The Pomp Podcast - #850 Operating A Baseball Team On The Bitcoin Standard w/ Steven Nelkovski

Episode Date: March 7, 2022

Steven Nelkovski is the CEO of the Perth Heat Baseball Team. They are the first baseball team to operate on a Bitcoin Standard In this conversation, we discuss starting back up in Australia after the pandemic, Expanding the Bitcoin Standard to more teams, Education the people about Bitcoin, and the recent world events that helped to Orange Pill more individuals. Steven joined us in studio last Friday as a guest host on "The Best Business Show". To view the full video interview, go to the "Best Business Show; LIVE" Youtube Channel. ======================= Bitcoin 2022 is the LARGEST Bitcoin event in the world that takes place April 6th - 9th in Miami Beach, Florida. All four days will be jammed-packed with exclusive content, exciting announcements and an incredible lineup of bitcoin speakers, artists and leaders. Day 1 is INDUSTRY DAY for enterprising bitcoiners who are looking to build a business or career within the ecosystem. Days 2 and 3 are general conference days featuring speakers like El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, CEOs like Michael Saylor, Elizabeth Stark, Jack Mallers, Adam Back and hundreds more. The conference caps off on the fourth day with the world's first and largest Bitcoin Music Festival - Sound Money Fest headlined by rapper and fellow bitcoiner Logic, featuring artists K.Flay, MØ, Royal & the Serpent, Apashe, Asadi and more. Stay tuned for the upcoming lineup announcement! Last year’s conference SOLD OUT and this year’s is on pace to be 3x larger so make sure you grab your tickets before it's too late. Visit b.tc/conference to learn more. Ticket prices increase on JAN 14th, use promo code POMP for 10% off and I will see you in Miami!ire ecosystem bringing utility to #NFTs. =======================  Brave Wallet is the first secure crypto wallet built natively in a web3 crypto browser. No extension required. Store, manage, and grow your portfolio, get NFT & multi-chain support, and more. Download the Brave privacy browser at brave.com/Pomp, and click the wallet icon to get started. =======================

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. Stephen Nelkovsky is the chief executive officer at Perth Baseball. They're a baseball team based out of Australia that is going on to the Bitcoin standard. It's an incredible story. I really enjoyed talking to Stephen, and I hope that you enjoyed this episode as well. Before we get into it, though, I want to first talk about our sponsors. Today's episode is sponsored by the Bitcoin 2022 conference. Bitcoin 2022 is the largest Bitcoin event in the world that takes place April 6th through the 9th in Miami Beach, Florida. All four days will be

jam-packed with exclusive content, exciting announcements, and an incredible lineup of Bitcoin speakers, artists, and leaders. Day one is industry day for enterprising Bitcoiners who are looking to build a business or career within the ecosystem. Days two and three are general conference days featuring speakers like El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, CEOs like michael saylor elizabeth stark jack mallers adam back and hundreds more the conference caps off on the fourth day with the world's first and largest bitcoin music festival sound money fest headlined by rapper and fellow bitcoiner logic featuring artists kay flay mo royal and the serpent apache asadi and more stay tuned for the upcoming lineup announcement last year's conference sold out and

this year's is on pace to be three times larger so make sure you grab your tickets before it's too late. Visit b.tc.com to learn more. Again, that's b.tc.com to learn more. Ticket prices increase on January 14th. Use promo code POMP for 10% off and I will see you in Miami. Today's episode is brought to you by Fundrise. You all know I believe that the best investors both understand and seek out extreme asymmetry. Fundrise is here to help you do just that. It's the largest direct-to-investor real estate investment platform out there, giving you the opportunity to achieve upside of an asset class previously reserved for institutions and high net worth individuals. That's right. Fundrise is making high-end

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I hope you guys enjoyed this one. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views 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. Bitcoin standard for the baseball team. Let's just start there. Remind everyone kind of what you guys are doing and then we'll get into topics. Well, it's moving so far, so much is happening.

So we launched on November 17th, we're the first team in world sport to be integrating Bitcoin and operating on a Bitcoin standard. And then unfortunately the season was shut down. So we- That was because of the weather, because of COVID? COVID, border restrictions,

travel restrictions within Australia. So we weren't able to get a team into Perth without them needing to quarantine for two weeks in a hotel. I mean, that's kind of dumb. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that to you or you're supposed to comment, but like that feels stupid. Yeah, it's been difficult. We've had a whole season.

That's a better way to talk about it. All right, here we go. We're working with the government, so we'll just play the right line here at the moment. But yeah, it's been difficult. But then we reset for a secondary season and they got shut down as well. So finally on March the 3rd next week,

our state will reopen to the rest of the country it's been closed for two years basically the best part of it it's been yeah i travel in and out unless you're a uh you know the prime minister or a high-ranking government official yeah some people don't have to quarantine or part of the best business show then you just can't get in yeah we definitely are not invited uh who was it there was a uh bank uh i think it might have been jamie diamonds i can't remember who to sign somebody one of the big bank ceos uh he like went to a number of different places uh and he like flew in flew out and there was no quarantine going on everyone's like what the hell and they're like oh he has special uh he got a special pass you know whatever and it's like well how do i get the special pass

there's been a few of those special passes hanging around i think the rules for thee not for me yes yes but uh through that we still managed to open up the ballpark on a couple of occasions and accept bitcoin payments at our concession stand so things like movie nights and they're really good uh test run for us to uh you know be able to buy beer with bitcoin uh buy hot dogs with bitcoin merchandise with bitcoin and that worked really well on the lightning network uh through open node there were certainly some issues that we found as we went through that process but it was great then to go back to open node our payment processor and say look we don't want all the contractors who are coming and operating these concession stands to have our two-factor

identification so we need to now work on that and improve that system so it's almost like permissioning and and all sorts of different things where like you guys want almost like a master account then there's like vendor accounts like these are the these are like the operational components of actually doing this it sounds great like everyone can pay with bitcoin but you in some degree uh and it's a bearer asset right so all of a sudden if if i pay my bitcoin to the vendor the vendor's like see ya a little bit different right then uh yeah financial system i don't want to be standing over their shoulder with patrick down at other concession stands so But, yeah, it certainly was something that we discovered early on

that we need our Perth Heat account, but then we need accounts for our concession stands as well. So we worked through that and, yeah, that will be a better place to operate next season. It was interesting when I went to Crypto.com Arena last week. I went to it. Yeah, I saw the Ice Hockey Kings on the Tuesday night and then the Lakers on the Wednesday night

and I went to purchase some merchandise and I said, can I pay in Bitcoin? And they said, sorry? oh interesting i said yeah yeah i'd like to pay in bitcoin they said would you like a bitcoin shirt interesting no no just bitcoin so obviously they're not set at the moment to take any sort of bitcoin or and i wonder how much of that is like uh the arena the sponsor right are the issues there or is it the actual individual vendors because in some of those really large arenas i do wonder are they all using the same payment system or does like each vendor basically hey

you're using squares you know point of sale system somebody else using something else and they're not connected i don't know what the answer to that is no there'll be so many different operations throughout yeah a venue like crypto.com arena but if you're investing 700 million dollars into naming rights i personally thought there may have been some integration yeah with it um maybe it's coming but out of right as of right now on the ground not not possible not not possible and then it gets you thinking well if they're crypto.com arena are they just going to be accepting shit coins and then how many can they accept because that opens up a whole new issue in the accounting yeah if you buy one shit coin or use one shit coin it goes just how do you work that out over

20 000 people using your arena on the one night john would go and buy hot dogs with shibu shibu you have to get some first right but but i do think it's interesting like as you guys are getting deeper and deeper into this you're starting to realize some of the operational uh some are complexity some more opportunities right and so like when people go to buy uh let's say a hot dog a shirt whatever uh in your stadium is it just like you're having a qr code do you have an actual physical device like what are you guys doing to make the user experience uh you know i guess just more efficient and effective the lightning networks instance so phone with a qr code and payments processed and you're basically just doing you're literally generating the lightning

kind of invoice right there on a device able to just scan it just like i would do like a peer-to-peer type transaction and then you guys got it it's as simple as that yeah and that's that's what's great about having the ballpark and becoming a bitcoin village is that we can educate and show how easy it is so the next part will be introducing the atms into the ballpark as well and then we'll discuss a little bit later what we're also going to do in the bitcoin mining space well let's just discuss it right now the ballpark well that's probably the biggest thing that's come out of it in the last two weeks um what we've seen is probably what we thought may have taken a little bit longer to achieve is not going to be that hard to do so we will become the first sports

venue in the world now and we're going to mine bitcoin at the ballpark if we're all in we're going to go the whole yep and where's the energy coming from is it uh just off of the grid or somewhere else now we're going to install some solar solar panels and use that but if you actually look at sports venues across the world, you've got these huge facilities that are sitting there doing nothing for how many days a year, 300 days a year, 320 days a year, 250 days. And they've got the footprint that we can incorporate renewable energy to then create a revenue stream, which can also support the local community. So any revenue we raise from Bitcoin mining, that will go back into the local community be it to help young baseballers equipment help with uh fees that

they may need or if there's teams traveling um around the country and they need support instead of doing fundraising well here we've got the facility um how much energy do you think or like how many miners do you have you guys figured out yet like how big this could be it all comes down to you know how many supporters can we get on on board and we originally thought that potentially going with one mining company would be would be the best way but you know speaking to some leaders over the last couple of weeks while being in the United States. I chatted to Charlie Schumacher at Marathon, visited Winstone out at the Riot facility,

which is just crazy air. Chad Harris is an inspiring leader with what he's doing. We chatted with Parker Lewis at Unchained Capital, even CK from Bitcoin Magazine, the managing director. And what we'd collectively like to do is bring all the miners into this project together. and we've got the opportunity to make this a global landmark now. Have you ever heard of, say, Fiat ballpark or the US dollar ballpark?

No. No, but we can go Bitcoin ballpark and we can get them all incorporated into this ballpark and they can all have their mining stalls within the one feature and it can be a great educational piece and maybe instead of just having two or three machines, maybe we can have somewhere between five to ten and it can really power the next generation of baseballers

and the community. But more importantly, we can be the pilot program for what's possible around the world. And this is not something that can happen in 12 months or two years' time. We can do this in a couple of months. We're ready to press play because the quicker we start, the quicker we're helping our community.

And that's what I think sometimes is lost with Bitcoin in the educational part is how can we continue to feed other parts of our community? And if we're inspiring the next generation or supporting young kids with development programs, then fantastic. Then already the network and the community is huge and it's winning.

But we're now showing every other stadium, look what can be done. Get onto your local governments, get onto your federal governments and start incorporating some renewable energy that we can feed Bitcoin mining off. Yeah. Can John come sing the national anthem?

No, you don't want that. I am curious though, on like a ground level for your guys vision what does that education look like because that seems to be such a big part about just bitcoin in general and getting the actual global adoption yeah what is the education on the ground level look like is it like a stand that you like kind of walk up to and talk about it is it kind of signage everywhere what does that educational component look like for the fans and also for the players yeah so when when you when you walk into the venue where we'll have the bitcoin mining that will be right in the main entrance so people will

walk in and you can't miss it and there'll be people there and the education will start from there um yeah then you've got the atm machines and you've also got uh you know the concession payments that are different stands as well what we've got which has been really good discussing with um companies here in the u.s is we've got a broadcast which we own now this is really different to anything else in world sport where you can have a broadcast which you control for four hours and every message can be about bitcoin and we can drop in educational pieces if we want to cross during the bottom of the fifth to yourself, John, and speak about what's happening in the Bitcoin world in Miami, we can do that. No one else has the ability to control the narrative

throughout a broadcast. And we can put on every platform we would like as well. So again, if you guys say to us, hey, Steve, let's put the Perth Eat broadcast on the Best Business Show Twitter page, we can do that. So we can have a global reach and show how sport has the ability to connect, but also educate. Because as we know, sport is great in terms of inspiring. Sport is a great way to build communities. And it's also a great way to integrate, you know, globally with different supporters and fan bases. So we feel our broadcast is one of the strongest assets we have in terms of going out to the masses, but also educating Bitcoin on a different level. So they don't have to go through a difficult, a long rabbit hole or a deep one, but we can just say,

you know what? Bitcoin is simply just a global monetary network for the internet. It allows peer-to-peer transactions. We don't have to make it any more complicated than that in terms of just the first part of the education. And then we can go deeper if required. But it can be a great entry level into understanding what Bitcoin is. And then if they want more, we'll have the, I guess, the additional sections through our website and through classes that will also run at the stadium as well have you talked to peter mccormick about uh i'm gonna call it a soccer team yes he calls it a football team which is we'll disagree um what do you think about his whole strategy i think the more teams that do this the better someone asked me this

a similar sort of question said are they a competitor i said no i i think they're a strategic partner yeah and and the more teams that we can have well you guys would definitely hopefully beat them in baseball I'm not sure about soccer because I'm also president of a soccer team and we're very good as well yeah we won a couple of championships the last few years so if Peter and Real Bedford want to take on Olympic Kingsway the challenge is there let's get it happening if he lost to an Australian soccer team he would never live it down the mighty green machine is where I love you Peter do not play man there's no upside here's the challenge I thought maybe I'd I would help him get to the Premier League in about five years' time,

but maybe getting Olympic Kings with a green machine up against McCormack. Let's go. Let's get it on. But the more companies that do it, or the more teams, the better, because we'll build then this global network of sports teams. And I know there's a lot of teams at the moment which are heavily invested in looking at how to operate on a Bitcoin standard. The Miami Marlins having a lot of conversations at the moment

about integrating Bitcoin. We know the Houston Rockets have got a great educational program, with NYDIG. And that's evolving. And there's some really cool plans on the table there with what they'd like to do. There's a basketball team in Australia, which Matty Delevadova, who played in the NBA, is involved with and he's right into it. And he's trying to integrate Bitcoin as much as he can into that organization. So the more organizations, sports teams, then we're just building a Bitcoin league of different teams as well. And also with that, we can help educate each other as to the best practices and how do we look through the payments of players?

because we've got a player who wants to be paid for five years up front in Bitcoin. He has the Bitcoin mindset. What we need to work- He wants to get paid for five years. He's going to take a discount on his salary, but he's like, give me the money now and I'll take it all in Bitcoin for my five-year contract.

Yes, because he knows what the value of that will be in five years time. And will you guys do it? We're talking through it, but this is what, again, we learned a couple of the obstacles that we need to get through. So how will the Australian taxation department see that?

and how will he be taxed over that period? Will they just look at it as a one-year payment and then he's not working for the next four years? So that's, yeah. Do you guys know where they'll come out on it yet? Still discussing it. So, yeah, I'd love to see him as the poster boy. Or a new poster boy.

Yeah, for Bitcoin. Here is the Bitcoin boy, yeah? The Bitcoin baseball boy in so many ways, yeah? I'm all for it. I still need to convince my board. He's unfortunately coming back for some injury, but uh oh damn they think he's not good no i think he's good he's a slugger he can hit baseballs he crunches them so um he needs you as his agent he's a slugger he's good

rehab it all winter yeah so uh it's it it's it's a really exciting discussion and what's the discount can you say what like over what he would be paid normally like is it like a 20 discount or like more it's hard to know what the discount will be because how will he progress over five years time as well and what would his payment have been after five years and yeah interesting who's got the discount in the end who wins yeah yeah um so yeah it's pretty interesting when you start to think about uh you know you could sign a long-term contract but there's like performance bonuses there's all this different stuff in there but at the end of the day if he just says hey look just give me some money up front and i'll take the price risk for you guys

it's quote unquote cheaper today but you do have to pay it all now right you're basically pulling forward even though it's cheaper on a per year basis you still have to pull it forward to pay today and so uh you know it's cash management like there's a bunch of complexity here uh that if you can figure out could be really really beneficial but you still got to figure it out absolutely and that and we and we always knew that once we step foot into operating on a bitcoin standard would we have all the answers no but if we wait would we have all the answers no chance you get left behind the quicker we do this the better or the quicker we'll learn and the more we'll be able to educate the next uh sports organization um that's ready to move as well

and that's important being able to educate more teams to come on that bitcoin standard i just want you to know how uh how smart our audience is somebody just posted in the chat c grove said a wise man once said always make the money never don't make the money hard to argue with that genius right like like just boil it right down to yeah make the money get his name we'll get him into our commercial department what uh the team's name is perth heat yes is there any gonna are you gonna change the name of the team could you change it at all or not really the name somebody said bitcoin the bitcoin bulls the bitcoin bulls oh look everything's always up for discussion depending on on on who the commercial partners are um look

If we fully integrate with Bitcoin, we want to work with whoever possible. Yeah, Bitcoin companies and continue to support the network as much as we can. We're now known as the Bitcoin baseball team. That's a really nice secondary line to support what we're doing. There's 30 years of history, and we've already tweaked the logo. As you can see, with the Bitcoin. No, copyright with the Bitcoin logo. No, and that was an easy hoop to get through.

What is the other one? Show the other hats real quick. So you got that one. So that's pretty loud. Then we've got something which is just more generic and Bitcoin baseball. Bitcoin baseball, pretty self-explanatory. And then I got this one right here.

That's the navy blue. This is mine. There's many like it, but this one is mine. No one else is going to get that one. There's a few here, so you're more than welcome to hand them out as you see fit throughout the course. I ain't giving shit to nobody. Just tweaking the logo naturally caused some dissatisfaction

against former players. When you start playing, your logo is your badge, yeah? And people start asking questions. like this there's 30 years of tradition here that you're tweaking there's championships which we've won and now you're playing around with a logo um so literally just putting the uh the bitcoin in there people got a little worked up yeah and what it's just previously was just like a full uh it was just colored yeah and i get it i understand it yeah um your logo is is pretty central to your whole organization um but i also need to make the organization better and i need to make sure that

We're the best baseball team, not only in Australia, but within Asia over the next decade. Do you guys go play other teams in Asia? Oh, we will start now. Yeah, there's a real appetite to create an Asian series, bring Japanese and Korean teams over to Perth and play international tournaments at the end of the Australian season, heading into their seasons.

I've seen a couple of them playing Major League Baseball. They're pretty good. Be careful. They're incredible teams, yeah. What is it, Ichiro, right? Legend. And then who's the guy? joe's always tweeting about him the guy on the angels uh the guy who's like a pitcher and hits

bombs yeah tony right like he uh i think he grew up playing in uh which league john i'll find it real quick what league did he grow up playing in the japanese are phenomenal baseball players we've actually got a korean team in the australian baseball league so the australian baseball league is an international league there's a team from new zealand also one from korea um it's a really interesting americans don't know that new zealand England and Australia are different, by the way. They're just a little island off the side, yeah. They get confused, but yes.

But yeah, in a business sense, that's quite an incredible model because they bring the whole Korean team into Victoria in Melbourne and they base themselves there for the whole season. But the television audience is huge. Over a million people watching each Korean game. And they have been the worst performing side for the two years that they've been in the competition, yet they still draw those numbers. and so it's the thought process that uh you won't necessarily get more teams into your league but

you'll basically play like out of league games and you'll go into uh various countries to play that's the great man said it it's the bitcoin cup you're coming to perth and we're playing for the baseball bitcoin cup and there's a team from japan a team from korea one from australia and it could be an invitational team that comes from you know the tampa bay rays who are our sister state uh team here in the u.s and we've suddenly got a four-team tournament with international teams and we're playing for the most prized baseball uh trophy trophy yeah which is you know powered by bitcoin so uh otani grew up in japan northern japan and it says that i actually didn't know this uh pretty interesting uh he wanted to move basically right out of high

school uh straight to major leagues and he had received interest from the rangers red socks yankees obviously best baseball team uh the dodgers etc uh and he basically said like i'm going straight from japan i'm turning professional uh but he ended up getting drafted anyways but i'm gonna mess this up so uh i apologize in advance but hokado nippon ham fighters i guess is one of the japanese teams uh they drafted him anyways and he actually then uh negotiated and to stay played uh i don't know how many years uh and then went to major league baseball so i think part of the reason why that's fascinating to me is like there's this whole idea of uh america has a monopoly on the best baseball players and sure there's people who want to get to the major league baseball

but many of the best major league baseball players have spent years i mean he spent uh it looks like three four years in the japanese baseball league before he went and so you guys as well in your league have seen many many people play for years there before they end up going to the major league baseball or come back right after major league baseball well everyone's journey is different so man just look at the perth heat we've had 31 players 31 players who've played for our organization and also played major league wow yeah that's a big number that's like the whole team right like they all play at the same time if we look at our partnership with the tampa bay rays which i value as one of the most prized partnerships in world sport for a team in australia to be partnering

with a major league team what do you guys do with them so they send us out their 10 best prospects each american winter oh wow interesting and that partnership's been going for four years we've already had three players who've gone on to play major league baseball okay so we've had jake fraley who's currently uh with seattle uh mike brousseau who's a home run for tampa knocked out the yankees in 2020 of the year all right go ahead and also chris sanchez who pitched for the Phillies. You know, from here, I'll be heading up to Tampa to catch up with the Rays organization and talk through, but it's so valuable. The quality of the prospects they send out and the individual that they bring, they add so much to our organization. But what we're finding is that

this journey to Perth, Australia is a really big part of their development. Prior to that, back in the late 80s, early 90s, it was with the Orioles. So over three decades, we've had two organizations. You dropped the Orioles, you're done with them? We're done with them. We're with the Tampa Bay Rays and what we're seeing is that, yeah, we've got a program and a system that the Rays organization trusts and that's really powerful and we're very grateful for that partnership. I didn't know where Perth was. I just looked up on the map and I actually met some people from Perth years ago

when I was living out in San Francisco and I remember being like, oh, Australia, Sydney, right, or Melbourne or whatever. and they're like, no, no, no, Perth, like way far away. But I didn't realize it's literally on the other side of the country. We're like the ugly cousin here on the far side of the country there on the west side. Most isolated city in the world. Is it really?

It is. Wow. But it's got the country's best baseball team. Do you guys have to travel when you go play these other teams? It's probably pretty far, right? Absolutely. How far is it to go to? To go to Sydney, four hours.

Melbourne, three and a half. Brisbane, five hours. So there's a lot of travel for the team. driving four or five or four no flights flight oh so this is like

basically across the United States absolutely wow yeah and again similar like traveling across the US a three hour time difference oh there's a three hour

time difference too damn how big is Australia it's huge Australia looks like a little small thing in the ocean it's like as big as

the United States going sideways nah so yeah for a team coming out of Perth to win national championships is difficult because you're on the road so much more

than the other teams on the east coast but good teams win regardless of what the conditions are but you guys have uh uh nice beaches there i think that's stunning beaches they're gorgeous yeah that's like the big thing is uh purse got the beach yeah we got cotter slow we've got scarborough we've got uh yeah florida we got yeah and then our southwest margaret river the wine region yeah yelling up it's a it's a stunning place to uh to see which hopefully

we'll get you out to uh we've been during the australian summer but i gotta say we gotta come after i saw some videos yeah everything's gotta calm down a little bit we gotta wait till after the craziness is over it's i think we're just about there but we've been saying that for two years yeah all right when i see videos of people like oh i could walk down through the i think i saw one where they were walking with like a cup of coffee through the park and they got stopped and like they checked the cup of coffee i'm pretty sure it was australia to make sure that they actually had coffee yeah to make sure that they actually had coffee or something and i was like oh i can't go there no we'll be back to our best all right all right and we've got a little hook

to get you over to australia so uh what's the hook what's the hook the best baseball team in australia yeah what do you think tell him tell him what well it's uh it's never been offered to anyone internationally before wait what is this this is uh this is something that uh on behalf of the organization and we'll get this right on camera here oops oh we got the wrong jersey here Take two. Building up the suspense here. Oh, God. I'm so scared.

Come on. Take two. Take two. Here we go. Let's go. See, this is what Joe misses out when he goes trekking around the world, doesn't he? No way. Here we go.

Let's go. Pomp. That is sick. Our international number one ticket holder. Number one ticket holder? Number one ticket holder. I don't even know what that means, but yes, in. You are in.

and I think this will coordinate with some sort of trip throwing the ceremonial first pitch, but here he is. Done. Our number one international ticket holder, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Perth Heat, the Bitcoin Baseball Team.

Just do that to me. What? All right, so hold on. First of all, rewind. Because look at this. He's tricking me. First, I get this one and he hands this to me.

There's no name on the back. Like, okay, that's fine. 21 million, you know, obviously 21 million Bitcoin. I got it. But this, I might have to wear this walking around miami that's awesome all right so now my first question before i agreed anything

which i already agreed but uh what is the international ticket holder what is that well yeah like i'm just i'm just the best that's the best yeah absolutely you come to the ballpark you get the best seats you get the best service you are you are the uh international ambassador for the perth heat uh done i will and when we get done we'll take a photo of this and we'll post it on the internet and we'll tell everyone that john's gonna sing the national anthem john's not excited about the national anthem you guys don't play the national anthem there we do play the national the australian national the australian and at times every country's got a national i know at times we play the united states one as well given the uh the the number

of imports we have yeah um so yeah we we like to respect that a couple of times throughout the season yeah um and also yeah play the united states i promise that we're coming we got to figure out when we're gonna do it uh and also uh maybe we'll bring my uh my daughter and sophia can go see perth and uh we'll we'll convince polina to come john can go john will uh i don't even want john uh you don't know this story but uh we've told the audience before john has a uh uh a history it's not a habit but a history of uh whenever we fly international the guy just just slams heinekens on the plane i don't know what the problem is that could be quite a flight it's like an eight hour flight how far is it from like no no it's like 15 hours or something like that

it's just getting to uh doha for the transfer and then the another 11 so yeah you're looking about 26 hours yeah 26 yeah with a stopover in between so you go from east coast to Doha or somewhere yeah so on my flight home I'll be going uh Miami uh to Doha uh I think that's 13 and a half few hour stopover and then Doha to Perth like another 11 or so yeah man 26 hours yeah we definitely gotta go to a game if we're gonna fly 26 hours we definitely gotta go to a game well i'll get the chairman to fire up the uh the boat and uh we're away you guys got a boat the chairman does oh who's the chairman what's he doing we'll go on the boat we'll do the whole thing the uh one of my favorite stories actually uh is um uh ryan leslie who you you may not know

there'd be no reason for you to know who he is but he's a music producer and so uh i asked him years ago i was like uh he'd spent a bunch of time with jay-z and a number of like very well-known artists and i said uh tell me a story as to like why are they successful and he said to me he goes let me explain to you i'm gonna tell you a day that i had with jay-z and he said they were in australia and uh i think it was either him or beyonce or both of them uh were doing like a special taping of the oprah show at the uh sydney opera house or whatever right so they had some kind of event uh and then um they went out on a boat and you know spent a little bit of time together for the day came back uh he had to do some work eat dinner and they went and in the

living room they set up uh the recording equipment and so uh the way that i remember the story him telling it was like it was like two three o'clock in the morning and he was jay-z right like it's not like he was you know just starting out he he'd already known beyonce also and uh and he was still working at like 2 30 in the morning and he was recording and ryan leslie i think either said something to him or jay-z's or at some point it came up that like you're jay-z but you're still working and he was like ain't nobody gonna ever catch me he's like because there's nobody's gonna do this and i always think about i don't know why i have that story and because it was in australia and i have it like associated with australia's like man australia is dope right and our brother

went uh uh vince went to australia yeah right when he loves the uh vegemite in australia not one of my favorite spreads one of or not no not not one of yeah me either he's gonna be ready to murder him for saying that uh no the thing that i remember uh is that he uh he came back he went when he was like a teenager uh i'm like i don't know some kind of program yeah yeah some program or something and uh and he came back he's telling us all about australia And we were like, yeah, cool, man. Thanks for the invite. You know, whatever.

But he had, what is the Aborigine, I think? The didgeridoo. The tube thing? Yeah, the big didgeridoo. My parents hated that thing because this dude was blowing into the didgeridoo. And he wasn't good at it, but he was trying. He was trying. Yeah, it's not easy to get the right sounds out of it.

Yeah, it's crazy. That is like the musical instrument, right? Yeah, that's it. The native musical instrument. All right, so let's talk. um obviously there's a whole bunch of stuff that's been going on around the world uh the russia ukraine stuff with crypto uh and bitcoin i saw that um it's like four million dollars now that's been donated to the ukrainian uh armed forces uh also i saw that uh some of the centralized

um i think it was patreon maybe froze a bunch of assets that was designated for some of them um and then uh the ukrainian national television was playing instructions on how to create molotov cocktails right they're like hey you gotta fight back they're handing out guns to people uh there's a pizza place in uh in ukraine that's giving out free pizzas to anyone that shows up uh and shows the weapon that they're going to use to fight the russian i mean it's like crazy stuff right but but it's it's war what's your general read on like uh maybe the situation but also just like bitcoin's role in these types of situations being like a censorship resistant technology well we saw it first with the Canadian truckers didn't we and the influence it had um in Ottawa and now now

we're seeing it in in a different role um in war um so in the space of two weeks um and its ability to transact in different ways is showing, yeah, the outside world or people not involved with Bitcoin, yeah, how it can have value and how it can be used as a global monetary network. What we're seeing in obviously Russia and the Ukraine at the moment is heartbreaking. It's confronting and if we could stop it right now, we would like to, yeah. Ideally.

Yeah. But unfortunately, that's not the case. How can Bitcoin play a role? And if we can continue to donate in ways that so far has raised $4 million, then fantastic. And if we can support communities with Bitcoin, fantastic. Yeah. I was on a call this morning, there was a couple of people who run Bitcoin or crypto companies. And multiple people said, hey we have uh folks that we work with whether they're partners employees contractors whatever uh that are in ukraine and uh each of them you know kind of briefly uh mentioned oh we've uh instructed our employees uh on how to store bitcoin we've sent them some bitcoin and they're like literally leaving the country right now another guy said that he actually had a pretty

large it sounded like employees they were like they're literally driving to the polish border right now right and like we're helping them and so it's this weird thing where uh it there's a lot of ties from ukraine to the technology world right and i think that we're seeing um uh the bitcoin community in these situations whether it's canada whether it's uh ukraine elsewhere uh there's just something about like bitcoiners helping bitcoiners right and it feels like that is yeah absolutely and it feels like there there's just something about this like loose connection of people who all have a similar vision of the world and in these situations the global audience steps in and tries to help. Yeah, without doubt. If you just look at our baseball team, as soon as

we've adopted the Bitcoin standard, we've plugged into the Bitcoin community and everyone we have spoken to has wanted to help. You look at some of those images of the lines at the ATM machines and people trying to take their cash out. How many won't be able to transact the money that they've saved in those accounts? One of the best things I loved about Bitcoin as I was starting to go down the rabbit hole was the fact that I could walk over borders. As long as I knew my words, I could take as much as I wanted to. It always fascinated me traveling, you know, over the years that you're only allowed to have $10,000 in your pocket out of Australia. That's the single most amount you're allowed to have. It's crazy. Yeah. Same with the United States. Yeah. $10,000. Yet now I can take

my Bitcoin anywhere and nobody knows. It's pretty cool. Yeah. And yeah. So what we're seeing is even with you know what its price is and how it's managed to hold its position over the last you know 48 72 hours as well if there was going to be a test for bitcoin again you start a war and let's see what happens with the price and right now we're seeing you know real strength in in the value of bitcoin uh because there hasn't been any you know huge volatility with the price at all um which yeah i went on television this morning and uh they asked me yesterday hey will you come on tomorrow morning and uh and bitcoin was uh had gone down three or four percent right so uh i genuinely think that they're uh they're trying to figure it out right they're trying to understand

hey what's going on let's bring on people that that have opinions and we'll kind of sift through it and uh right before i went to bed last night i looked and i was like oh bitcoin was up you know eight nine percent i was like all right i got a little more firepower going into the conversation absolutely down three or four percent right there's people going for you for it to trip up really yeah um and awards yeah generally generally a time when you say like you know stocks crash but uh is bitcoin no um we're actually now seeing the strength of it in the way that uh you know the world can transact and it can help uh communities like you know the ukraine and people throughout there which is fantastic i mean yeah it was uh let's see at 5 30 or so yesterday

morning uh eastern time it was sitting you know kind of 34 000 or so 34 5 34 7 and now it's at 39 300 bucks like it's up you know 12 13 percent over the last uh uh 24 48 hours and if you look at let's see gold uh gold i think is before i say anything let me check yeah it's down it's down you know one two percent um which is interesting though because actually when uh the conflict started it was opposite gold went up and bitcoin went down and then it feels like once people realize after about 12 hours or so like okay here's what's going on they reversed and so like i don't know what to read into that but but it's fascinating to watch maybe people have worked out you can't cross the borders holding gold bars yeah yeah i mean like it's like we all joke about

it to some degree but like one true two is i think that also uh you start to realize that like gold even if it quote-unquote works it's going to stay flat right like like there isn't going to be some 300 increase in the u.s dollar value of gold uh bitcoin is different now bitcoin can go down or go up but there's more volatility to the asset and so if gold and bitcoin both work right so forget in either or world they both serve as sound money one's physical one's digital uh in that scenario you're going to want to have the one that's more volatile right because they're both working and so i i do think that it's this very um just a really interesting way to kind of look at this and then you get into this uh idea of like you know printing trillions of dollars

we'll get everyone up to there's only 21 million confiscating it from truckers we'll get everyone up to like you know the the inability to confiscate it uh now you get financial sanctions wakes everyone up to censorship resistance like the world just kind of continues to get orange-pilled over time right it's been a great two weeks of marketing for bitcoin really or you know or month in terms of the globe understanding how it works and um in in different formats as well um obviously there's no company or ceo behind bitcoin but what we've seen is that uh it's marketing itself yeah canada's been a huge player in that um justin trudeau's the cmo of bitcoin right now he's done beautifully for us in a roundabout sort of way yeah um and we should all thank him actually we

Yeah, if we can somehow. And with what we're seeing in the Ukraine now is also another way of understanding how Bitcoin works globally in different markets and communities and at different times in world moments. The technology clearly works and has use cases as we've seen over the last few months. How do you think about the price volatility

and holding Bitcoin on your guys' balance sheet and everything that goes along with paying players to not kind of take that price volatility if it has a massive drawdown like it had in the last few months. I always say, zoom out, only heading to one corner, isn't it? We feel the strength of your organization will be hodling Bitcoin. If we can continue to hodl Bitcoin, and there was an example I spoke in Sacramento at Bitcoin Day last week,

and I was speaking about how all our partnerships moving forward, we would like to either be paid in Bitcoin or convert into Bitcoin. now if we hodl that bitcoin say we've got 25 bitcoin from from 2022 about a million us what will that be worth in 10 years time will one bitcoin be worth a million so will we suddenly have 25 million on our corporate treasury but that's just one year out of 10 years we've still got another nine years of stacking uh to go from there and that will be the strength of the organization and we can't lose it's to the rest of the competition try and catch us you think you can win championships with this sort of corporate treasury that we've got with this strategy that

we've had since 2022 um i i just cannot see how any other team in the australian baseball league will be able to compete and people say yeah but you've got operating expenses yes we do but those operating expenses will be covered from things like merchandise yeah ticketing memberships concession stands if we can cover our operating expenses through um those revenue streams and continue to huddle our partnerships then we're in a really good position um you know come 10 years time yeah i couldn't agree more i think it's a no-brainer how can people help you oh and in so many ways you know certainly the bitcoin uh community in in terms of organizations we want to partner with them um yeah we said you know when we spoke on the show the first time we're not a

shitcoin sports team yeah and that's actually what the name of the team now is perth heat we're not a coin sports team exactly but um yeah we only want to partner with with bitcoin focused uh companies and we've had the big exchanges come after us and we've had to say no and that's been you know part of the education to the board as to how it works and who and who we're going to partner with so certainly we want to continue working with you know bitcoin only companies and for for fans and members uh or people around you know the globe you can jump on our website um and you can purchase merchandise you can purchase uh yeah memberships yeah well so people people could basically get online we've just had the second shipment that's come through uh from new balance they are online

and they're available to be shipped immediately new balance paying you in bitcoin they're not at the moment yeah it's certainly his deal yeah one of our yeah um you know partners we would like to to do more with what what is the uh what's the conversion of uh aud to uh to us dollars It's about $71, I think, at the moment. Yeah, $72 to $1. $0.72 to $1 AUD. Got it. So it's about 30% less.

So if a hat is $50, it's kind of like $35, give or take. That's right. $36. Yeah, and there's the- Listen, I don't do public- You're close. But yeah, jump online. We're ready to ship those.

at uh that that's global um in in terms of the uh the network that we've got to uh to distribute and then yeah we just keep supporting us um joint joint people can't they're going to be able to watch the games on the internet once once we start up again yeah which which with 22 23 season and that will be the bitcoin broadcast and that's where we will integrate sick um anything and everyone to do with bitcoin in a four-hour broadcast we can cross to you for a one-hour pre-show if we would like and just speak Bitcoin

it was pretty cool we met up with CJ Wilson in Sacramento he's a two-time All-Star yep he's pitched in the World Series twice

11 years in the Major Leagues this is how the Bitcoin community works we met up he loves what we're doing yep and in a conversation

said wouldn't mind coming out and being part of your organisation can you get him to play he's been out of the game for a few years but you know what

he can add a lot I bet you he's still got a nasty fastball yeah it'd be pretty cool but uh he was speaking about yeah maybe joining our pitching staff yeah and uh how cool is that that yeah once we've joined the network we've now aligned ourselves with someone who's played you know 11 years at the highest level over 1200 strikeouts um that can only improve our organization yeah and that's where yeah some of the people who haven't understood what this whole process is about go how does it work well that's how it works just in one way of so many ways we've now got cj wilson offering to help our ball club yeah and

that's only going to better our bullpen our younger players coming through and sure and anyone within our organization that we've had someone play at the elite level and can educate us in so many different aspects of baseball but also running an organization yeah i firmly believe you can learn off anyone uh in any capacity yeah completely agree absolutely so um yeah um But our broadcast will be phenomenal. We've got some ideas and I'll share one with you. So you've got the home run fence, yeah? Yeah.

And there's different ways we can now integrate people in different parts of the world into competitions. So we may have our international number one ticket holder's face right up there behind the home run fence. That's me, John. We may be able to get Michael Saylor's face up there as well. We may be able to get, you know, Jack. and if a home run is crunched and it hits one of your faces well that can support the bitcoin

community in so many different ways ah interesting so we've got the game of baseball happening we've got players being gamified a little bit yeah absolutely why not yeah um you know let's bring the fans into the ballpark as well we appreciate that not everyone worldwide will be able to come to perth to watch the uh the bitcoin baseball team but there's so many ways ticket holder will absolutely front and center right behind home plate um but there's different ways that we can now integrate fans and the network into a game of baseball and we're controlling this broadcast yep um so many teams would love the ability to be able to control yeah what they put out it's like the yes network for the yankees but uh but better but better yeah um so some

really cool things are working through do we put like a a qr code on the back of a player is the way that people can scan through that and maybe a partner can give free Bitcoin to people but yeah

we'd like to experiment and have some fun with that obviously taking what our focus is which is winning championships I love winning more than anyone

you know what our dad used to tell us well he still tells us he used to say all the time he goes listen we'd like finish up with like a practice

a game or something he would just say listen all this nonsense they're telling you whatever he goes there's nothing more fun than winning it's the best

i just for whatever reason i always remember that i say yeah that is true there is nothing more fun than winning absolutely um since i've been with the organization we've lost two championship series in in three seasons and uh yeah we need some rings on our fingers and uh yeah we're the focus is always on producing baseballs and winning uh winning championships the klaxon shield but um you know part of our big part of our business is in integrating with Bitcoin and how can we work with the community to improve the education, but also taking it to different parts of the world, which, you know, we've got Twitter space at the moment, we've got these great podcasts, but how also can we connect with different generations of fans right around

the world through sport, because it's got the power to connect and to inspire. And we think we've got a really wonderful chance to do that. For sure. Well, the idea, I believe, of like plugging into the Bitcoin standard is not only the monetary, hey, you can set payments this way, the price appreciation you get the capital appreciation on your balance sheet appreciation or depreciation depending on the timeline and how you look at it um but obviously all of us here think appreciation um and then you you tap into the community right where cj wilson you have guys that are coming in and saying hey i like what you guys are doing how can i help absolutely and it just broadens your guys reach outside of perth and outside of australia in general um globally

right without doubt um you look at our merchandise sales and what we've been able to achieve since We launched our position on November 17. What we'd previously done in three years of international sales, three years, we eclipsed in four weeks. And that's just Bitcoiners around the world saying, I want to buy the jersey, I want to buy the hat, we want to support. It's crazy. Three years of merchandise sales eclipsed in four weeks.

And that's the... Welcome to Bitcoin. Yeah. It's pretty cool. And I know Pete McCormack said similar sorts of success with his merchandise with Real Bedford. uh the more people we have wearing bitcoin uh jerseys hoodies caps around the globe uh the better for the network the better for the community if we go to this john by the way

this is very important detail i don't need any 50 cent like first pitch i don't need a conor mcgregor first pitch i need you to about fauci first pitch don't even get me i need you to hit me with the george bush 9-11 uh right down the pipe just strike right he said i saw a documentary he said i knew that i had to throw it and he says then if i messed it up i'd never hear the end of it he said i need to throw it right down the middle apparently jeter told him he was like i'm gonna throw like from right in front of the mound he was like get on the mound yeah he was like you gonna get booted the greatest ceremonial first pitch of all time probably of all time right and the documentary on the espn for 30 for 30s is just that's what it is it's just phenomenal

it's one of the the mini ones it goes for 30 minutes wow what a story yeah that's why I just need to make sure John knows

that we're going George Bush style we're not going Conor McGregor throwing it off into I gotta re-watch McGregor's McGregor throws it into the like literally

he said I think I remember him saying it was a rocket though just a great single if that's his rocket I'd let it rip if that's his rocket gee

yeah that was awful yeah you threw it hard just got in the wrong direction there buddy um all right before uh before we let everyone go uh what is the website that we should send everyone uh to well if you go to our website which is just perthheat.com.au or you go to the uh the bitcoin perthheat uh there's two different ones there so that we've got the option there our main website then we've also got the additional one which has got all the merchandise uh memberships and and tickets for you to purchase

as well the bitcoin baseball team what and do you see john do you see the attention to detail here do you see what i see where's the laser eyes on the laser eyes on the uh on the guy swinging the bat like come on that's our captain tim cannelli uh also captain the australian team uh yeah wonderful player uh the best slugger in the competition really can crunch baseball we'll see we'll do some batting practice we'll see what he has john will throw him some bp john that's That's the only way John throws meatballs for this guy. Outfielders back up. Guy's like, hey, bring that shit right here.

Know your artist, John. Throw a 65-mile-an-hour fastball right down the plate for him. 65 miles an hour, bro. What are you going to throw, left-handed? Come a 65? I don't know how fast I could throw. It'd be interesting. You can't throw 70.

I didn't throw no baseball. We're going to get a spade gun out on you. That's what we're going to have. Yeah. Yeah, come on. You don't want to get that because some people would be embarrassed. I mean, I'm not throwing 90 miles an hour, so. You're going to be throwing 70 if you all come to Perth.

We don't want anything for 70. If I got CJ Wilson to help me out, I'll be throwing 100. All right. If you go into the chat right now, I just dropped Stephen's Twitter handle. Make sure you follow him on there. We appreciate you coming in. Just one more time in case anybody didn't realize I got this now. yeah your boy's gonna be wearing this on saturday night at the club i don't go to the club but it

sounded good um and now we have confirmed that john will be singing the national anthem at a game and throwing out the first pitch left-handed uh not left-handed yeah well if you throw 65 and uh and we somebody's not trying to have tommy john somebody said somebody said rubber arm You got like a wet noodle going on over there. Tommy John after one pitch. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you guys enjoyed this one. Make sure you're subscribed on Apple, Spotify,

or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to try to transition to get a new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to palmscryptocourse.com. We've developed a curriculum with the top teams across the industry. It's a three-week intensive training program

with over 50 events packed into that three-week time period. Go to pompscryptocourse.com to learn more and I'll meet you guys for the next episode.