The Pomp Podcast - #564 Matt James on Bitcoin, The Bachelor, and Life After The Show

Episode Date: May 25, 2021

Matt James is a businessman, former football player, and bitcoiner. Matt is best known for being The Bachelor in season 25. In this conversation, we discuss The Bachelor, Matt’s relationship with Rachel, watching the show like sports, how Matt got into Bitcoin, and why Matt has an unique opportunity to tech new people about bitcoin.  ======================= Public Rec is where indoor comfort meets outdoor style. Their best-selling All Day Every Day Pant is a more stylish alternative to sweatpants, and a more comfortable alternative to jeans. From the couch to the gym to the grocery store, and everywhere in between, Public Rec has you covered. Comfort starts with a better fit. Free shipping. Free returns. Visit www.publicrec.com/pomp and use POMP at checkout to get 10% off! ======================= As one of the largest and oldest Bitcoin exchanges in the world, Kraken is consistently named one of the best places to buy and sell crypto online, thanks to our excellent service, low fees, versatile funding options and rigorous security standards -- but this is only part of the story. We’ve been on the forefront of the blockchain revolution since 2011: http://www.kraken.com ======================= Unstoppable Domains makes crypto easier by replacing your address with [AnyName].crypto. They allow you to send and receive over 70 cryptocurrencies, including BTC, ETH, and LINK with a single blockchain domain. Go to unstoppabledomains.com and get [YourName].crypto to make your crypto life easier. ======================= Masterworks lets you invest in multi-million dollar artworks by artists like Banksy, KAWS and Basquiat at a fraction of the price. Contemporary art prices outperformed S&P 500 returns by 174% since 1995. Explore the $1.7 trillion art market and skip their 25,000 person waitlist at masterworks.io/pomp. (See disclaimer).

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. Now let's kick this thing off. Matt James is a businessman, a former football player, and a Bitcoiner. Matt is best known for being The Bachelor in season 25. In this conversation, we discuss The Bachelor, Matt's relationship with Rachel, watching the show like sports, how Matt got into Bitcoin, and why Matt has a unique opportunity to teach new people about Bitcoin. I really enjoyed this conversation with Matt and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up are my friends over at Public Rec. Public Rec is on a

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of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. all right guys bang bang i've got matt here what's up man what's good man not much uh you're the bachelor uh i don't think that you grew up wanting to be the bachelor how the hell does that happen bro it's just you kind of fall into it like my uh you're supposed to say you were looking for love well that's a given you know it's like i had never given myself a chance to to explore what a

relationship looked like so when the opportunity uh presented itself it was something that i entertained initially and then uh my roommate's mom tyler uh tyler's mom really pushed me she's like you know um i saw how much uh this pushed tyler in the direction that he needed to go and become a man and uh he was already on the show he had been on the bachelorette as a contestant so he was pursuing the but he didn't win he was he didn't win all right did you when he comes back or you're like you're a loser you lost or or is it just like a not like everyone except for one you know what's funny about that he wouldn't tell me what happened and that's my homie that's my guy i'm like yo so like what happened like are you engaged he's like i'm like he was acting weird

you know what i mean really just because i was expecting him to come back and be like tell you everything yeah but like it really did change him for the better and so i was like i took that into consideration when i was thinking about doing it myself how much did that play into you getting selected you think like that your roommate had been on the show versus uh it wouldn't matter you know i think it helped a lot because it gave me visibility uh into that fan base you know what i mean and what they were looking for and um i don't think that i would have been in that spotlight without that friendship and relationship with tyler because i think the peak of that was during quarantine you know after i had gone out to california to film the bachelorette like i was

initially supposed to be a contestant oh interesting i didn't know that yeah so i was supposed to be a contestant and covid happened and i'm in my hotel i don't have a phone i don't have anything and it's like wait they don't you don't they don't give you any electronics anything bro i'm just watching tv it's like ncaa tournament canceled like uh fifa canceled i'm like yo if all this stuff's canceled how are we about to film and then like literally clockwork someone walks in like hey we're gonna postpone for two weeks so um we're gonna get you a flight back to new york i call tyler he's like yo don't come to new york shit's hitting the fan like come down to jupiter yep so I'm like done. I came from Jupiter because his mom had passed away and I was down there for the

funeral. So I stayed another week and then flew out to California. So I just came right back to Jupiter and Hannah, who was on, who was the bachelorette that he was pursuing during his season was in Florida as well for the funeral. So she came back down and we were all kind of quarantining together. And then that snowballed into this opportunity where I was presented the opportunity to be the bachelor when you get that phone call or email do you like jump up and down you're like let's fucking go or is it like a damn am i really gonna do it like do you like are you worried about saying yes or is it like a celebratory thing you know it's funny so like at that time at the in the house that i was quarantining in like it was the peak of prank

wars like there's like we like we were at each other's necks there's 10 people living in like a two-bedroom house and so i thought it was a joke like i thought someone was messing with me Cause it's a, it's an area code I've never seen. It's someone I had never spoken to. So I get this call and I'm just like, who paid this person? I'm just like on edge. And then they called back the next day and I was like, Oh shit, this is real. And, um, I was honored, you know, because I know the type of, um, the type of research and the type of, um, I just know how difficult it is to be in that pool of people that they're considering and what an honor it would be to be the first black person to do that so um yeah it was surreal it

was surreal all right so you get there uh you meet all these girls what's going through your head like that like to me it's just like there's this element of uh um wow all these girls are here for me right so like there's probably like uh i'm the man right at the same time like oh but it's gonna be on national television like that doesn't mention things like i'm gonna have to be careful as to like what i say do whatever because everything's filmed right uh and then you like get into it and is it literally as emotional and for for those that are listening uh i've never watched this show before but i saw matt beforehand um my wife is a a 20-year veteran i think of the show and uh so i started watching uh because we've got some friends that uh they're

mutual friends and it's like sports man like literally like you could cheer on one girl over another girl or whatever right and you're like you you get into it and so like is that the same thing for you on the other side of it you know it's different for me you know because these are real relationships i'm dealing with are they real come on are they really they're real for me and i think that's why uh that's why it worked for me because when like to your point there's people who have bachelor pools and they're doing all this stuff like oh we wonder and and that's fun and it gets people engaged but for it to work and for it to be real and for those connections to be valid you've got to be vulnerable and that's not something that i was ever comfortable with being

or doing just because like i was conditioned as a man just to keep all that stuff inside and not share like our friend my friend group didn't talk about stuff like that and so when i'm like forced to address these things that i've never talked about or come to terms with with these women you just form this connection and bond over sharing things with people you've never shared before and also being disconnected from work email phone like you don't have any electronics like it's just you and these women out there trying to figure out if you're compatible with one another so it's weird if like a friend called me up and he started saying all kinds of emotional stuff you'd almost be like you good right well now now i'm like yo i welcome those conversations

yeah yeah it's funny after the experience like uh you find yourself just like trying to have these like deep conversations so it's like if you a common question you get is so how are you feeling pump like i feel good like if you ask me how i'm feeling man let me tell you like it's been a tough day like i've had this going on and i think you're more honest yeah you just you just dive deeper and you look to have those type of connections and conversations so after the show i'm like having these conversations people and they're just like yo like are you good i'm just like no i just want to know like it's because it feels good to get those things off your chest and share yeah uh the host what's his name chris chris all right what's he like behind the scenes he was great

you know i uh i spent a lot of time with chris because um during the days that we weren't filming we would uh we'd catch up catch up on how i'm feeling um there was times where he had his family there and a lot of the producers would have their family there and it just made it real because you know there's the work and then like when the cameras are off it's like oh this guy's a dad like oh this guy like what's he doing though is he like smoking a cigar drinking a drink and like chilling with his kids he's doing prep work yeah his kids are in high school so he's doing helping them out at the house and he's he's an avid golfer so he's playing a lot of golf um so he's on vacation basically well you know it might seem like that to somebody but like to him

he's working because when he comes on set he's ready to go yeah he was yeah and how many people you said there's like a couple hundred people there as part of this production there was so many people there like producers lighting sound um uh you have the the staff of nimico and you've got it's such a it's such a big vehicle and you don't really have i didn't have any concept of that until i got there and i'm just like wow yeah i i had no idea there was so much that went into making this work for everybody so when i'm watching the show a couple times you pulled up in nice cars you had nice clothes i was like damn this guy's killing life i was like what do they bring you in a garage and they're like what car you want to drive up in this scene or

how's that work it was funny about that so the g wagon was actually maggie's and maggie uh owns who's maggie maggie's the ceo of 84 lumber okay she also owns nimical on the resort got it and so miss hardy maggie hardy she would uh she let me use her car for some of the stuff nice and um and they own all those cars on property they have a uh i would say a car museum on property that has like rolls bentley porsche yep so i was driving the porsche i didn't know how to drive stick so i had to learn how to drive stick before i got there so i'm in jupiter like a week before filming like in my buddy james mcgrath jeep like stalling out in the middle of the street like i'm like i'm screwed like i'm not gonna get it working fast forward to the first night i had to drive

maybe a hundred yards that's it like all right matt like just pull up bro i couldn't get the like i couldn't how many takes did it take it took like 10 minutes they're like they're like forget it we're gonna push them up they were gonna push me they had production people behind the car ready to push me into the frame and then run out and i was gonna act like i was driving i'm like there's no way we're doing that like i'm gonna get this thing going then like last try like i finally got it in gear and i'm like speeding in but uh yeah no i learned how to drive stick in it so all right and then clothes those uh they got like a whole like wardrobe and like a whole team that's like there to make you you know look fashionable or what they got a whole they got

a whole team and that's what i need yeah i need it too like obviously i uh i'm not the most fashion for person and i'm all about comfortability so like uh if they weren't having me get into these clothes and i'll be wearing sweats and i don't think that that's yeah the proper well it may have made the show even more entertaining right they're like oh this guy refuses to wear the toxic refuse to wear he's just wearing sweatshirt sweatsuit rose ceremony like a velour jumpsuit like that would be my vibe it's like something super comfy how scripted is it uh i wouldn't say it's scripted at all i think that um i think that people would be surprised at how um how interesting and how wild reality as opposed to

making up or trying to compile things that, uh, that people think would be a good show. So like, as things play out in real time, that's crazier than anyone could imagine doing and like scripting. So, uh, there wasn't a lot that had to be added into the mix for it to be, uh, drama and things that were taking place. And there's a lot of drama. Uh, I didn't realize how much drama goes into this stuff. Uh,

how much of like the actual show that gets aired is that like on a percentage basis is that like five percent of everything that happened is that eighty percent of stuff that happens like just how i guess compressed do they actually have to make the experience so they can fit in tv well it's a great question pomp it's like you're out there filming for like almost two and a half months so it's like oh yeah every if you asked every single woman who was out there they're gonna wish that they had oh they should have put this in and they're gonna ask me like there's like good luck to whoever's job that is to make a cohesive story include everything that everyone wants in there because you have hours days weeks of footage to go through so i think they do a

really good job of just making it work with all the footage they have and trying to tell that story that is going to resonate with people how far into the two and a half months were you like yo i know who it is like i know who the winner is gonna be oh man um and don't say two and a half months um it's funny like you have you have your eye on a few like that first night where you're just like it's like you have this connection and you're like i need to make sure that this feeling is real and it's it's validated over the course of one-on-one dates and these group dates that you're having so like i would say that i would say i knew i had an idea early yeah early but But then it's hard because you add people to the mix.

I was going to say, then it feels like they're throwing kind of curveballs at you throughout the entire show, right? They had a bunch of other girls show up. Then they had somebody who just came in, I think, for like a night. And as this is all happening, are you finding out at the same time that everyone else on the show is finding out? Yeah. They're not like, yo, Matt, tomorrow, like curveball? No idea. And I think that's what makes it exciting for everybody.

And that's where you get the realist, raw reaction out of myself. you know because if i knew that someone's coming then i could be like whoa like you know it's like i didn't want any of that and uh i don't think they wanted that for me either so uh whenever people would pull up like did you know the girls that were gonna be on the show before you actually started filming i had no idea oh really yeah no because uh by the time i got into the property like my phone was gone my laptop i didn't have any connection to the outside world so when that information is being released they just take it from you they're just like now you can't have this pretty much they're like it's funny because like you think that they forget it's like all right

we're gonna get your phone a few weeks it's like whatever like they're not gonna come for it and then it's like it's clockwork all right like give it up and then really yeah they just take everything but i mean i say that and i think it's good because if if you had a line to the outside world then it wouldn't be the same experience yeah are you able to talk to like friends or family or it's like like uh it sounds crazy but like in jail yeah you don't have a phone but like there is a phone that you can use right and maybe you only can use it for 20 minutes a day but like you can communicate with people outside is there some equivalent of that here you know what's funny so you're like yes that's exactly what it's like and they made me pay to use it bro you

after a while it's it's all it's honestly liberating not having your phone yeah because we're tied to it so like outside of like wondering how like my family and friends are doing um unless there's like some major event or accident and i didn't really want to be on my phone or be communicating with anybody because i liked how like i think in normal life every five or ten maybe even every two or three minutes we're checking our phone like if you were to get you ever looked at how many times uh there's a thing on an iphone how many times you pick it up or the screen lights up no there's somewhere to look at that yeah it's bad i looked once i actually i'm gonna say this and people are gonna freak i think like one time i looked it was like 700 times a day

you're lying i swear and i mean because like notifications right so then i start shutting notifications off like whatever but like if you just sit there for an hour right and you think how many times you pick up your phone it's like four or five times more than you think you really did a lot right yeah you're like oh i pick up my phone once an hour exactly but that's how it was when i got back so like when i got my phone back i wasn't used to like having to text people and call so i was just and then you kind of get worked back into just checking it constantly which i don't like but you know what do you check when you wake up like what's the first app or that's a great question the first thing i check is twitter mad this is a theme here i only ask good questions

i would say the first thing i check is twitter because that's where i go for my news okay so i'll check i'll see what's trending and then i'll see there's a bunch of hashtags that i follow uh some stuff in crypto some stuff in sports and then politically uh and then i'm caught up so i check everything to make sure that i'm not like because there was a time where i was traveling once and i was off the grid for like four hours and i put out a tweet and it wasn't insensitive but it was based off of what where the country was at that time people were like yo do you live in a in a in a hole and i was like oh because you you didn't realize something i didn't know what was going on i had no idea where i read the room exactly exactly it's not what you said

it was just more of like hey uh it's kind of like a brand right they got scheduled tweet all sudden something bad happens and then they're like hey go buy peanuts oh that was you couldn't be more spot on that's how it was and so now i'm in a habit of like okay before i do anything like let me see where we're at like oh okay i'm gonna stay off social is that crazy though that that's the world we live in we're like literally we wake up in the morning we're like all right where are we in the spectrum of you know today right are we in like where everyone's outraged about something there's some like catastrophic event that happened or like no we're good okay fine i can go live my life right i think that i think it ebbs and flows like i think that it's a cycle that we're in

and it's something that we talked about uh before we got on is is there's going to be a point where the people canceling everybody are the ones that are getting canceled and i think until that happens like we're going to be in this space where everyone's kind of walking on eggshells and in some instances rightfully so because there's things that people are getting passes on for far too long but then there's other instances where it's like okay um we need to give people a space to have conversations and not be critical about them and i think that we're going to find that balance as we continue to add and flow is it unfair that like social media stuff almost requires or like is demanding everyone to be perfect like is it better off we just say hey

look humans aren't perfect like everyone has mistakes they say stupid shit we're all actually pretty dumb compared to like you know like computers or whatever and so like let's just admit that we're all flawed and then like let's work to get better together rather than say like no the expectation or default is perfection and if you're not there then like you literally get canceled i mean i think that what i try to do is remind the people who follow me and the people that interact with is that i am all those things i'm not a perfect person i'm continuing gonna i'm continually gonna make mistakes and if they're if they're coming to me for xyz just to give that disclaimer that you know like um as much as i try to be the model citizen like there's

things that i will do and say that constantly make me fall short so like just have grace on me and i'm gonna have grace on y'all uh but but that is the expectation study is so important right it's like if you go into it knowing like hey man you're gonna make mistakes i'm gonna make mistakes and then you make the mistake like well yeah i told you i was gonna make mistakes right right right rather than i think a lot of people especially as they get bigger audiences like i'm perfect right right like oh i got the perfect instagram photo every tweet has been passed through seven pr filters right right right then you're like wait a minute like you cheat on your wife like yeah hey you were supposed to be up here right yeah and you start to like i mean look we

just talked about bill gates is probably the best example like there was this whole you know hey i'm a philanthropic you know person i've got this whatever and you find out you're like well hold on a second those are actually in many cases uh they're not great yeah but that story is as old as time in terms of people you know just doing dumb stuff yeah but it's almost like the the bigger they are the more we put them on a pedestal the harder they can fall i think you bring up an interesting point pop and that's that the more authentic and organic you are on your social platforms the more and not maybe not grace but the more open to those things type of understanding understanding exactly because if you're if you're if you're posting imperfect pictures of yourself

like oh yo this guy is just as ugly as i am it's like oh this guy has like nose hairs like it's just like things that you wouldn't think that someone in the limelight would want to post about themselves like the more relatable you are the more people are going to have an understanding of where you're coming from opposed to being this like angel and then like that fall is gonna be hard because it's like

I knew they weren't perfect. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's also, I think there's this element of like the more people preach about like ethics and honesty and integrity and like all these things

that like everyone covets and we think are really important skills or kind of values. Right. If somebody's out there every day just pounding the table, I've learned over time like they're doing

some sketchy shit. Right, right, right. I don't know when the shoe drops. I don't know if it's in six months or literally 10 years but at some point that person is going to be exposed 100 and it's just because there is the projection right it's the belief that like oh i'm not this person so if i project to be that person then everyone i fooled them yeah right it feels like that's actually like the bad part of it yeah

and i see a lot of that and i try to be cognizant of that as i'm dealing with friends people close to me who are going through stuff like that because i know that you're one bad decision away from being bro you have a hat on says bandit like you like no one could think that you're perfect you know i love this ad i won't take it off all right uh so as you guys are finishing the show uh you finally let everybody else know what you've known for a little bit right is uh is rachel's gonna be the uh the winner right um is she happy about that like does she want to win uh by the way we're having this conversation she's in the room so i'm gonna put you on the spot rachel shout out just i'll get some answers for you go ahead rachel i um i've never done an

interview with her right here before so this would be interesting oh even better all right perfect um i think she was excited you know i was definitely excited because we've had to i'm sorry i'm just laughing at the fact that you're like i think she was excited like because can you feel the heat of her just staring at us all right i'm getting i'm getting burned right here we'll get that over go ahead um because we there's so much of our relationship that we want to celebrate and share with everybody and we've had to hide and be in hiding because we don't want to ruin uh this experience as it's errant for everybody else so we're again walking on eggshells so that we're not giving things away but i'm constantly doing

bonehead stuff to like give it away like i was listening to one of her playlists on spotify and people figured it out people figure out everything well hold on uh all right so let's the show ends right uh you've picked rachel rachel's the winner um you guys like get released to the wild essentially right like back into society right uh and you're told in november uh you said that nobody can see you it together until march right okay what happens for four or five months right you're so excited all this stuff what do you do for five months well a lot of listen to our playlist on spotify that's a you know that's like the old cds remember like a middle school girl would like write on it and give you the cd if you really like somebody you

burn a cd for him right yeah it's facts i had a playlist for him uh but i think me and rachel's relationship was a little bit different because a lot of things happen you know like um we would uh from a standpoint of like what we did together like we couldn't leave the house so like you're limited to we watched a bunch of movies uh we worked our way through disney plus like rachel's the biggest marvel fan there is so like she's giving me uh like a high level graduate education on the history of all these different characters and I'm trying to catch it's basically like bachelor for kids you know to some degree right like different players got different skills yeah no it was that was a lot of fun though we we we got to do things like that that you know if we

had the opportunity to do things outdoors we probably probably wouldn't spend as much time doing and then we there was like rough patches on our relationship you know like we uh we actually uh broke up for a moment while the show was airing and then after the show aired um and the finale happened um we found ourselves back well we're back together now when you break up is that like uh uh what a normal person would think of as a breakup or now that everyone in the world watches is it like something different like going back to like is like you're still a human right so is she i think and so like when you guys like have uh good or bad times like it's the same thing in any relationship that you had before the show right all right uh when you guys get back together

is that like a 2 a.m you up text that like a normal person would send when they're drunk or is that like a hey you know uh we saw each other somewhere for an event like how does that happen uh well i think that's an interesting question because there was if you tell me you up text right now i'm gonna die definitely not a you up text uh it was it was it was honestly um a commitment that we had made to each other that we were going to work on the relationship and there became there came a point in time where uh it was evident that my working on the relationship looked different than rachel's because um i wasn't really honoring that um commitment that i made to working on our relationship and uh it was just a come to

jesus meeting that i have with racial where she's like if you're gonna make this work then like let's do it but if you're not gonna make it make it work then like then i'm gonna let you do your own thing and um that's really all i need is that an ultimatum it was it was it was an ultimatum that i needed because i was yeah it was appreciated right it was uh yeah let me put my foot down exactly but it's uh my wife's in the room too she does that all the time but like not over like hey the relationship like you better take the trash out or you know yeah no no no it was it was what i needed in it and it's um it's it's been great all right uh best thing about her and most annoying thing about her oh that is she's not listening don't worry put your headphones in um the best

she looked real excited when i asked that question like she like that was exactly what she came for right oh no that's funny um we got to answer still yeah no whoo it's hot in here um no i would say the best thing about rachel is is her heart you know she's she's the most kind caring person understanding i've ever met you know everything we've been through um everything she's been through she's stuck right by my side and um she's continued to have a positive attitude towards everything and um it's one of the many things i love about her but um i have a list of things that i don't like about her no not that you don't like just the most annoying thing she does the most annoying thing

um that thing the thing you just thought of right there what was that thing um the most annoying thing oh i got it so um oh that was a good one whatever that way that was a breakthrough moment so i'm i'm really particular about the laundry okay and in what way and like i don't like to dry my stuff because it fits me a certain way because like i have long pants and shirts that i want to fit i don't want my i thought you were going to tell me that you only wear dirty clothes or something no i don't like like i like to air dry a lot of stuff so like i did my laundry separate from rachel and then rachel did her laundry and she puts her laundry in my laundry okay like not a big deal um like in the washer or in the dryer in the dryer

and um so like that's violating the air dry because now we're going in the dryer but but it's not just that it's that she she continued to dry the clothes for three days so like now the clothes have been drying for the past week and i'm like yo rachel like are you playing on same clothes same clothes yeah i'm like i'm gonna have to donate my shirts to stewart little because none of my stuff fits anymore like i'm gonna have to make these pants capris like for the longest time i thought the dryer was just a replacement for the iron right like if you got a shirt you just put a little water on it throw it in the dryer that's how that's how rachel utilizes it you know she'll put it on like fluff mode and i didn't i didn't even know that was a

thing i just thought you you dry clothes in there but uh you know it's it's uh it's not that it's not that deep but i like to give her a hard time about it because uh if that's the biggest uh thing that annoys you then you're doing all right yeah yeah i would say all right uh what's the spotify playlist what what happened here so i thought it was a private playlist okay but it wasn't it was a public playlist and when i think when you're on the computer if you're on spotify on the computer you could see if you're following me on spotify whose playlist i'm listening to so i was listening creepy shit bro you i mean a bachelor nation's its own yeah you know and you've got a decent like private investigators right right but like another thing pop is like like i'll post like

parts of a song and like a workout i'm doing or at the beach or eating and people like yo what's your song so like people are constantly going to your so you've got a decent amount of people following you on these these social channels so it wouldn't be out of the ordinary for them to be online be like oh what's matt listening to wait wait no you know it's like he's listening to rachel's like he's giving it away so it's like by like on accident you get a call from the producers they're like yo get the hell off spotify you know what i get it i you start getting dms like um like uh some are nice and some are like hey just a heads up like you should probably get off yeah oh good looks like like appreciate it i mean and then and then you like you try to double

down so you try to find someone else who has a playlist and you're like yo i'm also listening to her playlist i'm listening to his playlist it's like wait you try you gotta you gotta throw people off a little bit but um it was it was no secret did you ever think you'd spend your life trying to figure out what playlist to listen to to throw off throw off people and this past six months i've i spent a lot of time doing things that i never thought i'd end up doing what's the craziest thing you guys did to uh hide the fact that you guys were together during those like five six months when you weren't allowed to be seen together um i think the craziest thing would be uh the outfit changes all right what does that mean so like whenever like if if if rachel and

i were together and we wanted to go to a trader joe's or we wanted to go to um what's that pasta the place that i like in um california john and vinnie's i love john and vinnie's their pasta is fire so she knew that real quick so i'm like if we were gonna do something like that it's like hoodie hat glasses like tied up so you can only see like the shades in the hat matt how tall are you i know bro i'm not hiding from anybody bro i i forget how tall i am and it's like you can't hide six five you know what i mean it's like all right so you got to change your outfit what does she change her outfit too she does yeah she does the outfit swaps because you go to the dryer to get the clothes i mean that's where if she keeps her clothes there right she you know what she

she is uh very clean and um every time we're together it's it's it's either constantly cleaning the kitchen because we're making a mess or it's constantly doing laundry because we're doing activity so um i wouldn't be surprised if it was multiple trips i i heard uh recently i didn't hear my wife sent it to me which was probably a uh negative thing uh and it was a meme on the internet and it was like i'm moving out of my house as a woman posted and said i'm moving out of my house at three years my husband just hit me with i like this place the dish soap was always full like he's completely oblivious to the fact that it was getting replaced right yeah no so i feel like there is an element of you know you just gotta kind of be cognizant

of what's going on i try to be i try to be um i try my best all right so outfit changes is literally the craziest thing you guys have ever done um i think that i think the outfit changes and then like once like once after the show aired um like we were technically together but like we didn't we wanted to live our life outside of the the media and cameras and all that stuff so like um we went to dinner like in the cut like deep in brooklyn and um i wanted to get ice cream after the fact and um she didn't want to walk around no she didn't care i'm like uh i'm like y'all kind of want to go get ice cream she's like all right she's like do you want to walk over there because she knows that people are going to see us i'm like yeah i'm like it doesn't bother

me and then we get outside i'm like um you want to put my hoodie on like trying to give her like a like a outfit to like disguise she's like no like i'm not putting your hoodie on like we're going to doing this i'm like all right fine whatever so like just coming back to grips with the fact that like we don't have to do that stuff anymore is great like we don't have to hide being together and doing activities together just makes living life together easier is there like paparazzi and like that type of stuff or is it mostly just like fans because i saw i saw you listen you don't know that i saw this but uh you're with my boys up in new york with uh seth and ben captain all these guys and you and you guys were going down the street like you know gang gang gang literally

in scooters i don't know what y'all you guys were all on different mechanical devices flying down the street oh my gosh yo Seth, Ben, Wilton those guys are out of control like I love kicking it with those guys I met them down here in Miami Ben's the one that I know the best I don't really know the other guys that well but Ben like when he uh I don't know who posted or whatever I saw I was like what are all these dudes hanging out together doing it's funny because Ben has uh like people give me a hard time about my means of transportation because I have a one wheel that i love to ride and then i have a super 73 that i'm ripping all over the place um ben is the same way with scooters and everyone in our crew had like some sort of like like electronic vehicle

that you would use like when you're in like fifth or sixth grade so it's like we're like these big humans just like mobbing down sixth avenue like on like one wheels and scooters i literally saw the video and so we put music to it yeah and it was like uh as you guys were going someone kind of got up ahead into the side right was filming it it's like ah it's kind of like the avengers bro i wish man no i wish i wish it was like avengers i uh but no that's that's how we like that's one of the things i miss about new york you know i'm down here in miami but um i miss the connectivity that i had up there and being able to bounce from one place to another pretty seamlessly everything's like right there yeah what are you gonna do now like what do you

want to do kind of moving forward you got this massive audience everyone knows who you are uh you've got rachel uh i think that she likes you that seems that she likes you some days some days well only when you don't complain about the laundry what do you want to do now um i just want to be a part of meaningful projects you know i uh i fell in love with hydroponic farming over quarantine uh someone let us grow sent us a farm stand and i'm like you know our plants are gonna die there's no way we can do this ourselves and when the plants that we planted in this farm stand that tyler and i were like watching and feeding and and um giving water to sprouted into these massive kale heads and strawberry uh these baby tomatoes and straw like i was

i'm like yo if we can do this literally anybody can so i'm like how can we get this in these urban areas that we work with in new york city and across the country so like that's something i've been working on is um the scalability of the hydroponic space and every time i say hydroponic people are like oh hydroponics yeah i'm like well you can grow anything in there but i'm talking about growing food so um for now just kidding kidding kidding kidding kidding all right so you want to do that uh and then crypto all of a sudden i saw you started tweeting about bitcoin and stuff and we got introduced yep uh where what's so fascinating about that so i think that the intro to crypto was through um my fascination with the nft space and how i saw people all across

the world were being awarded this opportunity to um advance not only their professional degree their professional careers but um just economics like i could invest in an artist in uganda i can invest in an artist in taiwan who wouldn't have that visibility without this platform without um the connectivity and and and uh what everything that everything that you're allowed to utilize through an nft and the stories that you can tell and um through that research i i you know bitcoin and all these they've always been buzzwords and i didn't really know a lot about it and um when i tweeted something about nft and one of my buddies reached out to me john marbach and he's like if uh it was like it was like it was like morpheus reaching out to nia he's like he's like if you

want to learn more like meet me at my apartment at eight o'clock i was like oh shit like i'm i'm i'm i'm in like i'm getting violent so he invites me to his apartment pump and the secret society has accepted you it was hilarious like i get there um and john's like one of the smart like one of the smarter people i know went to college together um has a place in new york get to his apartment and he just starts unloading about how like what his involvement in the space is and um the different opportunities that are there and i'm coming at him hard with these he's just like the opposition like well what about this what about that and he's just like if you read this if you read that he had a he had a answer for every question i had and i did my own research shout

out john yeah john was bro that's the thing i like about the crypto community though it's like people want to educate you on and like not with misinformation but just like they want you to understand where they're coming from and they uh not only understand but offer any advice and i can't say that for other investment vehicles financial institutions that i've participated in the past that people are so willing to give information the other ones don't want you to exactly exactly that's how they make money so it's like uh and just from an economic standpoint like someone who studied economics it just made sense there's a fixed supply the demand's going to go up so the price has to follow and you know we're in a volatile time right now there's probably

going to be more but like the fundamentals of why i invested haven't changed and what i'm using it as hasn't changed and uh as long as those things continue to stay finite then i'm going to continue to put money into it so i think it's smart you got laser eyes on twitter now i got laser eyes all right when you did that what did bachelor nation say about laser eyes they were like yo matt's lost it oh my gosh it's funny because like that was like like there's no there is literally nothing that is similar from like driving a porsche looking fly going to meet 20 girls that are competing for you and then putting laser eyes and being like by the dip like those two worlds are completely different pump i'm like and mind you at this time like the the matt that people

came to know on the show like clean shaven like i have i haven't shaved since the show you look like nipsey hustle a little bit i appreciate that right like that's pretty good yeah no i uh i get that a decent amount really yeah i get that i feel like i'm smart i just need i need the cornrows but um but so like like the pictures that are coming like they're not hearing from me because i'm not on the show anymore but like there's like matt spot it's like a yeti it's like there's like he has a beer and he's like leaving walmart it's like like who is this guy and then um and then so when you leave i'm gonna take a picture and be like i spotted matt exactly prickle miami there's some girl i'm gonna make sure rachel's face isn't in it oh god here we go the media

storm around that but um so they're seeing that and then like the next thing i post is like like a picture of me in a tuxedo with laser eyes so like all right this guy's literally lost his mind like what is he is he possessed by a demon like what does this even mean and so but it's cool because it starts a conversation it's like you know like to my laser focus to the moon oh what's that so it just it sparks conversation that i want to have around something that i'm interested in and i'm inviting um pushback on so that i can um further validify or solidify uh why i feel i have these strong convictions about um this investment and uh just the community in general so the most interesting thing to me is as you kind of uh evolve your interest you learn

more about crypto you learn more about hydroponics whatever the audience that you have is literally really 180 degree difference than mine right mine is like if you look on like youtube is like 95 percent male right plena one time saw that she was like oh we gotta get some more females in this audience i was like listen it's just the like the type of the content really attracts a certain type of person right uh but you have like 90 95 percent women right because of the show and all this stuff and so do you feel like uh there's an opportunity to kind of expose uh a different audience to different ideas right regardless of what the ideas are what the exact audience is it feels almost like your interests are very different than what they normally would kind of consume

right i'm assuming most of your audience doesn't have laser eyes right almost 100 of my audience has laser eyes right so it's just like such a different uh kind of you know circle of people that you're really introducing a lot of these new ideas to yeah i think that i think that when you're in a position of influence that you have a responsibility and um i'm i'm not the chair of the fed i'm not controlling that's a good that's a job that no one can win you know what i mean like i i have very little say on on anything outside of my own opinions and when i find something that i think is going to be um something that's going to be here for a while uh and something that i want to pass on to the students and the families of the students that i work with

then i think that it's a responsibility to at least make people aware of um tools that are out there that they could change the trajectory of their life and especially with cryptocurrency i think that we've seen um historically uh communities that have been marginalized and discriminated against um can't get loans they can't buy houses they can't buy cars and like those barriers to entry don't exist the way they do with traditional financial institutions the way they do with crypto and that was something that was intriguing to me because if the families that i work with and the kids that we work with have access to these tools now and something that i only think is going to gain momentum um public um onboarding and institutional onboarding going

forward then like it would be an honor for me to be the person that bridges the gap between them and replicate that uh for women who are following me you know there's no reason why they shouldn't be um a part of this conversation as well it's conversations that rachel and i have on a regular basis you know she's constantly challenging my um thoughts and views on um being a bitcoin maximalist and all other things crypto so that rachel no shit coins all right and i like it because it helps me come to a better conclusion of of why like what my truths are rooted in and it helps her understand like oh like that makes sense because everything you're saying should make sense like it's not a secret there's no like theorem or it's the intellectual

almost like combat or battle of ideas right where you come in you're like hey i got this idea she asks you questions you're almost in some way educating but at the same time you're getting a gut check on you know do i actually know what i'm talking about do i really believe this exactly yeah uh plana thinks that satoshi's a female that is a popular take and i i think that i don't think that she's wrong on that really i've heard that before and i why do you think that i'll tell you why she thinks that i think it because of the rationale that that went into the protocol and I don't think it's something that would have been, I think that men are more greedy

and I think that there would have been some sort of way to maybe hoard the potential. I don't know, I just think that it's too fluid of a system for it to be created by one of us. So Planta thinks it could be a female because men are too egotistical, right? See? Like somebody would be out there like,

yo, I made that shit, that's me, you suck! Yeah, I like that, I like that. That's so true. But she's like, no, actually, it takes a special type of person, right, Which, from a probability standpoint, is more likely a woman than a man. I don't know who it is. I don't want to know.

But I think it's interesting to think through. Like, everyone does assume. The other thing that I learned recently is there's only one time ever Satoshi revealed gender. He was signing up for something. I use him because when he signed up, I forget what it was, it asked for birthday and it asked for gender and selected male. Now, could have been throwing it off. Could have been throwing us off. Right?

So, you don't know. but like that's the only time ever that there was gender involved in a way that uh satoshi you know kind of um said anything about their what was the birthday uh i forget exact birthday but i put them in there like i think mid to late 40s in 2010 so like mid to late 50s today interesting right so i could be could be who knows yeah i don't think i want to know no no i definitely don't want to know yeah uh there's an element of um if you don't know nobody can say uh oh that's far right or far left or that's a man that's a woman that's a white person a black person a green person that's a american uh you know somebody from another country uh oh that's a christian that's a muslim

that's right it's just nothing so that entire conversation then like knowing that the protocol yeah i think that it's just it's not bad if people knew all it does is it just removes one other thing that people can attack right there's plenty of people who are like oh i don't like vitalik right i don't think vitalik's done anything that's like right worth attacking or Or being mad at him or not liking him or anything like that. But it's just like because they know who Vitalik is, he tweets something. Everyone freaks out, right? Half the people are like, yes, he's the king.

Right, right, right. Half the people are like, he's an idiot. Right, right, right. Like, all right, whatever. So like that just adds another level of complexity. So it's not so much like you solve a problem as much as – or that it necessarily matters as much as just it's one less thing for people to attack. And so if everyone's yelling, screaming about Bitcoin, and oh, by the way, the creator of the protocol does something, it just is another kind of attack factor. When you think about the last year of your life, what are the two things that you're like, I cannot believe this happened?

Like maybe one positive surprise and one negative surprise. I would say they're probably both related to my experience on The Bachelor. and i would say that the first positive is you're talking about it like my experience of the bachelor like it was like uh but i don't know how to like yeah yeah i got you i don't know how to refer to it because it's like like it's like the process or like the experience and like i don't like saying it's a show and then like i don't like saying contestants because then it like takes away like the real clinical yeah it doesn't feel like it was real it's like oh i was on like when i think of show i think of like freaking nickelodeon like getting slimed like i don't

think of like you know what i mean like i don't want that comparison to ever be drawn with the relationship jeopardy stand right up right exactly so the price is right right yeah you watch that all the time as a kid exactly so yeah so the process um going through that for me is like i can't believe that i was able to you know i went into it with an open mind and i'm i'm shocked that i was able to find someone like rachel that like can put up with me has the type of heart that she does and was able to form that connection as a skeptic before the show that you could find someone like that on a tv show and so like that was incredible and that was a great takeaway from the whole experience for me and then the second thing would be um just where we're at

as a country and um the type of um things that we need to do and grow uh and having the conversations that we need to be had not only around race but diversity inclusion uh you would think that we would be further along um but it gives me hope that we're having those conversations now so those are two things that um i never would have thought would be yeah the byproduct of this experience for me all right before we get into rapid fire questions to answer rachel do you know how lucky you are to have this guy this guy is amazing i just want it to be known right now that i said that so it's on record you are so lucky to have this guy all right so we keep going so listen just give me twenty dollars all right so what what is the most important book you've

ever read oh man the most important book hands down is the bible i read the bible uh i try to read it every day but that's like kind of what grounds that's what grounds me so okay uh second comes from our friends that hate sleep uh i used to sleep like five six hours i was real bad right uh my lovely wife said hey sleep is important i mean because she didn't want me to keep waking her up and all this stuff i see rachel pumping her arms over here all right so i got eight sleep now right and i like this thing so much that i invested in the company because it's a bed that they make super cold on uh you can make it cold or hot shut up i make it freezing cold i sleep like a baby eight nine hours it's amazing uh and it's got sensors in it that can tell you you know

uh how deep was your sleep how many times did you toss and turn whatever like it tracks all stuff only downside is when you first get it out of the box is a fun tip for everybody it also has like a vibration alarm in it so it said it asked you when you're setting up the app it's like you know what time you want to wake up at eight o'clock first night go to sleep in it that thing woke up i swear i thought it was an earthquake listen what the fuck is that that's the only downside but i love this thing so what is your sleep schedule and based on rachel's reaction it must not be very good bro i could tell you without a shadow of a doubt if you had asked what rachel's biggest problem with our relationship

right now is is my sleep cycle all right how many hours do you sleep so i typically sleep five hours like okay like six max but like which i used to think was normal right so like and and and i and to get to that point like i don't like to wake like if i had to wake up at 5 a.m i'm not going to set an alarm for 5 a.m i'm going to set an alarm for 2 a.m because when my alarm goes off at 2 i'm like thank god i have three hours left and then i'm going to set alarm for 2 15 because I'm going to look at it 15 minutes. I'm like, oh, I have two hours and 45 minutes left. So I set like 10 alarms and whole time I'm more, probably 20.

And I'm waking up because I hit snooze. So Rachel's just like having to deal with this. But when I'm with Rachel, she likes to sleep. She likes the room to be like a bomb shelter. Like the curtains have to be all the way down. There can't be any light coming into the room. The phone faces are down. So like I could wake up if I, if my, and she'll, she'll turn my alarms off.

She had, she had me set one alarm. And so when that goes off, I'm obviously not going to get on, I'm not going to get up off that. So I wake up, I went to bed at 11 PM. It's three in the afternoon because I didn't have an alarm. Like there's no concept of time. It's completely dark. And I look at the phone and I'm breathing hard.

I'm like, yo, it's, I've been asleep for 11 hours. She's torturing you. Yeah, she is. i love is that she doesn't have a microphone so she can't say anything all right so what so you still only sleep five six hours or she's got you well it depends so like like when i monday through friday like i try to get like five or six hours but on the weekends like sleeping i'll sleep in a little bit all right last question and you could ask me one to finish is aliens are you a believer or non-believer bro i am a i am a believer i think that there's

And because I think that there's, well, a bunch of reasons, but I think that there's too much smoke to not be fire. Like, I don't know necessarily what they look like, like if they look like E.T. or if they look like a transformer. But, like, there's too much going on for there not to be some sort of, like. Did you see the cephalopod test? No, I didn't see that. Oh, man. i haven't talked about this on the podcast in a long time so cephalopod i don't even know if you show me 10 things i couldn't tell you what a cephalopod looks like but it's something in the

ocean and they gave it an intelligence test designed for like four-year-olds or something and it passed you're lying i swear and i by the way i don't know what's in the intelligence test i don't want to know uh i don't know how you administer an intelligence test to a fish or whatever i don't want to know that either but all i know is that i've read multiple reports that it passed the intelligence test okay and so uh when i think of alien i always think of like out in space right but there is shit in the ocean that scares the hell out of me too rachel's afraid of sharks sharks yeah you think sharks or octopus are scarier like the octopus feels like it could fuck you up pretty bad so so you know what you know what that's actually hilarious you say that

because what's that documentary there's a documentary called my octopus teacher and like and and now like we can't eat octopus if you octopus and you're canceled uh so i i have to watch the documentary i might feel the same way so i can't even speak yeah i haven't even watched it yet but like apparently uh you yeah you can't eat it you gotta watch it all right can you eat sharks though if we don't like them your sharks are endangered you can't eat sharks either oh have you ever seen the uh the viral video of the woman uh who's in her car and i don't know she's driving or just sitting there and she's like i've been telling y'all y'all want to go to the beach no problem go to the beach but don't go in the shark's house because if the shark comes in my

house i'm eating it so if you go in the shark's house shark's gonna eat you wow it's all it's like a two minute video this shit is hysterical that's a great way to think about it yeah don't go in the shark's house respect the sea you know what's crazy pomp when i was in jupiter there was a uh i was living in jupiter over quarantine there was the biggest tiger shark i've ever seen in my entire life on video uh there's this guy he's just paddle boarding maybe 50 feet offshore maybe 50 60 feet offshore this dude's paddle boarding and he and he puts his gopro under the water i i don't maybe what did he do d 15 20 foot long tiger sharp that has a whole hammerhead shark in his mouth ripping it up and this is underneath his paddleboard bro like he's just paddleboarding

there's people playing on the beach and like yo i'm gonna send you the video video is crazy yeah i don't i don't i don't go in the shark's house so i get i get why people would be yeah i'm good like i like to look at it it's nice you know go there's a breeze but yeah going inside i'm good just go in a pool all right what question you have for me to finish up um if you could tell yourself your 20 year old self one thing looking back on your whole life experience what would you tell yourself two things no fucking fear and go bigger everything that you do in life uh takes the same amount of effort regardless of the output right like if you want to accomplish something you have to work hard at it right but if you work hard at accomplishing a small thing then you get

a small reward but you work hard at accomplishing a big thing you get the big reward so it's kind of like um you know think of like sports right you have to play just as hard in the first game of the season as the championship game right if you want to win right but obviously the championship game is way more important right right from just a pure like the payoff of it right so if you want to actually accomplish things in the world you're going to do the work anyways like go after big things right because the asymmetry is so much better and i think just like when you're younger it's almost like uh in baseball like batting average like like you want to hit bat a thousand right every time i do something i want to be successful right but as you get older i think

you realize like slugging percentage is more important right i don't need to get hit every time but when i get hit it's a home run right right i like that and so like that's a a framework that i think is just it's really really hard when you're younger and then as you get older you realize that you're like damn i've been doing it wrong the whole time right like you go you look at all these super successful people right like uh take masayoshi sun from softbank right he's been the richest person in the world twice right he ain't the richest person anymore right and one time he literally was the richest person in the world and lost 99 of his wealth and then came back right like how do you do that like you just you always take big swings right and so like yeah

cool he probably didn't enjoy the 99 but just he was taking big swings right mike novogratz from galaxy digital i think he he's gonna kill me if i get this wrong uh i think he's been a billionaire three different times billionaire not a billionaire billionaire not a billionaire billionaire now again yeah and he's now i think wealthier than he's ever been and so it's just like you just see enough of the data points you're like all right just go big yeah all right where can we send people to find you on the internet oh man uh abc food tours that's uh our non-profit that we work with the students uh and we've got our sustainability uh model going and then abc food tours.com abc food tours.org.org on on any social and then me personally matt james 919 all right

And then, uh, obviously if we go to Rachel's, uh, Spotify playlist, we'll see you there. Yeah. Anything on Rachel's socials as well, because I'm going to be scouring it, especially the social, uh, Spotify, cause she has better music than I do. So, all right. Thank you for doing this. Absolutely. Appreciate you, bro.