, I want to thank our sponsors, Patriot Mobile.
	Great people.
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	Again, you're going to have a cell phone in your pocket at all times, guys.
	Give your
	We're good.
	We're good to go.
	Support people who care about what you believe in.
	Also, don't forget to check out the guys at Gold Co.
	and other, whether it's crypto, whether it's gold, like diversify yourselves from the insanity that's going on.
	We're watching it.
	The bank collapses.
	We're watching stupid decisions.
	We're watching Joe Biden use his first executive order to veto
	People who didn't want to make ESG and woke nonsense and like that DEI be a part of your retirement savings.
	It doesn't have to be the best investment.
	As long as it's woke, that's wonderful for you.
	Even if you lose all your money, what could possibly go wrong, right?
	So, guys, go check out the folks at Gold Co.
	Go to DonJrGold.com.
	Learn about it.
	Again, bank collapses, inflation, fuel prices going high, interest rates are through the roof.
	It's not looking good.
	I just want to make sure you're protected.
	You don't have to do anything, but go and learn.
	Read about it.
	They'll help you out.
	They'll take you through it.
	So go to DonJrGold.com.
	Learn about it.
	I think you'll like them.
	Do what you want, but again, I just want you to be prepared, so check it out.
	That's D-O-N-J-R-Gold.com.
	You guys are the best.
	I appreciate you, and we will see you soon.

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