The Pomp Podcast - #515: Justin Rhedrick on Bitcoin’s Power to Lift People Up

Episode Date: March 18, 2021

Justin Rhedrick is best known as Bitcoin Vegan. Justin was tired of running the rat race, the seemingly never-ending paycheck to paycheck cycle working in retail merchandising and that’s when he decided to learn about Bitcoin back in 2016. In 2016, Justin also started his very own business “Vegan On The Go”, where he cooked and delivered vegan food. In this conversation, we discuss the power of bitcoin, the black community, being early to markets, no excuses, his new book, and why Justin’s story is so powerful. ======================= OKCoin.com is the leading crypto exchange for both beginners and experienced users. You can fund your account in under 2 minutes, and get access to the most advanced trading engine, all while paying the lowest trading fees in the industry (0.1%). Visit www.okcoin.com/pomp and open your account today.  ======================= With 10M+ users, Crypto.com is the easiest place to buy, and sell 100+ cryptocurrencies. The Crypto.com Visa Card gives you up to 8% back instantly, and 100% back on Spotify and Netflix. Also, Crypto.com lets you earn up to 8.5% p.a. on BTC, and 14% p.a. on stablecoins. Get $25 when you download the Crypto.com App with code "pomp". Download the App now: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/pomppodcast2021 ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 140,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy to understand language, while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://www.pompletter.com =======================

what's up everyone this is anthony pompliano most of you know me as pomp you're listening to the pomp podcast simply the best podcast out there let's kick this thing off justin redrick is best known as bitcoin vegan justin was tired of running the rat race the seemingly never-ending paycheck to paycheck cycle working in retail merchandising and that's when he decided to learn about bitcoin back in 2016 in 2016 justin also started his very own business vegan on the go where he cooked and delivered vegan food. In this conversation, we discussed the power of Bitcoin, the black community, being early to markets, no excuses, his new book, and why Justin's story is so powerful. I really enjoyed this conversation with Justin, and I hope you do as well. But before

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The link is in the description. Crypto.com app. Use code POMP. You get $25. bucks, you can go use that Visa debit card. Lastly, do not forget that I write a daily letter to over 140,000 investors about business technology and finance. I break down complex topics into easy to understand language while sharing my personal opinion on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at Pompletter.com. Again, Pompletter.com. All right, let's get into this episode with Justin. I hope you enjoy this one. Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek

Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. all right guys bang bang got a special treat for you today justin is here thank you so much for doing this sir hey hey how you doing man thanks for having me on man absolutely you've got this incredible story uh just in life and then also uh kind of with your relationship with bitcoin let's start with kind of your background tell us where'd you grow up and then kind of walk us through your life um until about 25 years old okay uh well i grew up in charlotte north carolina

uh home of the charlotte hornets it's not my favorite team though i'm a lakers fan by the way mama mentality um and growing up i was i was always a bit of a different child um i've been through different situations in my life um one particular that really stood out life changing well let me fast backtrack i grew up a basketball player love to play basketball um got into a lot of uh different didn't really get into too many different sports outside of that probably ran a little track but um i always had a i always had that inkling to want to be great that's something i didn't know what the hell it was right so it was always something there that i wanted to tap into just didn't know how and i didn't really understand it then but that process

officially started my senior year in high school when i was in 2006 um me and my mother our house was foreclosed on in 2006 my senior year and i was wanting to go play uh college ball try to compete for a state championship uh the summer before that i was waking up at like 5 a.m every day to train it was really something i wanted to go show myself on and when that situation didn't happen you know we lost the home i had to transfer to a school when i transferred there i got there too late to play basketball i was still able to hang around the team you know coach respected me you know i could play so he said hey you know you'll still be good camaraderie um but then we know we were just hanging out um had a few friends at west charlotte and we would

go out and party every weekend and it was crazy that they allowed us that we actually did some stuff we did at 17 so um but one weekend in particular one of my friends was still his name was travis moore it was on february 18th and um that was a very life-changing moment and so when that happened to me i was like okay um you know i there was really no coping you know there wasn't too much coping in there because a lot of times people say hey that's part of life you don't have to get over it's like how the hell do you get over that at 17 so uh luckily i was still able to graduate high school with the north carolina ant um and i had gone there for two years and college was fun because i had a lot of fun in college i wasn't the guy who did all the school

work i was partying chasing the girl again i went to class sometimes though i did go to class um i actually made the dean's list uh one year one semester in school but then immediately after i dropped out of school um reason being finances was making me make crazy decisions while in college it was hard to focus um more importantly it was one time i was in class and i was a business major and this my professor he was throwing up this graph showing like everybody's potential jobs and whatnot and he said uh well you know there won't be any jobs for you while available to like four years after graduation and i sat there for a minute like wait did i just hear this correct and everybody in us in the classroom was just going along like yeah that's cool okay that's

right and i said yo what the hell are we doing here i said uh i remember blatantly in orientation you saying that well not you but it's being said that six months after graduation sally may or someone's going to want their money from these student loans we acquired here so why would we want to wait that long to start paying on it didn't really make sense to me then and i started noticing the world in a different lens um so that was that was that semester i decided like you know what i'm just gonna drop out of school because i felt like i was being taken advantage of a little bit you know i didn't i don't like that at all and when i ever whenever i sense that into someone or a situation i want to really regain that control over the situation but i did that in a

stupid way by dropping out of school so then when i dropped out of school i went back home to charlotte i had really no plan i was just thinking about how i was going to make it if i was just going to roll into a lucky situation with money um that did not happen and i ended up making decisions that led me to go to prison for three years so in 2011 i got i got locked i got arrested at 20 years old i was sent off to prison at 21 um and when i was going to prison and when i got there i was just thinking to myself like damn you really messed up all right um but however i wasn't really down on myself too much i felt that i could i couldn't make a comeback on whatever it was i always had self-confidence no matter what it was um you know i would look up to athletes

like tom brady floyd mayweather toby like i mentioned and it wasn't just because the fact they were always winning but it was about what they battled through to get you know what did you battle to get and um sitting in prison you know i had to do a lot of learning about myself i did a lot of breathing um i tackled a lot of situations uh i did i ran i ran a few hustles on the yard as well just kept my mind going i was always working out i was always trying to stay um stay ahead as much as i could and so when the time came for me you know to start getting closer to home people ask me justin what are you gonna do when you got out of prison i don't know but i plan on making a billion dollars doing it man you crazy you know you don't know what the hell

what's you know about this like man i don't really care what you think i'm going to do it because i said it because if i felt i feel like this if i say i'm going to do it then it can't get done it's just how we're going to get it done and so um you know a lot of people ask me what i have planned i said i don't have anything planned because i don't know what's out there so when i came home from prison in 2014 it was um it was very it was a very rough situation um i would try to apply for jobs all around charlotte i got denied everywhere because of my record i even got denied from working for two men in the truck i actually got said so i can't work for a moving company he said no we can't hire you damn this is gonna get kind of rough then so um eventually i

started doing some other type of work like retail merchandising i would um like work 12 an hour 12 hours a day and I just started noticing how me being in this position made me put me in a position to be taken advantage of by people you know who think well you don't have this credibility you don't have a degree you have this record well you are you can do this work right here and in my mind I always felt like yo I'm better than this type of work I don't feel comfortable with calling you a supervisor because I feel more intelligent so I always look for ways that I could branch out into entrepreneurship I did not know so it didn't it didn't start taking serious until I was about to I found out my girlfriend that time I was pregnant with my first daughter

and I was like all right cool but something clicked in me it was like you know you have to start being different than than the situation you're currently in I started noticing everything around around me like I started noticing my network of people I started noticing everybody around me had the same problem nobody was really getting out of that problem and i wanted to fix that so um so eventually one day i decided i was watching i was online on instagram and i would see a lot of algorithms sending me stuff about dr davian being vegan and it was interesting to me but it was strange but it was interesting it was interesting enough because now a lot of people knew how to do it it was outside the box and it made me it made me want to be healthier and at

this time i was still boxing at the gym in charlotte so um um i can tell i'm about to lose my job all the little 1099 self-employed were about to go away they had a different change in changing scenery or changing business and i felt like i wasn't a cultural fit no more so i said okay um what i'm gonna do next well what's my next move gonna be and i said to myself well if i'm gonna go through this much hell then i might as well go through hell creating what i want you know i'm saying because i would hear about folks say things about you know creating a business is hard is this and the third i'm like well if i'm gonna go through hell let me create my own situation at least if it can be hard it's going to be hard because i chose it to be not

because it had to be because of a situation so um the very first thing I did I started cooking vegan food at my house and delivering I had a little food service called vegan on the go I would cook the food deliver it try to make money um and I could tell I didn't like working for I didn't like cooking for people I did not like the the idea that I didn't know what the hell I was doing as far as like inventory wise was I really making money or was I just shuffling money around and send people food but it was a learning experience but during that learning experience I remember one day walking outside with my daughter and I said something in the world is going on right here right now so if I'm there early enough I could take advantage of it because every type of type

of work I wanted to do I was always not able to do either no degree or the record but I would look I'm like all right so how did these people make all this money or make all this gains like I would look at folks like zuckerberg like tom like uh andrease horowitz it's like yo what did what did they do right and i looked at the internet i looked at technology i'm thinking like damn all these guys are really making good money but why you know but why because i know there's gonna come a time where this gets a little sketchy but why and i realized that because they were early they were there early on something that was changing the world and i was like i need to be early on something that would be so the barrier of entry would be so low as long as i'm there early i can

defend you i can make it work for me i said it out loud one time and i was with my daughter like i said i was in the college set and then i remember going to a gas station in charlotte um i see a black dodge charger someone said justin what's up who the hell is this hey what's up man it's me isaiah i said oh it was isaiah jackson and he said yeah man how you doing what's going on bro like this that third so i've been knowing him since i was 11 years old and i tell this story all the time but it's a very important part of the story um so i see he says you know we catch up he says follow me on instagram or instagram says bitcoin today i look at it i don't know what the hell bitcoin is said all right i got you know i'll see you later on stay in touch

i see the movie dope i don't really think too much of bitcoin yet it wasn't until my mom said hey there's um no i'll tell you why this before that my granddaddy who was 80 some years old at the time had a miner at his house a bitcoin miner and what was funny was i said what is this granddaddy said well it's a miner it's gonna make me some bitcoin just don't print me off some money and everybody's thinking he's joking but i'm really looking down like what are you talking about because my mom told me that my granddaddy was good at finding investment he could have invested in i think he had opportunity invested like enterprise microsoft very early on i'm not sure what happened he probably sold who knows who cares but i said all right if he has that type of

insight that's inside i want to have so i started looking at bitcoin a little bit and my mom said well hell this is lending platform you can use to help you make some money want to give it a shot i said yeah on there it says some good high high quality jargon that if you invest into this platform in 60 days we'll give you a payout of compounding interest i'm like yo this sounds good all right let's go i throw it in there i see the little bitcoin sign i'm like all right it's gonna work i show it today isaiah says justin you're about to get down they're not honest it's gonna be legit he said nah man try to take the money out i took the money i tried to see if they're gonna give him the money they didn't and so then i was like damn but what happened i didn't lose

faith in bitcoin that actually made me intrigued it also made me intrigued me about it because isaiah knew it was a scam just by looking at it i said all right so i hit him up one day i said so i need you to tell me like you know what's bitcoin man like what's going on what is it's He said, well, there's a storage of value. So it's like gold appreciates over time. He said, you can use it like money, spend it like money. And it's decentralized.

So it's outside of government control. Now, everything he named, I kind of understood. But what stood out first was decentralization because I could compare that to how we use stamps on the prison yard. You know, if you have like a debit, if you have like an ID card with a little mag strip on it

so you can swipe when your family sends you money or you get paid for working, you can buy things from the canteen but excuse me but if you don't have any money on your card then you have to use postage stamps as currency and the value of the postage stamps was determined by the price of stamps in the real world so at that time the stamps were like well when i was in prison stamps were like 44 cents as high as 45 so we always kept it at 30 or 35 cents on the yard so you can always have stuff in the circulation um which is kind of ingenious so when he told me about that you know i looked at it i looked at some videos um and i said can i change my life

with this he said just you do whatever the hell you want as long as you're you have patience you got knowledge you stay here and you stay active and you do whatever you want i said all right i got you so after that conversation i had gone home i did a lot of youtube research a lot of youtube see who's talking about bitcoin see what this is i'm digging into things i never knew about um i never knew about it all like gold or just overall other stocks like i'm hearing all this money talk and it deals with bitcoin then i started looking at bitcoin i started seeing no holes no holes in it from what i could see um and then i asked some people i went to school with and a lot of my friends i went to school with you know some of them got into finance and some of

were decent entrepreneurs but they when i asked them about bitcoin they said nah man we never heard of bitcoin you know we don't really deal with it's not doing much we heard about it but it's nothing and that let me know i need to be here because i had finally found that that that thing that was going to be groundbreaking in the world but i was early enough to be there and those were that was what i was looking for something that were something that i could invest my time and money in but i don't have to try to worry about being in a saturated market in three to five years i can already be ahead of the curve and what i did not know then what i was looking for was um what i was doing was trying to be an early adopter so when i learned what bitcoin was

you know i still had my business i would i would go through other jobs i would buy bitcoin as much as i could um so bitcoin at this time was like 626 i bought my first i bought my first piece of bitcoin around july 9th 2016 july 9th 2016 and then i would work you know still do my food business so i would still try to find jobs here and there but i would always buy big i'll always buy bitcoin because in my mind i was like i've never seen my money move i've never seen my money work for myself it was like yo this is working for me all right so i needed i need to go acquire as much as possible but then on the flip side i started noticing like why am i always pulling this out or why am i always having to use it but i wanted to grow for me so that was like a

battle for a while um but when bitcoin hit twenty thousand dollars that was the most money i ever had in my life you know and it had grown for me and i had stayed that whole course um so when it had gone down and i was still going through things it's like you know trying to figure out damn how do i keep this working how do i not how do i not take it out um it wasn't until it wasn't until that bear market where i did a lot of personal development work um one thing in particular i did was i signed up for jim quick's um super brain assessment i mean of course so i could read books faster and then i started reading up on personal finance and reading up on how i could actually have bitcoin as an asset but also buy or dollar cost average in a way that works that's responsible

because when you start with no money you don't have enough money to trade you don't have enough but you have to have enough um i feel like i had to have enough uh reserve enough to buy into the future so by doing that over and over you know having to stumble and fall that's what brought me here today to meet you have this incredible story uh everything from kind of growing up and the hardship that you face to then you know literally going to prison um and actually getting somewhat of a crash course in alternative currencies, right? Most people don't think of it with kind of the stamps on the yard. And then eventually finding Bitcoin. And I guess really just as you started to save in Bitcoin, right? Because that's really what you were doing is you

basically had a couple of businesses, they were driving some cash flow when you were taking that and converting it into Bitcoin. Were you doing it because you thought that it would appreciate value? Did you think it because, hey, the banks can't take this from me? Like what was the kind of thought process in terms of why you wanted to take the dollars and convert it to bitcoin um even before really you know 2016 there wasn't as much attention on it um given what uh what it is today so back then i was like okay i i'm cool with it the wonderful thing the first thing that really got my attention pumped was the fact of how easy it was to buy right the low the barrier entry was incredibly low um i didn't have to like i remember one time someone bought up and said hey

you want to invest some marijuana stocks in e-trade or i try to go to these i would try to go to these platforms i'm like man this is just tiring like i gotta have this or i have to have this amount of money i'm like bro i don't have extra thousand dollars like this you know what i mean like damn to invest on the platform now i might have some misinformation now but then that was my thing and then i got tired of dealing with the stigma of what questions they're gonna ask do i have to you know they're gonna ask me about having my record they're gonna ask me about this and the third so when they showed me how to buy bitcoin it was so simple like damn this is what decentralization feels like this is what freedom feels like just buying it because you can um so

that was the first thing the second part was also the uh the fact that it could make money i had never purchased an asset that could do that so me just seeing it on the screen go up and down um i looked at the graphs some of the graphs they had on instagram that time and what stood out the most was the dip you know it was the dip it was that that that bear market time they had from silk road when it was just going sideways for years that's what gave me validity because in my mind i said that breeded real fear in people for them to know okay i can stay or i can go but that told me this is legit because if you just kept going going going going going up with no dips at all like a linear line i thought it was some bullshit but i saw dips and i'm like all

right well that gives that gives me that gives me the reality to know like okay this is what i'm doing because you you just don't all nothing is linear you just don't always go up you have to have time of peril so that that's what let me know that bitcoin was legit and that's what i said all right it's kind of like life right you got ups and downs and uh and you end up making it where where you want to go. What was so fascinating to me, and you and I have talked about this before, but I think that Bitcoin has this very special kind of place in the Black community, right? In terms of a lot of people have become aware of things like predatory lending discrimination, right? And some of the more complex things. But I think your story is so powerful because,

you know, as somebody who had gone to prison, a lot of society basically boxes you out, right? If you have a record. And so whether it was trying to get a job at the moving company or trying to open up certain accounts or participate in certain aspects of the financial industry, maybe it's not impossible, but it's harder, right? And there's more friction there. And so something like Bitcoin that is decentralized, that's built on this open protocol, nobody cares, right? Nobody cares the color of your skin. Nobody cares what you've done in the past. They just want to know, do you have the money to buy it or do you have the collateral? And I think that maybe, you know, you can shed some light just on like, as you've gone down this path, and now, you know, really, really educated yourself, like, how do you see that and the importance for the black community or those who've been in prison and kind of some of these groups of folks who, who people might not be as aware how important Bitcoin is?

um well the fact that there is a friction to traditional finances but there's traction towards bitcoin does prove a lot um and i believe when people actually um because there are a lot of barriers when we talk about black people and the one way that they can really benefit or actually benefit from a decentralized money in that way is the fact that no one in the the initial the initial point of them even buying it there will be a breath of fresh air because if i go through this friction i know a lot of other people are going through friction as well and you know as we do in our groups clubhouse we we are teaching you the basics of knowing like your money is going backwards you know and and the way to really that i that i really noticed

it back then in 2016 was like this you know i do a lot of my i answer a lot of questions and stories and what i experienced so one thing i always noticed uh very early on was that every venture i started i either had to put up the money and have to put up more money than initial money so will always be going down everything was a build yourself out of debt and it didn't matter what it was you know you would have to put up initial money it's like even uh flipping a house or trying really or investing in real estate you have to put up the collateral you still have to continuously invest continuously invest whether it's uh maintenance whether it's um you have to hire people no matter whether there's bills taxes whatever you always have to do that even before

you turn profit on that house or even create some type of revenue but you got to go work for that other money bitcoin is a situation where you can really set it and forget it you can buy it and you give it time it'll show its appreciation and when i speak of it from that level i'm really trying to speak about the freedom of of energy or the financial freedom it gives for you to really live your life and you know a lot of times when it comes to bitcoin what we don't really experience in the black community is our own control over anything like we've we never necessarily had control over our assets we don't really have control over our own words hell we came to this country as an asset and we still have to pay capital gains tax for being here if you really

look at it so that freedom portion and it's just it's just how the story is told to people who who aren't necessarily open to that way of living yet you know you when you when we were coming up or you would hear people say hey it's too risky to invest you know save your money that's what they would tell our community but then they'll put a lottery they'll put the lottery in our community that has a very infinite chance of winning i mean a very small chance of winning but people play it all the time they just put their money in there watch it die watch it die watch it die nobody ever take nobody ever took that time to actually see where that was going but then again like i was telling one of my friends and we would say the government put

dope in the hood but they kept finances and stocks and investments on their side but you would tell black people hey you know it's too risky you don't want to do that saving money but you don't have no problem with us wasting our time and wasting our lives selling dope or playing in these streets from bullshit so it's those type of comparisons that people that that have to open up both eyes because i could talk to them about bitcoin all day yeah you know the price appreciates it's this and that but for people who never even experienced that type of life that means nothing to them so it's a it's a slow introduction but one of the greatest perceptions I saw was that I could even be in a bad place financially because it might go

through times I don't have a job especially back then or it might be times things were slow or even until you know just 2019 brother i used to make 100 not in 2019 but when i started out i used to make 150 a month sometimes and i would still go buy bitcoin even if it was ten dollars because i knew this was appreciating this was going up and it was better for me to do that than wasting on something else there's a lot of different um different areas that has to be touched but one that i like to bring up most of the time to people is everything you touch everything you've been buying before Bitcoin has been depreciating in value or it appreciates so slowly that you cannot keep up everything. Or even the iPhone 12 Pro Max you could buy today, you'll take it to the

pawn shop. I'll tell you that I promise you they're going to try to get half off of what you bought. So everything depreciates. Why the hell are you buying? Everything pretty much depreciates while you're buying. What you're really highlighting here, and I think is one of the underrated aspects of Bitcoin is when you start to go down the rabbit hole of Bitcoin, you get an education on monetary policy, on economics, on currencies, on really the economy. And you start to realize that the system is working exactly as it is designed, right? But really, to me, it's a gap between the educated and the uneducated and not in a negative way. It's just that's what it right there's people who understand exactly what you just said that the assets uh around you that

are consumptive they're going to go down in value the investment assets are going to go up in value right and it's all because the dollar is being devalued against those investment assets and so when you learn that your eyes get opened and you start changing your behavior right right yeah that's really what it was um just noticing what appreciation was you know just everything um because you got a lot of times people buy dumb shit man they buy they waste money on expensive shoes they waste money on weed liquor and i mean waste like way too much uh you waste a lot of time or even right now in bitcoin right just think about it and i said this before and it's not to hurt no feelings but if you're thinking about going to

your business necessarily it's too legacy you're probably better off just buying bitcoin and seeing what can happen you know saying seeing what you can grow from there i mean because we're at a point in time now where like we talked about before michael sales just bought another billion dollars and when billionaires make these moves what type of moves do do i feel we have to make you know i mean especially as the black community there's some there's some numbers i looked at myself like when elon made that big buy of 1.5 billion dollars bitcoin i'm thinking like damn okay yeah we i individually might not have 1.5 billion dollars right now to buy big not saying And I won't, though, not saying I won't, because I always feel no matter what the price of Bitcoin is, it's a great price.

I tell people all the time, I'm like, hey, should I buy here? Should I buy here? Listen, you're going to buy Bitcoin at one hundred thousand dollars. So if it hit an all time high of fifty eight thousand dollars, but you feel it can go to one hundred, does it really matter? The price of Bitcoin has been proven not to matter to me, you know, because what matters is actual Satoshi. That has already been proven to be valuable than a dollar. but um yeah so when so once you have that reality everything just starts becoming a little bit more simpler to do you still want to figure out how you want to live your life and i think that's something that trips up a lot of uh black a lot of black people in general you know like simple

things like budgeting um one of the best books i've read that i recommend people um is profit first by mike mccallaghan because he helped that book helped me put money in buckets and buy percentages and by you know what's important how it matters and how you can still live your life by using you know still having your business money here or what you pay yourself like those types of things is what helped open my mind so like you said before bitcoin helps you study economics it helps you study you know um global policy monetary policy all that stuff then you start taking to another level like all right how can i really make this work for me and that was of things you know i realized that if i applied the attitude to bitcoin like how rappers do when

they rap about selling dope or being in the streets then i know i can win like i already have tenacity to do it i just need something better to go after i didn't want to keep going after things that weren't gonna give me freedom and when people actually see that then they can really notice like yo all right i do have the money to do something no matter how small it is but i've been buying shit that doesn't go nowhere like elon and elon and the cyber truck i would not be giving him seventy thousand dollars in bitcoin for that damn truck and if he ever hears his podcast hit me up i will not be doing that only reason because that truck cannot turn next in a year so i've given you seventy thousand dollars and you're going to sit on some of that

bitcoin and now you have what a seven hundred thousand dollar truck because i didn't really understand what was going on out here with bitcoin so but what i was going to say was i looked at elon musk big buy and i said all right so how could black people as a people compete with this buy well if we have 1.2 trillion spending power in america then 10 of that if 10 of that was to go to bitcoin what would 10 of that be that'll be 120 billion dollars so will we be able to get everybody on board i hope so however in the very in the very good stages why i like to say is you know you put 10 of whatever you get first based upon how i read the profit first because you got to pay yourself in the beginning too many times we pay our we what we give ourselves in the future

is that bullshit like you you read you receive money like oh yeah i'm good but you remember you have to pay off a debt from six months ago that's 80 of your money i started looking at money in percentages and so if we take that approach as a people 10 of our spending power from what we do in usd to bitcoin then as a as a collection we'll be worth 120 billion dollars in btc now you allow that 10x what would that be but that's how i had to start looking at bitcoin i know like that's very far out but however it's a mission that i love to be a part of with everything we do at Clubhouse, Bitcoin, Black Bitcoin Millionaires, and BSA, and Lamar Wilson. But that's just how I started looking at Bitcoin as is that freedom piece. But it does start at a very ground level

of getting people to understand what the hell Bitcoin is and why it's beneficial for them to use it. Absolutely. Bitcoin is beautiful. And I think the way you describe it is perfect. I know that you recently wrote a book. It's when the ocean or in the ocean that is filled with sharks be the orca talk a little bit about the book and uh explain the title and kind of what the uh the goal with the book is so the reason how i got to the title man i used to always like watching national geographic shit um even though i'm a vegan i'm gonna tell you people like this even though i'm a vegan i like watching animals eat other animals i don't know why i mean shit i used to some some of them would tell me well that's not nature like nah that's nature that's

what they're supposed to do you know i might not eat meat but i love watching the lion eat some shit up so um so what really got to me one day man i was online and um you know you hear the word apex predator right hell is that one day they were talking about a komodo dragon being the apex predator of his land and he's realized like you know he can't be hunted he can't be hunted like when he's on that island he can't be hunted everything matter of fact i'm so much of apex predator i i control population i'm population that's what the kimono dragon so then you know i heard that word i didn't really buy into it too much but i was watching something online and there was you know they were in the water and they were talking about how the

orca is the apex predator of the sea the wolves of the sea and usually you would think it's the shark most people think well the shark is the baddest motherfucker in the water until you start looking at the characteristics going through and i remember one time i was uh i was i was at a function by this guy by this coach by the name of jc fox and we always talk about being a top one percent of one percent and striving to be that and i was like all right that makes sense so i'm studying this orphan i'm looking at like why is this why is he the apex predator not just because of size it's more intelligent than a shark they communicate they work together and they have they have highly advanced hunting techniques so i took that and i just looked at like how

i've been living my life to approach becoming the top the top of whatever i'm in and so there's a the reason i wrote that book is number one so you can see how how i approach my life to get to where i am the relentless pursuit behind it but also where i strive to be and i didn't just strive to be i don't strive to be uh in the know i don't strive to be you know one of the best i strive to be the authority i strive for greatness because when you throw out a big goal whatever you hit in the middle it's going to be it's going to be a good result but you want more only because of where i started only because of where it was only because of the legacy i wanted for my family so the point of the book is to highlight everywhere i've gone in my life um

i like the the effort and mentality it took and some and some of the things i saw how i just applied when i saw the life that's how i had to really learn a lot of things off of the mistakes i made i'm going to write these mistakes who i'm going to listen to who i'm going to surround myself by you know i mean orcas work in pods they work in groups so i learned like lean on your network use your network value being a part of a big network or a quality of network and that's how i look at bitcoin you know if we have eight billion people in the world and 100 million people use bitcoin now or less than that that means you have at least what one one two percent of the global population already here i started valuing those types of numbers because there's a different

caliber that's a different color of network those are different caliber of people that are there so once you strive and i'm and that's what i talk about a lot just striving to be the best of the best no matter who it is your friend could make quote-unquote competition with you make a healthy competition do whatever but that's the only way i started to get out of my situation because every athlete you know every athlete i named floyd he fought his way out of a dang bedroom the size of this office with seven other kids there tyler perry slept on a bitch created what he created tom brady got picked 199 i mean yo none of these people who were great thought it was going to be an easy road they just accepted what it was and went through it that's why i wrote about the book

and that's how i approach everything i do you know if i if i have to start at this level all right cool as long as i have the tools i need to get there then i'm gonna get there but just do it because what looks like what it looks like right now doesn't mean it's always look like so i gave that book to talk about every experience i went every experience i went and to show people like there really is no excuse not to get what the hell you want to do you just have to be committed to whatever take whatever is in the process to get there you get there and if you die along the way guess what that was what it was meant to be but dedicate to it you have to dedicate to something that's what that's where the purpose that's where the title of that

book come from came from that's the purpose of me writing yeah where can people go find the book right now if they want to find it um well they could find i have it on my website uh bitcoin deacon.com there's a pre-sale going on uh first hundred people to buy i will send them an autograph I have a copy of BitcoinVegan.com and you can press the little shop page and you'll see the book at the top. Or if you're on Instagram, you can click the link in the bio and you'll see it there too as well. But it's on my website, BitcoinVegan.com. You got it. You got wired up there. Before we get into the rapid fire questions, I want to talk about this idea of no excuses. And I know that you and Zay have talked a bunch about it, but just this idea that,

you know, look, you basically have the perfect story, which is you had hardship in your life, you went to prison, and you got out, and you made a better life for yourself, right? And if you can do it, anyone can do it, right? Because basically, it would be really easy for you to sit there and say, you know, I had this bad situation happen. And therefore, I kind of have a disadvantage in life now. And so, you know, I'm just going to take the lumps and it is what it is. But instead, you said, no, I'm not going to allow that to be the narrative. And so talk a little bit about this idea of no excuses and why you think anyone in the world can do this. Well, I like how you say the narrative because I hate false narratives. I hate narratives that I didn't agree to. No one

said that I was going to fall. For instance, me going home, going to prison, coming home, everybody said it was going to be hard or this, that, and third. I said, no word did I agree or did I tell you that I was going to reach that bullshit narrative? I didn't tell you none of that. So, you know, I love to rewrite a narrative if I can. And when it comes to excuses, man, you know, what helped me realize I was making excuses was when I looked at the people who I was surrounded by, what were they allowing me to make true?

Oh, I can't do this. Yeah, you're right, man. You know, just fall back. Just relax. You know, I started studying what excuses were from high level, mediocre excuses from very very bottom excuses excuses in general you know what am I telling my telling myself that I cannot do and when I looked at when I just looked at my life I really felt like I felt like even in prison I was going to come out and still be a success but I think it

was um I tell you what I read a book by Grant Cardone he said don't nobody care what you think you cannot do like if you want to be a success don't nobody care what you think you cannot do what can you do you have to be able to do something what the hell can you do in prison we had to use everything around this to still make it better you know pump i used i used what batteries and headphones and tape to to uh to charge a cell phone in prison you know i'm saying i've seen a guy with several life sentences hustle his way to hire more to get a to get a release date you know i've seen people who fight for it fight for what they want i i when i came home from prison i spent a lot of time at don boxing gym here in charlotte i was always around fighters

they never gave up they never gave up it was always about fighting for your life what no matter what it is so nobody care about what you cannot do and that's when i realized my excuse really don't live here even when it comes to bitcoin well i can't afford six thousand dollars well can you buy one satoshi yeah well it's better than buying doge it doesn't matter like it was all about being it was all about being present noticing myself what am i telling myself i can't do and why you know what where did i where did i agree to this in my past who did i put myself around who i thought was you know on the level of success but now i'm noticing their excuse you know i always study i like to study people i like to study business i like to study people

and see what they say when obstacles come up because no matter where you are there's going to be an obstacle you know it's like a video game when we play video games growing up you go to level one you beat that level you beat the level at level two there's another boss there there's another boss there there's always someone or something you have to overcome at any level so i had to get over the fact that this shit was going to be a linear straight process and be okay with whatever confronted me to go to that next level i stopped looking at i stopped looking at quote-unquote excuses or reasons not to do something as a reason to do it because whatever, whenever I overcome this

excuse here, I'll be ready to ascend to whatever the next level has for me and whatever comes at that level. So it was about me really looking at the journey and realizing that all journeys come with obstacles and you have to be prepared to step toward that obstacle every single moment.

If you look at how Tom looks in the last two minutes of the first six Super Bowls, he was always ready for it. Look how Floyd looks like when he steps into the ring, he's always ready for it. They are always ready for whatever takes place. And no matter what took place between there, you have to be willing to accept. Accept the fact that you could lose, it could turn out bad, but you still did it.

And take what you learned and keep going. At the end of the day, if you have time on your side, you'll always make it. You'll always make it. I love it. I could talk to you forever, man. Before I let you go, I got three rapid fire questions. Then you could ask me one to finish up. What is the most important book that you've ever read?

So outside of Bitcoin and Black America by Zara Jackson, I will say this, and I really hope these guys hear this, because I would love to meet these two. The Future is Faster Than You Think by Stephen Collar and Peter Dominator. That book was so impactful for me, especially in 2020, because I had told myself I don't, I wanted, like, after I had taken that damn quick course and started reading off crazy books, I would read like 10 books a month. just on things i knew i was not good at and then get better at those things if i can create revenue to hire somebody to do it then do it that's how i approach life again everything is out everything is out you got to read books to do it do it but when i read that book i wanted to start reading books that were really up to date like they came out fresh so when i read that book the book came out january 28 2020 i read that book in about two or three days and it opened up to me everything

that was possible to take place in this decade it even made i hate to say it made coronavirus make sense because how else would we start bringing this stuff in it made bitcoin make even better sense but most importantly that book opened my mind up to what the future is where the future is going i've always been about where is the world headed not where the hell it that's why I didn't want to hop in a lot of things that my friends are already doing because it's like yo it's going to be saturated in five years in five years I might as well struggle with some shit that's disruptive or that's coming out that's going to be exponential so in that five years I could be hey Justin we want you on pump show instead of being like hey

Justin come come to work those are the differences I wanted so future is fascinating you think is possibly outside of Bitcoin in Black America and every other damn book I named one of the most important books to read in this decade that's a great uh suggestion second question is a little bit more personal your sleep schedule so i used to be like a six hour sleeper uh and then mateo and alex over at eight sleep convinced me uh so this question is brought to uh to us by them uh they got like a thermoregulated bed basically means it i was making it really cold so i sleep it on the ice cube all sudden i sleep like a baby skip deep sleep feel better uh and now try to see like eight nine hours what's your sleep schedule now and how has that evolved over the years

well now with a newborn baby that's on your heart the baby changes everything huh yeah it's almost not there uh but before then i would say this so and i like what you said about sleeping in the cold because i read that with jim quick he said like you know when you turn the temperature down it tells your body like you're ready to sleep um keep it pitch back dark he brought up some amazing stuff because you want your photosynthesis to be down uh so really i will wake up i used to i used to always wake up at 5 a.m like i said before i had my baby and they would you know do things um but i feel like sleep is very important because you get to this was something some cool shit he said too he said

you get to solve the problems you had from the previous day so my sleep schedule would usually consists of me trying to get if not eight uh if not eight hours or six to eight hours of good sleep and if it's not going to be that long of sleep then i want my quality of sleep to be very good i want to be in a deep sleep so my brain can really relax and really um really be productive for the next day so a good a good i try to get a good six to eight hours um and i just want it's the quality of sleep now it's just the quality of sleep i can get and you know the older this this baby boy gets i know the better sleep will get so yeah hey i i i love it i love it uh last question for you is uh aliens are you a believer or a non-believer listen man somewhere now people

i get some flack about this but sometimes i think satoshi's an alien um i do actually believe i don't i can't sit here and believe we're the only people um it's kind of it's kind of strange um you know i hope to go to mars one day hopefully bitcoin can get me there i really feel like i can go uh but i do believe in aliens i do believe in life outside of earth i believe they're so intelligent that they that they can that they can see us but we can't see them or somebody knows about them that they're not just going out telling that information but i do believe in aliens and i am interested in uh being on mars when that time comes uh hey i'll be there with you let's go what do they say bitcoin's going to the moon and uh and humans are going to mars i'm i'm down for

it uh you could ask me one you could ask me one question finish up what you got for me uh one question for you oh man i've never had to ask the question on the flip side let's talk about something real light i don't know if you like to do this or not but we're gonna throw it out there what's your price prediction for bitcoin by the end of the year oh i i keep the same thing i've been saying for years 100k by the end of 2021 i ain't changing it uh i'm probably being too concerned i'm trying to be i'm probably being too conservative at this point uh but i just that's the number i picked so like whatever i'm sticking with it i mean i tell you i i can hold her i can i remember i read in 20

november this last year someone from cindy bank saw three hundred thousand dollars and reason i to see that happening sometimes i read different uh articles and i read one in particular where it said the wall street journal was talking about a cash crisis and you couple that with um the endless amounts of printing of money that you love tweeting us about that and man you know you do a better job tweeting the price than pulling market cap those i just gotta get you that uh man i love it i love it oh and you were talking some jazz somebody else the other day good job i love that too but um but everything with you know including the print of money uh lost jobs we're going to continue to get more stimulus checks and they're talking about a cash crisis well then

them. How can there be one that's going to keep printing it? I just see a couple of that with Bitcoin just being the orange pill and opening folks' minds up to the reality that's in front of them. I mean, $100K at the end of the year isn't bad. I can't see $300,000.

You know, $100K is only a 2X now, so everything is possible. Anything is possible. So where can people find you if they want to get in touch with you on social media? Find me on Instagram at BitcoinVegan.

You can find me at Twitter at Bitcoin underscore vegan. Simply shoot me an email at Justin at BitcoinVegan.com. Awesome, man. Listen, Justin, thank you so much

for taking the time to do this. You've got an incredible story. You're doing fantastic work and hopefully we'll do this again in the future. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.